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Association for Adorno Studies Theodor W. Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Mirror Sites View this site from another server:. Aesthetic Theory , trans. The Authoritarian Personality , T. Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link , trans. The Complete Correspondence, — , T.
Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords , , trans. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments , M. Hegel: Three Studies , trans. History and Freedom: Lectures , trans.
Introduction to Sociology , ed. The Jargon of Authenticity , trans. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason , ed. Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic , trans. Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy , trans. Metaphysics: Concept and Problems , ed. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life , trans. Notes to Literature , , , , 2 vols. Prisms , trans. In this way, identity thinking misrepresents its object. The essay presents both a critical analysis of enlightenment and an account of the instrumentalization of reason.
The Enlightenment is characteristically thought of as an historical period, spanning the 17th and 18th Centuries, embodying the emancipatory ideals of modernity. Enlightenment intellectuals were united by a common vision in which a genuinely human social and political order was to be achieved through the dissolution of previously oppressive, unenlightened, institutions.
The establishment of enlightenment ideals was to be achieved by creating the conditions in which individuals could be free to exercise their own reason, free from the dictates of rationally indefensible doctrine and dogma.
The means for establishing this new order was the exercise of reason. Freeing reason from the societal bonds which had constrained it was identified as the means for achieving human sovereignty over a world which was typically conceived of as the manifestation of some higher, divine authority.
Enlightenment embodies the promise of human beings finally taking individual and collective control over the destiny of the species. Adorno and Horkheimer refused to endorse such a wholly optimistic reading of the effects of the rationalization of society. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant. They do not conceive of enlightenment as confined to a distinct historical period. Instead they use it to refer to a series of related intellectual and practical operations which are presented as demythologizing, secularizing or disenchanting some mythical, religious or magical representation of the world.
Adorno and Horkheimer extend their understanding of enlightenment to refer to a mode of apprehending reality found in the writings of classical Greek philosophers, such as Parmenides , to 20th century positivists such as Bertrand Russell. An analysis of the second of these two theses will suffice to explicate the concept of enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer present.
These accounts typically describe the cognitive ascent of humanity as originating in myth, proceeding to religion, and culminating in secular, scientific reasoning. On this view, the scientific worldview ushered in by the enlightenment is seen as effecting a radical intellectual break and transition from that which went before.
Adorno and Horkheimer fundamentally challenge this assumption. Both myth and enlightenment are modes of representing reality, both attempt to explain and account for reality.
However, they view the betrayal of enlightenment as being inherently entwined with enlightenment itself. For them, the reversion to mythology primarily means reverting to an unreflexive, uncritical mode of configuring and understanding reality.
Reverting to mythology means the institution of social conditions, over which individuals come to have little perceived control. Reverting to mythology means a reversion to a heteronomous condition. Adorno and Horkheimer conceive of enlightenment as principally a demythologizing mode of apprehending reality.
For them, the fundamental aim of enlightenment is the establishment of human sovereignty over material reality, over nature: enlightenment is founded upon the drive to master and control nature.
The realization of this aim requires the ability to cognitively and practically manipulate the material environment in accordance with our will. In order to be said to dominate nature, nature must become an object of our will.
Within highly technologically developed societies, the constraints upon our ability to manipulate nature are typically thought of in terms of the development of technological, scientific knowledge: the limits of possibility are determined not by a mythical belief in god , say, but in the development of the technological forces available to us.
This way of conceiving of the tangible limits to human action and cognition had first to overcome a belief that the natural order contained, and was the product of, mythical beings and entities whose presumed existence constituted the ultimate form of authority for those societies enthralled by them.
The realization of human sovereignty required the dissolution of such beliefs and the disenchantment of nature. From now on, matter would at last be mastered without any illusion of ruling or inherent powers, of hidden qualities. On this reading, enlightenment is conceived of as superseding and replacing mythical and religious belief systems, the falsity of which consist, in large part, of their inability to discern the subjective character and origins of these beliefs. Few would dispute a view of enlightenment as antithetical to myth.
This is, however, precisely what Adorno and Horkheimer argue. Viewed in this way, the value of nature is necessarily conceived of in primarily instrumental terms: nature is thought of as an object for, and instrument of, human will. This conception of nature necessitates drawing a distinction between this realm and those beings for whom it is an object. Thus, the instrumentalist conception of nature entails a conception of human beings as categorically distinct entities, capable of becoming subjects through the exercise of reason upon nature.
