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{{Short description|1947 book by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno}}
{{Infobox book
| name              = Dialectic of Enlightenment
| title_orig        = Dialektik der Aufklärung
| translator        = John Cumming (1972)
| image             = Dialectic of Enlightenment (German edition).jpg
| caption           = 
| authors           = [[Max Horkheimer]]<br/>[[Theodor W. Adorno]]
| illustrator       = 
| cover_artist      = 
| country           = Germany
| language          = German
| series            = 
| subjects          = [[Philosophy]], [[social criticism]]
| publisher         = 
| pub_date          = 1947
| english_pub_date  = 1972 (New York: [[Herder and Herder]])
| media_type        = Print ([[Paperback|pbk]])
| pages             = 304
| isbn              = 0-8047-3633-2
| dewey             = 193 21
| congress          = B3279.H8473 P513 2002
| oclc              = 48851495
| preceded_by       = 
| followed_by       = 
}}

'''''Dialectic of Enlightenment''''' ({{langx|de|Dialektik der Aufklärung}}) is a work of [[philosophy]] and [[social criticism]] written by [[Frankfurt School]] philosophers [[Max Horkheimer]] and [[Theodor W. Adorno]].<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_1947">{{cite book |author=[[Max Horkheimer]] |title=Dialectic of Enlightenment |author2=[[Theodor W. Adorno]] |date=1972 |publisher=[[Herder and Herder]] |isbn=0-8047-3633-2 |location=New York |page= |translator=John Cumming |oclc=48851495 |orig-date=1947}}</ref> The text, published in 1947, is a revised version of what the authors originally had circulated among friends and colleagues in 1944 under the title of '''''Philosophical Fragments''''' ({{langx|de|Philosophische Fragmente|link=no}}).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Schmidt|first=James|date=1998|title='Language, Mythology, and Enlightenment: Historical Notes on Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment.'|journal=Social Research|volume=65|issue=4|pages=807-38 (p.809)}}</ref>

One of the core texts of [[critical theory]], ''Dialectic of Enlightenment'' explores the [[social psychology (sociology)|socio-psychological]] ''status quo'' that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]]. They argue that its failure culminated in the rise of [[Fascism]], [[Stalinism]], the [[culture industry]] and [[Mass society|mass]] [[consumer capitalism]]. Rather than liberating humanity as the Enlightenment had promised, they argue it had resulted in the opposite: in [[totalitarianism]], and new forms of barbarism and social domination.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cikaj |first=Klejton |date=2023-05-04 |title=Dialectic of Enlightenment: Adorno & Horkheimer’s Work in 6 Parts |url=https://www.thecollector.com/adorno-horkheimer-dialectic-of-enlightenment/ |access-date=2024-03-22 |website=The Collector |language=en}}</ref>

Together with Adorno's ''[[The Authoritarian Personality]]'' (1950) and fellow Frankfurt School member [[Herbert Marcuse]]'s ''[[One-Dimensional Man]]'' (1964), it has had a major effect on 20th-century philosophy, sociology, culture, and politics, especially inspiring the [[New Left]] of the 1960s and 1970s.<ref name=":0">Held, D. (1980). ''Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.</ref>

==Historical context==
{{Frankfurt School}}
In the 1969 preface to the 2002 publication, Horkheimer and Adorno wrote that the original was written, "when the end of the National Socialist terror was in sight."<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_2002">{{cite book|title= Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments|first1=Max|last1=Horkheimer|first2=Theodor W. |last2=Adorno |editor-first=Gunzelin |editor-last=Schmid Noerr |translator-first=Edmund|translator-last=Jephcott |publisher=Stanford University Press |date=2002|orig-date=1947|isbn=0-8047-3632-4|url=https://ia600705.us.archive.org/13/items/pdfy-TJ7HxrAly-MtUP4B/Dialectic%20of%20Enlightenment%20-%20Theodor%20W.%20Adorno%2C%20Max%20Horkheimer.pdf}}</ref>{{rp|xi}} One of the distinguishing characteristics of the new [[critical theory]], as Adorno and Horkheimer set out to elaborate it in ''Dialectic of Enlightenment'', is a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of [[Social dominance theory|social domination]].<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_2002"/>{{Rp|229}} 

