Horkheimer and Adorno on Enlightenment
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- Опубліковано 19 гру 2021
- Professor Ellie Anderson, co-host of Overthink philosophy podcast, explains why Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno think that enlightenment is not all it's cracked up to be, according to their seminal work The Dialectic of Enlightenment.
This video was created for Professor Anderson's Spring 2021 "Continental Thought" course at Pomona College.
For more from Ellie, check out Overthink podcast!
Overthinkpodcast.com
This was one of the most succinct explanations of this work I have come across, you did an amazing job!
It's very imprtant to emphasise that Adorno was not anti-Enlightenment. He wasn't an irrationalist and wasn't religious. Rather he wanted an enlightenment that was self-aware.
Right. By exposing the domination of human labour and nature in class divided societies as an ideology fit for justifying the bondage of the many by the few, they hoped for a self-conscious praxis of emancipation to emerge. The critique of scientism is tied to the critique of religion and Idealism in general: the reversal of the subject/object power relation in the mind, a reversal which has resulted in mass murder and other manifestations of unfreedom within what has passed so far as "civilisation".
@monsieur bertillon The video says (with citations) that your interpretation is idiosyncratic at best. What evidence (citations from primary sources!) do you have to offer ud in favor of your proposed intepretation?
@@kmickelson3738 From the preface written by Adorno and Horkheimer: "The critique of enlightenment given in this section is intended to prepare a positive concept of enlightenment which liberates it from its entanglement in blind domination." ('Dialectic of Enlightenment' Stanford University Press 2002 trans Edmund Jephcott p xviii)
77 from MINIMA MORALIA
Auction. - Unfettered technics eliminates luxury, not by declaring privilege as a human right, but by severing the possibility of fulfilment in the midst of raising general living standards. The express train which races through the continent in three nights and two days is a miracle, but the trip in it has nothing of the faded glory of the train bleu [French: blue train]. What comprised the voluptuousness of travel, which began by waving farewell through the open window, the friendly concern of those who accepted tips, the ceremonial meals, the unalloyed feeling of being favored, which does not take anything away from anyone else, has disappeared along with the elegant people who were wont to promenade before the departure on old-fashioned platforms, and who will henceforth be sought for in vain in the halls of the most prestigious hotels. That the steps of the train are drawn in, signifies to travelers on even the most expensive express that they must obey the terse instructions of the company like prisoners. They are given indeed the exactly calculated value for their money, but nothing which isn’t already included in the statistically average claim. Knowing such conditions, whoever would have the idea of setting out with his beloved, as formerly was done from Paris to Nice? But one cannot shake off the suspicion that even the deviant luxury, which noisily proclaims itself as such, has an element of something capricious, of something artificially gotten up. As per Veblen’s theory, it is more about permitting those who can pay, to prove to themselves and others their status, than about meeting their in any case increasingly undifferentiated needs. While the Cadillac is surely superior to the Chevrolet, since it costs more, this superiority, otherwise than in the old Rolls Royce, is derived from a total plan, which cleverly equips the first with better cylinders, brakes, and accessories the second with worse ones, without changing anything in the basic schema of the mass product: one need only make small changes in production to transform a Chevrolet into a Cadillac. Thus luxury is being hollowed out. For in the middle of general fungibility, happiness clings without exception to what is not fungible. No exertion of humanity, no formal reasoning can alter the fact that the clothing which shimmers like a fairy-tale is worn by the one and only, not by twenty-thousand others. Under capitalism, the utopia of the qualitative - what by virtue of its difference and uniqueness does not enter into the ruling exchange relationship - flees into the fetish character. But this promise of happiness in luxury presupposes once more privilege, economic inequality, precisely a society based on fungibility. That is why the qualitative itself turns into a special case of quantification, the not-fungible into the fungible, luxury into comfort and in the end into senseless gadgets. In such a circle the principle of luxury goes to pieces even without the leveling tendency of mass society, over which the reactionaries sentimentally fuss and fume. The inner composition of luxury is not indifferent to what useless things, through their total embedding in the realm of usefulness, experience. Its remainders, even objects of the greatest quality, already look like junk. The delicacies with which the super-rich fill up their homes, call out helplessly for a museum, yet this latter would, as per Valery’s insight, kill the meaning of statues and paintings; only their mother, architecture, points to their proper place. Held fast however in the houses of those to which nothing binds them, they are a slap in the face of the mode of existence which private property has developed into. If the antiquities with which millionaires before the WW I surrounded themselves still mattered, because they raised the