For nature to be considered amenable to such subordination requires that it be conceived of as synonymous with the objectified models through which human subjects represent nature to themselves. To be wholly conceivable in these terms requires the exclusion of any properties that cannot be subsumed within this representational understanding of nature, this particular form of identity thinking. In this way, our criteria governing the identification and pursuit of valid knowledge are grounded within a hierarchical relationship between human beings and nature: reason is instrumentalized.
Men pay for the increase of their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator toward men.
He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them. The man of science knows things in so far as he can make them. In this way, their potentiality is turned to his own ends. Ultimately, the drive to dominate nature results in the establishment of a form of reasoning and a general world-view which appears to exist independently of human beings and, more to the point, is principally characterized by a systematic indifference to human beings and their sufferings: we ultimately become mere objects of the form of reason that we have created.
How do Adorno and Horkheimer attempt to defend such a fundamentally controversial claim? Throughout his philosophical lifetime Adorno argued that authoritative forms of knowledge have become largely conceived of as synonymous with instrumental reasoning; that the world has come to be conceived of as identical with its representation within instrumental reasoning.
Reality is thus deemed discernible only in the form of objectively verifiable facts and alternative modes of representing reality are thereby fundamentally undermined.
However, Adorno argued that human beings are increasingly incapable of legitimately excluding themselves from those determinative processes thought to prevail within the disenchanted material realm: human beings become objects of the form of reasoning through which their status as subjects is first formulated.
Thus, Adorno discerns a particular irony in the totalizing representation of reality which enlightenment prioritizes. Human sovereignty over nature is pursued by the accumulation of hard, objective data which purport to accurately describe and catalogue this reality. As it stands, of course, the mere act of describing any particular aspect of the material realm does not, by itself, promote the cause of human freedom.
It may directly facilitate the exercise of freedom by providing sufficient knowledge upon which an agent may exercise discretionary judgment concerning, say, the viability of any particular desire, but, by itself, accurate descriptions of the world are not a sufficient condition for freedom. Adorno, however, argues that the very constituents of this way of thinking are inextricably entwined with heteronomy. The question as to whether these facts might change is ruled out by enlightened thought as a pseudo-problem.
Everything which is, is thus represented as a kind of fate, no less unalterable and uninterogable than mythical fate itself. Conceived of in this way, material reality appears as an immutable and fixed order of things which necessarily pre-structures and pre-determines our consciousness of it.
The more the machinery of thought subjects existence to itself, the more blind its resignation in reproducing existence. Hence enlightenment reverts to mythology, which it never really knew how to elude. For in its figures mythology had the essence of the status quo: cycle, fate, and domination of the world reflected as the truth and deprived of hope.
The ostensible difference between them is that the realm of facts appears to be utterly objective and devoid of any subjective, or anthropomorphic forces. Indeed, the identification of a truly objective order was explicitly pursued through the exclusion of any such subjective prejudices and fallacies.
Subjective reasoning is fallacious reasoning, on this view. The pursuit of human sovereignty over nature is predicated upon a mode of reasoning whose functioning necessitates subsuming all of nature within a single, representational framework.
Assembled within a classificatory scheme these facts are not, cannot ever be, a direct expression of that to which they refer; no aspect of its thought, by its very nature, can ever legitimately be said to possess that quality. However, while facts constitute the principal constituents of this classificatory scheme, the scheme itself, this mode of configuring reality, is founded upon a common, single cognitive currency, which necessarily holds that the essence of all that can be known is reducible to a single, inherently quantifiable property: matter.
They insist that this mode of configuring reality originates within a desire to dominate nature and that this domination is effected by reducing the manifold diversity of nature to, ultimately, a single, manipulable form. For them the realization of the single totality that proceeds from the domination of nature necessitates that reason itself be shorn of any ostensibly partial or particularistic elements.
They conceive of enlightenment as aspiring towards the institution of a form of reasoning which is fundamentally universal and abstract in character: a form of reasoning which posits the existence of a unified order, a priori.