Such would give rise to the "[[pessimism]]" of the new critical theory over the possibility of human [[emancipation]] and [[Political freedom|freedom]].<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_2002"/>{{Rp|242}} Furthermore, this ambivalence was rooted in the historical circumstances in which ''Dialectic of Enlightenment'' was originally produced: the authors saw [[National Socialism]], [[Stalinism]], [[state capitalism]], and [[culture industry]] as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional theory.<ref>[[Jürgen Habermas|Habermas, Jürgen]]. [1985] 1987. ''[[The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity|The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures]]'', translated by F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 116: "Critical Theory was initially developed in Horkheimer's circle to think through political disappointments at the absence of revolution in the West, the development of Stalinism in Soviet Russia, and the victory of fascism in Germany. It was supposed to explain mistaken Marxist prognoses, but without breaking Marxist intentions."</ref><ref name="Dubiel_1985">{{cite book|last=Dubiel|first=Helmut|date=1985|orig-date=1978|title=Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory|translator-first=Benjamin Greenwood |translator-last=Gregg|publisher=MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA.|isbn=0-262-04080-8|page=207}}</ref>

For Adorno and Horkheimer (relying on economist [[Friedrich Pollock]]'s thesis<ref>Pollock, Friedrich. 1941. "Is National Socialism a New Order?" ''Studies in Philosophy and Social Science'' 9 (2):440–45. p. 453.</ref> on National Socialism),<ref>van Reijen, Willem, and Jan Bransen. "The Disappearance of Class History in the Dialectic of Enlightenment." In ''Dialectic of Enlightenment''. p. 248. </ref> [[state intervention]] in the economy and the increasing concentration of capital had concealed the contradiction within capitalism between the coercive [[relations of production]] and the level of [[productive forces]]—a tension that traditional theory expected to be resolved through a proletarian revolution. The liberal market economy, once associated with individual autonomy and competition among private entrepreneurs, had evolved into a system of [[centralized planning]].<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_2002" />{{Rp|38}}

{{Quote|text=[G]one are the objective laws of the market which ruled in the actions of the entrepreneurs and tended toward catastrophe. Instead the conscious decision of the managing directors executes as results (which are more obligatory than the blindest price-mechanisms) the old law of value and hence the destiny of capitalism.|author=|title=''Dialectic of Enlightenment''|source=p. 38}}

Because of this, contrary to [[Marx]]'s famous prediction in his preface to ''[[A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy]]'', this shift did not lead to "an era of [[social revolution]]," but rather to [[fascism]] and [[totalitarianism]]. As such, traditional theory was left, in [[Jürgen Habermas]]' words, without "anything in reserve to which it might appeal; and when the forces of production enter into a baneful symbiosis with the relations of production that they were supposed to blow wide open, there is no longer any dynamism upon which critique could base its hope."<ref>Habermas, Jürgen. 1982. "[https://www.academia.edu/25271181/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas_The_Entwinement_of_Myth_and_Enlightenment_Re_Reading_Dialectic_of_Enlightenment_ The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-Reading 'Dialectic of Enlightenment']." ''New German Critique'' 26(4):13-30. {{doi|10.2307/488023}}. {{JSTOR|488023}}.</ref>{{Rp|118}} For Adorno and Horkheimer, this posed the problem of how to account for the apparent persistence of domination in the absence of the very contradiction that, according to traditional critical theory, was the source of domination itself.<ref name=":0" />

==Topics and themes==

The problems posed by the [[History of fascism|rise of fascism]] with the demise of the [[Liberalism|liberal]] state and the market (together with the failure of a [[social revolution]] to materialize in its wake) constitute the theoretical and historical perspective that frames the overall argument of the book—the two theses that "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology."<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_2002"/>{{Rp|xviii}}  

The history of human societies, as well as that of the formation of individual ego or self, is re-evaluated from the standpoint of what Horkheimer and Adorno perceived at the time as the ultimate outcome of this history: the collapse or regression of [[reason]], with the rise of National Socialism, into something resembling the very forms of superstition and myth out of which reason had supposedly emerged as a result of historical progress or development.