idea of the bourgeois dwelling to a dream - the fearful dream - without exploding it, then the chinoisieries [French: ticky-tacky luxuries] which they meanwhile have turned to, sullenly tolerate the private owner, who is only at ease in the light and air which are locked away by luxury. Functionalist luxury is a nonsense, on which false Russian princes who work as interior decorators for Hollywood may earn their keep. The lines of advanced taste converge in asceticism. The child reading A Thousand and One Nights, intoxicated by rubies and emeralds, asked the question, what indeed is so wonderful about the possession of such stones, given that they are described not as a means of exchange, but as a hoard. The entire dialectic of enlightenment is at work in this question. It is as reasonable as unreasonable: reasonable, in becoming aware of idolization, unreasonable, in turning against its own end, which is present only there, where it is not held accountable to any authority, or indeed to any intention: no happiness without fetishism. By and by, however, the skeptical child’s question has spread to every luxury, and even naked sensual pleasure is not immune to it. To the aesthetic eye, which represents what is not useful against utility, what is aesthetic - when violently cut off from purpose - turns into what is anti-aesthetic, because it expresses violence: luxury turns into brutality. In the end it becomes swallowed up by drudgery or conserved as a caricature. Whatever of the beautiful flourishes under horror, is a mockery and ugly to itself. Nevertheless its ephemeral shape stands for the avoidability of horror. Something of this paradox lies in the basis of all art; today it is expressed in the fact that art still exists at all. The firmly held idea of the beautiful demands, that happiness be cast off and at the same time maintained.
@@monsieurbertillon9570 yes.
92 MINIMA MORALIA
Picture-book without pictures. - The objective tendency of the enlightenment, to abolish the power of all images over human beings, does not correspond to any subjective progress of enlightened thought towards imagelessness. After the idols were cast down, and metaphysical ideas irresistibly demolished concepts previous understood as rational and authentically thought, the thinking unleashed by the enlightenment and immunized against thinking is passing over into a second representativeness [Bildlichkeit], an imageless and biased one. Amidst a net of relationships in which human beings have become entirely abstract to each other and to things, the capacity of abstraction disappears. The alienation of schemata and classifications from the data subsumed under them, indeed the pure quantity of processed materials, which has become incommensurable to the circumference of individual human experience, constantly necessitates the archaic retranslation into sensuous signs. The little stick figures and houses, scattered in statistical texts like hieroglyphics, may appear in every specific case to be accidental, a mere means of assistance. But it is not for nothing that they look so similar to countless advertisements, newspaper stereotypes, and toys. In them the representation is victorious over what is represented. Its outsized, simplistic and thus false comprehensibility reinforces the incomprehensibility of the intellectual processes, from which their falseness - the blind, non-conceptual subsumption - cannot be separated. Ubiquitous pictures are nothing of the sort, because they simultaneously present the entire generality, the average, the standard model as something unique, something particular, while ridiculing such. Even the abolition of the particular is derisively turned into something particular. The demand for this has already sedimented itself as a need, and is reproduced everywhere by the mass culture, after the model of the “funnies” [in English in original]. What was once called Spirit [Geist], is dispelled by the illustration. It is not merely that human beings no longer have the capacity to imagine what has not been drilled into them and shown in abbreviated form. Even the joke, in which at one time the freedom of the Spirit [Geist] crashed into the facts and caused the latter to explode, has passed over into illustration. The pictorial jokes which fill the magazines, are for the most part pointless, empty of meaning. They consist of nothing other than a challenge to the eye of a competition with the situation. Schooled by innumerable prior cases, one is supposed to see “what’s happening” faster than the significant moments of the situation are developing. What such pictures act out, in anticipation of their completion by the well-versed observer, is the throwing of all meaning overboard like ballast in the snapshot of the situation, in the unresisting subjugation to the empty hegemony of things. The state-of-the-art joke is the suicide of intention. Whoever commits it, is rewarded by acceptance in the collectivity of laughter, which has horrifying things on its side. Even if one wanted to try to understand such jokes by thinking, one would remain helplessly behind the tempo of unleashed things, which race ahead even in the simplest caricature, like the concluding chase at the end of animated films. Sagacity turns immediately into stupidity in the face of regressive progress. No other understanding is left to thought than the horror of what is incomprehensible. Just as the sober-minded gaze, which meets the billboard smile of a toothpaste beauty, perceives the misery of torture in her manufactured grin, so too does the death-sentence of the subject, implicit in the universal victory of subjective reason, bristle from every joke and truly every visual representation.
