Study On Horkheimer And Adorno's Dialectics Of Enlightenment

In the 20th century theory pedigree of cultural criticism, Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectics of Enlightenment is a masterpiece in western Marxism as a profound reflection and critique to the cultural crisis in the developed industrial society. Compared with western Marxism and in particular other thinkers in the Frankfurt school, Horkheimer and Adorno's uniqueness lies not only in their concrete critiques towards the ideology, the instrumental rationality, the psychic mechanism, the totalitarian rule and the mass culture, but also in their having profoundly touched and analyzed the essential root of all mentioned above- - the thinking mode of the abstract rationality identity. In their opinion, it is precisely the abstract rationality identity that has led to the identity of enlightenment, rule and rationality, and it is also the prime criminal that has transformed the enlightenment rationality into the instrumental rationality. In fact, this identity has initially revealed some clues in the early human myths.Horkheimer and Adorno believed these myths created by the tragedy poets, had already revealed the enlightenment spirit as disciplines and rights which was the genuine goal esteemed by Bacon. Myth, as a product of the human age of barbarism, seems chaotic and fantastic, actually it is by no means any ignorant record, but the product of human ration. As a process of rationalization, Myth has been contaminated by rationality from the very beginning and gradually formed the theory element. And this process is also the origin of enlightenment spirit of"establishing sovereignty as a goal", or in other word,"master spirit". Horkheimer and Adorno believed that"master spirit"may date as early as back to the several opening chapters of Creating Century, and the process it launches is precisely called by Marx? Weber as the disenchantment process. This process has resulted in the confrontation and conflict between human as subject and nature as object. Therefore, both the myth and the enlightenment are the product of the struggle process that human extricates himself from the mystical force. Based on the self-survival request, human has developed the consciousness of domination and conquest over nature. In this sense, myth has already become the synonym of enlightenment. But the enlightenment ration has seriously wrinkled in its developing process. Although it declares that it has surmounted the chaos and ignorance of the myth time through the introduction of reasonable analysis, in fact it has already degenerated into the victim of a new myth.In other words, the enlightenment spirit replaces fantasy with knowledge, defeats superstition with rationality and then thoroughly abandons the myth. As a result, it has shut off the history and the genuine relation between itself and life world. Finally, it becomes a thing without past and history. This is because enlightenment does not seek the rational basis of its development in the past traditions and the historical models, but in the future to obtain perpetuity. Thus, as the originally historical thing, when it prompts forward infinitely, the enlightenment has destroyed anything before so that it has ended its own history. Afterwards, it unceasingly pursues the definitiveness and the permanency of the actual thing from the future, which has led itself back unceasingly up to the myth. But the myth which has been actually abandoned by the enlightenment has protected the history in the way of compensation, and it embodies the nature which grows continually.So, what is the basic reason that causes the enlightenment to back up to the myth? Horkheimer and Adorno's answer is the invariable abstract rational identity, which makes human today only regards nature and natural forces as tools to solve the human survival predicament and to improve human living conditions. The developing scientific tool increasingly makes human lose his plain natural disposition, live and work on the abstract level which completely surpasses lives of the human in the past. The science and technology, going each step forward, symbolizes each step closer to the highly abstract direction. Simultaneously it also symbolizes that modern people strengthens his essential force and unusual ability to live on the abstract level, but at the same time the self-alienation degree of human also deepens along with it. According to the view on the civilization progress of Max and Engels, the science and technology is only the public demonstration on the human's essential strength and on the intrinsic strength in human's survival practice. Simultaneously it can also inevitably create and intensify the alienation between man and man as well as the dominant and the exploitation process from man to man. Therefore, Horkheimer and Adorno advised people to reconcile with nature instead of opposing it. Then, in a fully enlightened society, whether does the rational progress indicate the human moral progress?Enlightenment has destroyed religious beliefs and actually set up the rational beliefs to substitute the religion which is