Dialectic of Enlightenment, Part 1

Moral Minority

In this multi-part series, we examine the legacy of critical theory and the prospects of a recuperation of Marxist theory in the face of rising fascism by delving into the dense and fragmentary landmark text of the Frankfurt School, Dialectic of Enlightenment. In Part 1, we discuss the meaning of Enlightenment as the advancement of thought and ask how we square the traditional narratives of historical progress and emancipatory potential with the pernicious effects of rationalised management, social alienation, and the homogenisation of political possibilities under the logic of Enlightenment. As argued by Adorno and Horkheimer, the destructive trajectory of the enlightenment project can only be understand by its purported point of departure—myth. By posing itself in opposition to myth it recapitulates the impulse of myth to subsume the multiplicity of the world under the dictates of unitary, abstracting logic. By detaching ourselves from the influence of nature and attempting to master it, we have enslaved ourselves more surely to the claims of the “natural” and “objective” and left ourselves exposed to the forces of irrationality that the Enlightenment supposedly had left behind. Is there a way to preserve the emancipatory potential of Enlightenment in the face of our radically circumscribed political present?