This was very enlightening. Thank you so much for making these philosophical concepts easy for us to understand.
Thank you for this pun
This is hands-down the best summary view of the Dialectic of Enlightenment I've seen. I'll be teaching the section on Sade for an upcoming graduate seminar and will assign this video to help them understand how the section fits with the rest of the book.
Well then I don't find it very persuasive (no offense to the professor here, but rather the theory).
All attempts at insight or intellection tautologically involve attempts at mastery of a subject; that is quite quotidian. One cannot seek insight (even of the theory espoused here) without seeking mastery.
What appears to happen here (granted the theory will bear actual reading in full) is a conflation of mastery over ideas with capitalism etc., not quite sure how this elision is made. One could hold for example that communism seeks a mastery of economic arrangements just as ably.
It is indeed difficult to think -- to bring the world into the lens of one's mind -- and not, in tightening one's acuity window, to be seeking some form of mastery over it, such that we are not merely protoplasmic entities, experiencing all phenomena as if an unformed child, or placental emanation...
Please do not refer your students to this video. If they need a scholarly overview then they should read Marcel Stoetzler's chapter "Dialectic of Enlightenment" in the SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory
I am aware that there are tons of scholarly overviews out there, and I usually assign the actual text of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. What is often lacking is something in a more accessible format that still adheres to rigorous standards -- as this whole podcast series does.
@@rogermaioli The following is a highly accesible intro to the Frankfurt School: ua-cam.com/video/6g5_tuXwOUg/v-deo.html
@@spiritualpolitics8205 That's why Adorno was opposed to totalitarian communism too. He was against any sociocultural oppression
One of the most clear and concise summary of the key points of DoE I have watched/read.
I love what you're doing, Ellie. You have a wonderful way of distilling key concepts of philosophical Thinkers and making the exploration of the history of Ideas so compelling. I've never heard anyone distill the argument that Horkheimer and Adorno put forward about the implications of Enlightenment thinking - as you have done for us here. Bravo!
Love your lectures and teaching style!
Thank you!
This is fantastic! Amidst all the boogeyman caricatures of Critical Theory in the media of late this is a breath of fresh air. I'm teaching an excerpt of Dialectic of Enlightenment in my Contemporary Jewish Thought class this fall and will recommend this video to my students in the supplemental materials!
Its not a boogeyman. Critical theory in the 21st century is not used correctly. Because if it was, a lot of Jews would be losing seats on executive boards, and obviously they cant let that happen.
Oh yeah? How's that going right now?
This kind of video (start, voice, gesture) is perfect
Your lectures are gold 🙏🏻
Thank you for bringing this book to my attention and great overview. Just ordered myself a copy.
This talk is enlightening! I am listening to it multiple times.
Amazing video, appreciate your effort
Thank you for this insightful explaination, now bearing in mind prof EA has spent years working on these topics to have such an understanding of them and there is no way by just listening to a few podcasts can someone like me who hasn't done that wrap their minds round this stuff but there is enough content I believe open the average mind to understanding the world we live in today because as far a I can see the world is just standing poised to do it all again!
Frankfurt school is always mesmerizing. Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas might be the ones that enlighten the contemporary philosophy. Anyway, I love Adorno on his thoughts about pop music and culture. Thanks for the review Prof. Ellie! Have a nice weekend.
