Dialectic of Enlightenment

In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Horkheimer and Adorno argued that the celebration of reason by thinkers of the 18th-century Enlightenment had led to the development of technologically sophisticated but oppressive and inhumane modes of governance, exemplified in the 20th century by fascism and totalitarianism. In works…

…book Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947; Dialectic of Enlightenment), Adorno and Horkheimer located this impulse in the concept of reason itself, which the Enlightenment and modern scientific thought had transformed into an irrational force that had come to dominate not only nature but humanity itself. The rationalization of human society had…

…Adorno on an influential study, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), which traced the rise of fascism and other forms of totalitarianism to the Enlightenment notion of “instrumental” reason. The work’s pessimism reflects the defeats that progressive European social movements had suffered since the early 1930s. A more accessible version of the…