increasingly deteriorating, which has caused the moral flaw. The human, in own innermost feelings or outside himself, cannot find the thing upon which they may depend. The human needs to seek the new spiritual home. Therefore, the enlightenment scholars must establish an ethical basis for the new civilization they strongly advocate. The Bourgeoisie enlightenment scholars such as Kant, Sade and Nietzsche, all had their respective outlooks on enlightenment and moral. Horkheimer and Adorno believed the Enlightenment turned the intentional acts into instrumental acts and replaced the value judgment with the fact judgment. As a result, the Enlightenment reduced all value questions to the fact principle in the scientific way of positivism. Thus, Kant's attempt to establish the moral rationality on the basis of rationality is in vain. In the starting point, Kant's way to solve the confrontation between the science and metaphysics by marking off the rationality has created the separation and the confrontation between phenomenon and essence, inevitability and freedom, theory and practice, cognition and moral, and also ethics and reality, which makes Kant's practical philosophy forever an ethical critique. But this kind of critique, in the eye of Horkheimer and Adorno, is weak and only"the compromise between sentimentality and preach". This means that Kant's attempt failed, by one kind of good will, he tried to solve the predicament between the capitalist society development and the loss of human value and significance. But it is a kind of utterly hopeless pursue. We may even say that it is a kind of unsuccessful endeavor. Because Kant's so-called"diktat", which asks people to comply with in practice, is actually the programmed principle of the formalism, which is possibly unable in the extreme situation to safeguard the realization of the universal legislation principle and the individual substantive rights.So, how did Horkheimer and Adorno regard Sade's enlightenment and moral outlooks? They regarded Sade's Histoire de Juliette as a model of the instrumental rationality and argued that it had announced the bankruptcy of Kant's enlightenment and moral outlooks.Horkheimer and Adorno believed that Sade had discovered, by sheer experience, the affinity between knowledge and preparation which had been proved by Kant from the transcendental angle. The affinity has an inescapable characteristic of the sense of aim in every aspect of bourgeoisie life. This kind of life is totally rationalized. In other words, Horkheimer and Adorno had already discovered that there was some kind of connection between bourgeoisie liberalism symbolized by Kant and Sade's functional rationality. Along with the taking shape of the bourgeoisie Enlightenment, even the inherent joy of human's sexual instinct loses its original attribute and is equated with the rationalized instrumental act. Thus, Sade's Histoire de Juliette has become the model of the functional rationality and the computation rationality. Sade's "Sodom's 120 Days" is a violent attack and subversion to Kant's knowledge system and the moral metaphysics. It has openly accepted the instrumentalism of the capitalistic rationality by completely tearing up the moral mask and revealing its true self. Horkheimer and Adorno even believed the standpoint Sade adopted was the genuine ethical implication contained in the modern theme, and even that of the entire enlightenment process. The formality and abstractness of Kant's philosophy system has become empty and tasteless because it has lost all real life aim and vivid content. This is similar to the schematized and sequenced principle in sensual pleasure that Sade's life followed. In particular, as moral laws of the practical reason in the regulative principles, they are also finally functionalized, and computerized by the theoretical reasons of the knowledge and scientific system in reality. The rationality, because of losing its significance of metaphysics, has lost its goals. Because of this, it may operate all goals and cause the life world to lose all realistic goals and moral codes and pursue only after material things. In this sense, Sade and Kant, we may say, reach the same goal by chance from different approaches.Regarding Nietzsche's enlightenment and moral outlooks, Horkheimer and Adorno have their special view. In their opinion, Nietzsche's Will to Power is not slightly inferior to both Kant's diktat as well as the law of the Sadeism. Firstly, they believed that the"higher-self"Nietzsche believed in was only one kind of hopeless endeavor in which humanity made himself to save the God (who had already died) and it was also a kind of Kantian continued attempt to transform laws into self- discipline in order to save the Western civilization. Therefore, as to the secret of Nietzsche's so-called"superman", his will is nothing but to get rid of the external might to win self-independence, which, similar to the diktat, is too bossy and grim. Again, in admiring the strong and accusing the weak of guilt, Horkheimer and Adorno discovered that Nietzsche was also astonishingly similar to Sade. In Nietzsche's eye, the master moral is formidable, brave