I just re-visited this brilliant podcast of yours, Ellie - and this time it brought to mind what "Walter Benjamin", (one time member of the Frankfurt Schule) wrote: his 9th Thesis Of History. In it, Benjamin expresses his own ambiguous attitude towards "Progress" in this allegory that he penned shortly before his suicide (Nazis were closing in on him): " A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call PROGRESS...
Fantastic dear Ellie.
this was so well put, thank you!!!!
I m from Indonesia. West borneo. Pontianak city. Great knowledge ❤
Good info! Thanks! Lots to think about here!
Very knowledgeable professor! I love the explanation.
DIVINE presentation . Nice earings !!
Damn. Wish i had this a few months ago. I was teaching an intro to anthropology class for artists, and was trying to explain how anthropology as a discipline came out of the enlightenment. It's a tough thing to get into when you are critical of it at the same time, which of course anthropology is. Anyway, wish i had this earlier. You nailed it in under ten minutes!
Not that this is helpful at this point, but there's a great collection by Larry Wolff and Marco Cipolloni on precisely this topic. Wolff's opening essay, "Anthropological Thought in the Enlightenment," is a lucid account of how exactly Enlightenment thinking anticipated the consolidation of anthropology as a discipline.
@@rogermaioli Just looked it up. This is a great recommendation!
Thank you!
@@shyman3000 My pleasure!
Ellie Anderson, you have enlightened me, your new fan :)
What a gem
3:39 “Isn't our mathematical conception of nature itself a projection of human ways of understanding things?”
Brilliant remark! Is there any more texts/thinkers I can read that explores this line of thinking?
Thank you so much!
You present in a very clear and digestible fashion.
Do you ever cover Bataille?
Thank you! Dr. Anderson hasn't done any videos on Bataille yet, but worth considering for the future :)
beside the point; I love that you have Lefebvre's masterpiece in the background. I think Lefebvre is one of the most underrated thinkers, and writers !
Thanks so much for this. Wow.
Thank you for this
Oh, how I wish I had seen this video before I started reading The Dialectic of Enlightenment.
The Dialectic of Englightenment is a mesmerising (though very difficult) read. In my view, the core concept of the book is not really a critique towards the Enlightenment programmatic positions per se, but rather towards where it eventually led considering what was promised - that is, an immanent critique. Also, the way they discuss myth is absolutey amazing and key ideas there seem to originate from a satellite companion of the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin.
Much food for thought here. I have always been a fan of Enlightenment "thinking" (so I'm going to have to work on exploring and working around some of my bias's here). I see a possible contrasting with Heidegger's views on technology. However, no matter where I go I am always haunted by Lacan's Real. And Wilfred Sellars "myth of the given". And of course post-humanism and wherever that leads....
Great video - I've been looking into Adorno recently - I find him rather hard to follow: this helps.
Thank you.
"misery grows while our capacity to reduce misery grows" - thank you. I couldn't formulate a strong enough position against ChatCGPT until hearing this. It's rubbed me the wrong way but I could never articulate why.
I think that their analysis is especially relevant today.
Your videos are gonna get me through my PhD entrance exam
Brilliant, thank you :)
U r just osm in explaining stuff. Thank u very much.
Thanks!
Thanks
This was very helpful, thank you. Could you please do other sociological thinkers as well? Just a request :)
If only Adorno and Horkheimer wrote as clearly and succinctly as Ellie explains it here. Not to mention Adorno’s pettiness and snobbery, etc.
I am more sympathetic to this conception of modernity. When we speak of progress, we weight it as an undisputed net positive. Then we see anything that is a hinderance to it as a deficit through and through. Yet within each polarity there can be found a fractal binary of cost and benefit. So that anything one can conceive of as detrimental has within it something helpful, and anything that we conceive of as helpful has within it something detrimental. You can split this atom infinitely and never find pure benefit or cost. This is the problem I believe some have with Steven Pinker. You have to close one eye to see a steady march of progress. Now perhaps Horkheimer and Adorno went a little far by calling progress tyrannical, but that language does to break the spell that technological marvels tend to cast.
Thanks was interesting as usual !
When l read of the works of the Enlightenment my mind always is thinking of Buddha Enlightenment ( spiritual/ meditation and Plato allegory of the cave . Where the prisoner having seen the light returns to the cave to enlighten the others . ( also to me the same template Nietzsche used to introduce his God a s dead aphorism)
The French Enlightenment l feel is a than philosophical attempt to update knowledge through nature and science through a strict discipline !
