Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor W. Adorno

Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950. Robert Hullot-Kentor, University of Minnesota Press, 2006, 208 pp. Magda França, São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1974‎, 165 pp. Hans Hildenbrand and Alex Lindenberg, Gallimard, 1962. Philosophie de la nouvelle musique, trans.Mohr, 1949, 144 pp Frankfurt am Main: Europaische Verlaganstalt, 1959 repr. Philosophie der neuen Musik, Tübingen: J.C.B.

Komposition für den Film, Munich, 1969 in GS 15, 1975 Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1996 Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006.

with Hans Eisler, Composing for the Films, 1947 New York: Continuum, 2005.

Michael Hauser and Milan Váňa, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2009. Edmund Jephcott, Stanford University Press, 2002. John Cumming, New York: Continuum, 1989 ed.

Dialectic of Enlightenment: philosophical Fragments, Herder and Herder, 1972 trans.

with Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente, Amsterdam: Querido, 1947 repr.

Robert Hullot-Kentor, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, trans.

Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen, Tübingen, 1933 repr.

'Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.' This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.Īdorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning.

The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes.

Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor W. Adorno