and idiosyncratic. In all the struggles against everything that does not belong to or even oppose itself, it may establish itself through some of its inherent qualities such as strength, valor, arrogance and magnanimity etc. It doesn't fear slightly how others appraise its behavior, even if its behavior in others eye seems crazy, cruel and evil, it refuses to balk. And it is also a worldbeater which is unable to be estimated by others. In the view of Horkheimer and Adorno, Nietzsche's viewpoint seems similarly to have aroused the sympathetic chord in Sade:"live dangerously"is similar to the special mission in Juliette, which hopes to make all sacrifices fearlessly. Again Horkheimer and Adorno believed, Sade and Nietzsche's theory that sympathy was guilty was also the old-style bourgeoisie heritage. The designing, inhuman Fascism takes advantage of this theory and then turns the demotion of the sympathy into the rejection of the political tolerance and even reliance on military control. Kind-heartedness and benevolence become evil things, however, the domination and oppression become the moral excellence. Horkheimer and Adorno discovered surprisingly in the partita of enlightenment rationality and moral that the final outcome of civilization seemed to be the dreadful return to nature. But this kind of distorted return to nature runs through the Enlightenment, and displays in the form of the barbaric natural retaliation in the 20th century barbaric lives.As the enlightenment deepens and the industrialization advances increasingly, the cultural domain of the capitalism is also having an earthshaking change. The most noticeable change is the collaboration between capital, science and technology. It invades widely the cultural world, thus gives rise to the show business or the culture industry which via scientific and technological way massively copies and distributes cultural products. The cultural industry time has unexpectedly come, along with the popularization of radio technology, broadcast, television, movie and new dissemination technology. Thus, along with the process that enlightenment rationality alienates itself into the instrumental rationality and the technical rationality, the cultural domain of the capitalism is also difficult to get rid of the evil clutches of the instrumental rational spirit. Finally it also degenerates into the commodity culture, under the control of the benefit and the value principle, it may produce and duplicate in large scale the cultural commodity. Thus the cultural creation turns into the cultural production.To begin with, people seem to enjoy full freedom in cultural industry, but actually they have suffered comprehensive and covert control. Under the control of the cultural industry pattern, culture becomes a tool to bind the popular consciousness and an accessory of totalitarianism. By deceiving and enslaving the populace in a more ingenious and covert way, it urges the culture to back up from the enlightenment to the ideology and becomes a tool for the ideology in order to serve the benefit of the ruling class. Next, under the formidable control of cultural industry, individual cannot help melting into the standardization, modelling and stylization flood. As a result, he has extinguished his individuality and lost the true life in the rich candid significance. But what intrudes individual life is the cultural product which the mass media, the cultural industry esteems. And the cultural product has usually, by unceasingly repeated and unified, become the deficient individuality and the style popular for a while. People are blindly seeing popular movies, singing popular songs and putting on popular clothes without any thought. People do not differ from each other and become mere mold copies of each other. So the consumers do not have anything to classify, because popular art has already crushed people's dream and judgment. Again, the cultural industry is fundamentally a counter-culture. Because both the cultural industry and the producing industry have finally the same primary purpose to gain the profit, instead of improving the cultural and spiritual quality of the broad masses and meeting with the demand for their spiritual and cultural service. This is precisely what Horkheimer and Adorno intended to expose and criticize in their "Dialectics of Enlightenment": Culture industry backs up to ideology so it loses its own characteristic.Horkheimer and Adorno's "Dialectics of Enlightenment" persists all along that their theory can only analyze and run through violence, rule and oppression in the human history, which is displayed in the pain, hunger and helplessness of the weak , the powerless as well as the oppressed . It intends to indicate that human can know the actual facts about things only at the price of pain. Only in the position of the firm society criticism can we find the path towards the harmoniousness of the human and the nature, and realize a true reasonable society.Horkheimer and Adorno's "Dialectics of Enlightenment" has its theoretic predicament and limitation, but at the same time, its theoretic and practical significance is profound and lasting.