I was unaware of the work of the authors that you in your usual animated spirit present here . I agree much of what you shared !
When you explain, your facial expressions are very interesting :) Good luck, and please continue.
As far as I can see, we human are half animals and half spiritual beings. There are two broad levels in our minds: lower mind, which is associated with processes (like software programs) in physical body, and the high mind, where the abstract thinking is conducted. The human evolution is the process to get more and more human operating at higher mental level most of the time. At individual level, some, like yourself, would find reason to study philosophy and strive to operate at higher mental level for longer, but most will experience the sudden mental upgrades through events. (This is similar to the fact the evolution of species is more mutative than linear.) "Knowledge is Power", and that notion indeed attracted many people to embark on the journey of enlightenment. The tricky part is that there are different levels of enlightenment, or levels of mental evolution. People (i.e. scholars) who have not achieved high levels in these levels of enlightenment would not understand that they are still far away from the "limit of sky" (so to speak). As you know, such "journey into the light" will never end.
Fantastic explanation - clear, concise, and very accurate as far as I can tell.
What I’m struggling to understand from this text is what even brought them to their conclusions? What evidence do they have that the SOLE goal of the enlightenment is domination? What makes them believe that their description of the relationship between rationality and barbarism is accurate? It seems to me that they present these ideas as axioms and expect the readers to simply accept.
I think a lot of the Adorno stuff was written fresh off the heels of WW2, right just after Nazis used rationality in the service of killing and stealing.
havent read them myself but I guess you could study those evidence in the new disciplines and thoughts that emerged from the Enlightenment + Capitalism hot pot ? Eugenism and other science based criminology, humanism and its hypocrisy when critiquing the rise of nazis while holding onto european colonies, anthropology and its early ethnocentrism... and I guess in general the rise of three "barbaric" behaviors : exploitation, extractivism, surveillance.
I'm considering reading The dialectic of the Enlightenment soon enough, do they really not argue and point out evidence of such dangers ? I feel like it would indeed be a bit of a frustrating presentation..
Misery grows as our capacity to remove misery grows 😮
What is the text of this lecture?
The Dialectic of Enlightenment (excerpt from the Continental Philosophy Reader)
nice video.
I like the Marcel Proust on the bottom left
❤❤
That topic gave me an idea to explore - the inversion of roles that the left and right wings plays these days. It's easy to see where I'm going just by thinking about the western enlightened "left", with it's needs to assert political correctness, controlled labor markets, and new definitions sexuality.
So the left wants to push for its political project. How is that new? How is that even unique to the left?
eyy what a convenient approach to the topic i obsess over re: Einstein's ( spinoza as well) depicting the universe as completely deterministic
The fact that mathematics is an intrinsic part of this universe and that it probably exists independently outside of it completely destroying this arguments.
Firstly, that is nowhere near a "fact". This is widely disputed among mathematicians and philosophers. Secondly, how?
None of this is an argument.
it means that for example humans use the knowledge to manipulate the costumers and than the humans think the wrong is right because it is plausible 2:02 enlightment becomes Mythology, but this relation can only people follow how read this book and get the message for themselves
This reminds me of Foucault. Perhaps his perspective is that Enlightenment was not used just to dominate nature, but people as well.
You had me at “hoo, hoo, hoo..”
Page 200 of what? Thx
routledge.com/The-Continental-Philosophy-Reader/Kearney-Rainwater/p/book/9780415095266
🌺🌷😇🌷🌺
🔥🔥🔥👍
This is what she said: oootseietnrpinpouaaeortsnlfhtsres which is an actual claim she made--you just have to put the letters in the "right" places.
As much as I don’t like to is there’s a diamond the rough with the idea about enlightenment seeing itself as opposed to myth. And not as it’s own kind of myth.
Wow❤❤❤❤❤❤
🕯️
real
Perhaps what both of them were grasping at was the lack of Enlightenment to handle doubt and uncertainty without defaulting to inhumanism.
Engia para d´ate. Certainty brings ruin.
