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Dialectic of Enlightenment (Cultural Memory in the Present)
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About Dialectic Of Enlightenment
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENTPhilosophical FragmentsBy Max Horkheimer, THEODOR W. ADORNO, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Edmund JephcottStanford University PressCopyright ©1987 S. Fishcher Verlag GmbH, FrankfurtAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-8047-3633-6ContentsPreface to the New Edition (1969)..........................................xiPreface to the Italian Edition (1962/1966).................................xiiiPreface (1944 and 1947)....................................................xivThe Concept of Enlightenment...............................................1Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment.............................35Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality........................63The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception......................94Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment.........................137Notes and Sketches.........................................................173Editor's Afterword.........................................................217The Disappearance of Class History in "Dialectic of Enlightenment": A Commentary on the Textual Variants (1944 and 1947), by Willem van Reijen and Jan Bransen............................................................248Notes......................................................................253ExcerptCHAPTER 1The Concept of EnlightenmentEnlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance ofthought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear andinstalling them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant withtriumphant calamity. Enlightenment's program was the disenchantmentof the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge.Bacon, "the father of experimental philosophy," brought these motifstogether. He despised the exponents of tradition, who substituted belieffor knowledge and were as unwilling to doubt as they were reckless insupplying answers. All this, he said, stood in the way of "the happy matchbetween the mind of man and the nature of things," with the result thathumanity was unable to use its knowledge for the betterment of its condition.Such inventions as had been made—Bacon cites printing, artillery,and the compass—had been arrived at more by chance than by systematicenquiry into nature. Knowledge obtained through such enquiry wouldnot only be exempt from the influence of wealth and power but wouldestablish man as the master of nature:Therefore, no doubt, the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge; wherein manythings are reserved, which kings with their treasure cannot buy, nor with their forcecommand; their spials and intelligencers can give no news of them, their seamenand discoverers cannot sail where they grow: now we govern nature in opinions,but we are thrall unto her in necessity: but if we would be led by her in invention,we should command her by action.Although not a mathematician, Bacon well understood the scientific temperwhich was to come after him. The "happy match" between humanunderstanding and the nature of things that he envisaged is a patriarchalone: the mind, conquering superstition, is to rule over disenchantednature. Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavementof creation or in its deference to worldly masters. Just as it serves allthe purposes of the bourgeois economy both in factories and on the battlefield,it is at the disposal of entrepreneurs regardless of their origins.Kings control technology no more directly than do merchants: it is asdemocratic as the economic system with which it evolved. Technology isthe essence of this knowledge. It aims to produce neither concepts norimages, nor the joy of understanding, but method, exploitation of thelabor of others, capital. The "many things" which, according to Bacon,knowledge still held in store are themselves mere instruments: the radio asa sublimated printing press, the dive bomber as a mor