Its rationalist and empiricist versions do not part company on this point. Reality is henceforth to be known in so far as it is quantifiable. Material reality is presented as having become an object of calculation. The form of reasoning which is adequate to the task of representing reality in this way must be necessarily abstract and formal in character. Its evaluative procedures must, similarly, avoid the inclusion of any unduly restrictive and partial affiliations to any specific component property of the system as a whole if they are to be considered capable of being applicable to the system as a whole.
Adorno and Horkheimer present the aspiration towards achieving human sovereignty over nature as culminating in the institution of a mode of reasoning which is bound to the identification and accumulation of facts; which restricts the perceived value of the exercise of reason to one which is instrumental for the domination of nature; and which, finally, aims at the assimilation of all of nature under a single, universalizing representational order. Adorno and Horkheimer present enlightenment as fundamentally driven by the desire to master nature, of bringing all of material reality under a single representational system, within which reason is transformed into a tool for achieving this end.
The attempt to fully dominate nature culminates in the institution of a social and political order over which we have lost control. If one wishes to survive, either as an individual or even as a nation, one must conform to, and learn to utilize, instrumental reason.
The facts upon which instrumental reasoning goes to work are themselves conceptual abstractions and not direct manifestations of phenomena, as they claim to be.
Adorno posits identity thinking as fundamentally concerned not to understand phenomena but to control and manipulate it. A genuinely critical form of philosophy aims to both undercut the dominance of identity thinking and to create an awareness of the potential of apprehending and relating to phenomena in a non-coercive manner. Adorno argues that the instrumentalization of reason has fundamentally undermined both.
He argues that social life in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are fundamentally nihilistic, in character; opportunities for leading a morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to instrumental reasoning and capitalism.
Morality is presented as thereby lacking any objective, public basis. Adorno attempts to critically analyse this condition. He is not a nihilist, but a critic of nihilism. He argues that morality has fallen victim to the distinction drawn between objective and subjective knowledge. The first statement is amenable to empirical verification, whereas the latter is an expression of a personal, subjective belief.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were two of the most prominent figures in The Frankfurt School, a group of German intellectuals that worked together during the 's to develop a critical theory of society with Marxist influences. Adorno and Horkheimer's work is based on the legacy of Karl Marx and was aimed at the critique of Western industrialized-capitalist society. Unlike traditional Marxism in which the economy determines everything, Adorno and Horkheimer and their friends at the Frankfurt School sought to describe the interconnections of economy with culture, psychology, media and other intricate factors through which capitalism functions.
Now any person signifies only those attributes by which he can replace everybody else; he is interchangeable. It might be argued that the standardization of the cultural product under late capitalism is technologically determined, the same as an industrial product such as a can of green beans. Horkheimer and Adorno begin by considering, and dismissing, the claim that the standardization, the identity of mass culture, can be explained in technological terms.
Technology attains its power, they argue, only through the power of monopolies and great corporations. As Stuart Ewen has pointed out, mass society has two aspects, mass production and mass consumption. He states that "the expression 'industry' [in the concept 'culture industry'] is not to be taken literally.
It refers to the standardization of the thing itself -- such as the Western, familiar to every movie-goer -- and to the rationalization of distribution techniques, but not strictly to the production process. One is for stimuli that provoke the listener's attention The other is for material to fall within the category of what the musically untrained listener would call 'natural' music Adorno continues that "the paradox in the desiderata -- stimulatory and natural -- accounts for the dual character of standardization itself.
Stylization of the ever identical framework is only one aspect of standardization. This dual characteristic of popular music also proves to be significant for purposes of marketing it. In order to be mass marketed, "a song-hit must have at least one feature by which it can be distinguished from any other, and yet possess the complete conventionality and triviality of all others.
Without standardisation, it could not be "sold automatically, without requiring any effort on the part of the customer;" it could not be mass-marketed at all. As Horkheimer and Adorno point out, "modern communications media have an isolating effect. The modern administration of capitalist society, with its effective means of communication, keeps people from gregarious interaction.
Automobiles facilitate travel of people "in complete isolation from each other. Popular music either promotes the thoughtlessness of the masses or else provides the content of their thought. Regarding the first of these, Adorno invokes the Distraction Thesis. It is also a product of that music; "the tunes lull the listener to inattention.
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