The Enlightenment was the very opposite of totalitarianism. It encouraged every individual to think for himself and to speak freely, while totalitarianism requires central control of narratives and knowledge by the state.
One cannot think for himself and speak freely
The big leaf to the left of the screen seems to nod and confirm...
As far as I can tell you/Horkenhier/Adorn only list 2 specific examples. Rocks and plants not having souls and Dreams and FMRI. Well, rocks and plants don't have souls. And very few, if any, mental health professionals are going to disregard self reports about dreams. I've - never - had a therapist tell me your dreams are irrelevant unless we hook you up to a machine and analyze them.
BTW- I am not claiming that Capitalism and Western Society haven't dominated the planet. My point is that Horkenhier/Adorn seem more concerned with showing off how "smart" they are and using poetic examples than they are with actually dealing with specific and relevant examples. it is kind of hard to take them seriously.
Furthermore: the fact that colonialism predates the enlightenment discredits the idea that the enlightenment caused colonialism.
Dunno about colonialism. We may call it something else (neoliberalism, for example) but it’s still going on.
Wow that's was so cool
So it should be backing into the future of Macbeth's witches, et al. Ecological egalitarianism, rocks and all..
Wait: the Frankfurt School’s goal is not a conspiracy to undermine “American values”? As in you are and actual philosopher and have actually read their books? WTF? Are you even American?!
🌹 Socialism or Barbarism, there is no other option.
Also, in present day neoliberal society, the social construct that Knowledge is Power must be treated as a truism, lest we be made subservient.
I think this podcast is aptly named.
I'll take it over your response any day, which doesn't seem to involve much thought at all.
@@fede2 ooh ouch I’m shattered. I’m so sorry to have let down your expectations in particular,
A person who obviously doesn’t even understand the word “apt.”
@@spidgeb3292 Somebody's a little sensitive. Maybe next time add a touch of substance to your pissy put-down.
Unless that's not what you meant to do, in which case it would be you struggling with basic definitions.
@@fede2 sorry you need more explanation. For most, it shouldn’t be necessary. I said precisely what I intended. It’s your prerogative to dislike it. And it’s my prerogative to dismiss your comment as frivolous. So we’re done here.
@@spidgeb3292 It's a tad ironic that you "dismiss my comment as frivolous" all the while stubbornly refusing to say anything even remotely of substance. Yeah, call me crazy, but I do dislike those kinds of things. And if this is all you can come up with then you're right, we are done here.
Yeah but you can't get to deconstruction without first having the enlightenment.
Adorno and Horkheimer do not oppose entlightenment. They warn about the fascistic/kapitalistic aspects.
@@elio1464 Since capitalism means the freedom of people to dispose of their property and their labor as they desire, it is a good thing.
Spinoza was clear...
Free will is non existent, we are all slaves.
The goal is not to judge/dominate/praise/ condemn.
But simply, to understand.
Read some existentialists. The debate of free will and Determinism is useless. We have agency, we feel like we have free will therefore we do. Hence the notions of responsibility and guilt. You cant go around tell people “Everything you’ve done was predetermined”. Even if it was so, it doesn’t matter.
@@charbeldaher632
don't read anything. Instead , Look within .
Detach yourself from everything and everyone.
Or don't. Either way , i wish u well
To understand is to be free
@@muhammadarif5623
How did you understand that you are free?
Did you decide who your two parents should be? Did you decide where and in what conditions you were born?
Why is humanity dissimilar and unequal?
Are you saying that the destitute freely determined to be destitute, and the affluent freely determined to be affluent?
And don't say as an answer: the affluent is a hard worker! Hard worker has to have circumstances in which to work hard! So, how does that circumstances come by? By Free Will?
@@Nemo-sz2qy Why would you wish someone to be well if their life is predetermined
Enlightenment does not primarily aim for mastery; the effort to overcome the problematic situation it finds itself in, with its own thinking capacity, inevitably leads to mastery.
Enlightenment is not intended to dominate other people, but as Atatürk also stated, societies of people who benefit from science and whose knowledge and skills are developed inevitably come to a position of governing others. (In my opinion, this is what should actually happen.)
The claim that "Barbarism is an endemic feature of Enlightenment" is baseless. If it is said that the negative aspects of certain ideologies that emerged in the last century, such as capitalism and socialism, are a result of Enlightenment, then I ask the following questions: What existed before that? Was life all rosy and perfect? Did people become barbaric only with Enlightenment? Aren't the negativities of the era born from a mindset that continues old barbarisms using technology this time? What does such a mindset have to do with the essence of Enlightenment? And many more questions...
The sovereignty of Enlightenment, as a criticism, says that the thinking individual gives it to themselves. Then, morally, it should also say the following: Whom should we give the sovereignty to?
It talks about the danger of labeling knowledge as power. So, I ask: Won't knowledge emerge one way or another? It is said that water never stops flowing. What is the new proposal for approaching knowledge? Is scientific knowledge preventable? I find this approach speculative and sterile.
Enlightenment is not a fashion of 18th century Europe; there was already a transition from mythos to logos in these lands thousands of years ago.
Nature is definitely something to be examined (today with the language of mathematics, tomorrow with other scientific languages and tools). The advantages provided to us by the measurements we make as a result of these examinations need no explanation. Everything, from the camera used by the speaker girl to the shampoo she washes her hair with, is a result of this human-nature-science triangle.
Another problematic discourse: why should an Enlightenment-oriented person fear the unknown? Enlightenment itself means being curious about the unknown.
The Frankfurt School, Nazism, the insertion of Jews who escaped from Germany, and establishing a connection through Marxism and socialism while talking about all of them, it's a bit off. In other words, it should be examined with its positive and negative aspects, considering the conditions of that historical period, but if we talk about Enlightenment, it is "one" subject with its influences and impacts.
Yes, reason is already a tool. Let me correct it: reason should be a tool!
"Capitalism or Enlightenment wants to eliminate subjectivity!" This is the funniest part because if subjectivity doesn't exist, there would be no need for such thought movements. Subjectivity is inevitable, natural, and a continuous state. Moreover, an enlightened individual is someone who can be a subject despite society. To say that science has declared war on subjectivity is the same as saying that Kılıçdaroğlu will ban the headscarf.
It says that Enlightenment thinking reduces the productivity of the dialectical process. Just a moment ago, it criticized dialectical materialism, but at the 7th minute, it emphasized the importance of dialectics. Were the dialectical processes before Enlightenment so productive? Can dialectics be productive without free thought?
It is not a correct approach to directly associate Enlightenment with capitalism, daily working hours, poverty, income inequality, etc. Instead of generating alternatives regarding the answer to the question of "What kind of individual?" blaming Enlightenment for political and economic failures is like getting angry at the news and breaking the television, so to speak.
I haven't come across any Enlightenment thinkers demanding linear progress. I wish it were possible to avoid the rusty shackles of the past repeatedly entangling our feet
Time stamp 3:04: nothing relating to "formal logic" on page 200...maybe you were off on this? Nothing about "mythic fear" on the following page either. You must not thave the edition that everyone else (pretty much) has.
.. rosy skies for Horkheimer and Adorno until Socialism failed and Maxism was proven wrong .. and now their myths live on?
...and while arguing in favour of irrationalism often speaker use... wait for it... rational and logical arguments...
Too bad their solutions are regressing right back to enlightenment ideals.
They do not want to overcome entlightenment. They want us to be woke because of the myth in entlightenment.
what are solutions that they are offering?
Kant is an especially notably example because he was suuuuuuuper racist
The desire to dominate others and the colonialism do not represent human nature. I think that European accomplished that task during the past five hundred years because most of the original colonists are religious: they do what their God tells them to do without exercising human thinking and reasoning. That is why we need philosophy.
Adorno and Horkheimer are kinda boring and repetitive. Walter Benjamin is by far the best read of all them Frankfurt cats!!!
It is inspiring to watch a beautiful woman talk about philosophy
Are you serious?
Wah shaheen e iqbal. That's all you could come up with?
Rooted in Marx and Freud--two profoundly pseudoscientific thinkers.
Critical theory has a few interesting insights, but it's mostly just obfuscatory BS.
5:08 and there we have it. Imagine my surprise most of them were Jewish.
Thanks