Horkheimer and Adorno believe that in the process of Enlightenment, modern philosophy had become uncritical and an instrument of [[technocracy]]. They characterize a key part of this process as the historical transition of rationality into [[positivism]], referring to both the [[logical positivism]] of the [[Vienna Circle]] and broader trends that they saw in continuity with this movement.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Josephson-Storm | first = Jason | title = The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences | location = Chicago | publisher = [[University of Chicago Press]] | date = 2017 |page = 244–5 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ | isbn = 978-0-226-40336-6 }}</ref> Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of positivism has been criticized as too broad; they are particularly critiqued for interpreting [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] as a positivist—at the time only his ''[[Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]]'' had been published, not his later works—and for failing to examine critiques of positivism from within [[analytic philosophy]].<ref>{{harvtxt|Josephson-Storm|2017|pp=242, 243–4}}</ref> However, Adorno's later contributions to ''[[The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology]]'' present a more differentiated critique of positivism, including attention to internal debates and methodological tensions within the tradition.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Adorno |first=Theodor W. |title=The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology |publisher=Heinemann |year=1976 |isbn=978-0435826550 |location=London |pages=53-54 |language=English |chapter=Introduction}}</ref>

To characterize this history, Horkheimer and Adorno draw on a wide variety of material, including the [[philosophical anthropology]] contained in Marx's early writings, centered on the notion of "[[Labour (economics)|labor]];" [[Nietzsche]]'s [[Genealogy of Morality|genealogy of morality]], and the emergence of [[conscience]] through the renunciation of the [[will to power]]; [[Freud]]'s account in ''[[Totem and Taboo]]'' of the emergence of civilization and law in murder of the primordial father;<ref>''Dialectic of Enlightenment'', 7, 159, 162.</ref> and [[Ethnology|ethnological]] research on magic and rituals in primitive societies;<ref>''Dialectic of Enlightenment'', 10, 256.</ref> as well as [[myth criticism]], [[philology]], and [[literary analysis]].<ref>{{cite journal
| last       = Moore 
| first      = Alison
| date       = September 2010
| title      = Sadean Nature and Reasoned Morality in Adorno/Horkheimer's 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'
| journal    = Psychology and Sexuality
| volume     = 1
| issue      = 3
| pages      = 249–260
| doi        = 10.1080/19419899.2010.494901
| s2cid = 143713118
}}</ref>

Adorno and Horkheimer argue that [[antisemitism]] is a deeply rooted, irrational phenomenon that stems from the failure of the Enlightenment project and the inherent contradictions of bourgeois society. They argue that Jews serve as a universal scapegoat onto which individuals and societies project their deepest fears, anxieties, and neuroses. According to their analysis, the complex and often contradictory nature of modern life generates a sense of [[Alienation (Marxism)|alienation]], powerlessness, and psychological distress. Unable to confront these feelings directly, people seek to externalize them by identifying a tangible "[[Other (philosophy)|other]]" to blame for their problems. The Jews, with their historically marginalized status and perceived association with the disruptive forces of modernity, become an ideal target for this projection.<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_1947" />

Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that [[antisemitic stereotypes]], such as the Jews' alleged greed, cunning, and [[Rootless cosmopolitan|rootlessness]], are not based on any objective reality but rather reflect the unconscious fears and desires of the antisemites themselves. By attributing their own negative impulses to the Jews, they are able to maintain a sense of psychological coherence and moral purity. This irrational, projective hatred is further reinforced by economic resentment and nationalistic ideology, which provide a broader social framework for antisemitism. Ultimately, Adorno and Horkheimer see the persecution of the Jews as a symptom of the unresolved contradictions and pathologies of modern society, which can only be addressed through a radical critique of the Enlightenment project and the social conditions that sustain it.<ref name="Horkheimer_Adorno_1947" />

The authors coined the term ''[[culture industry]]'', arguing that in a capitalist society, [[mass culture]] is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=l-75zLjGlZQC&pg=PA94 pp. 94–5]  quotation: {{quotation|Culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines form a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together. Even the aesthetic manifestations of political opposites proclaim the same inflexible rhythm...All mass culture under monopoly is identical... Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce.}}</ref> These homogenized cultural products are used to [[Media manipulation|manipulate]] mass society into docility and passivity.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=l-75zLjGlZQC&pg=PA95 pp. 94–5]  quotation: {{quotation|...The standardized forms, it is claimed, were originally derived from the needs of the consumers: that is why they are accepted with so little resistance. In reality, a cycle of manipulation and retroactive need is unifying the system ever more tightly.}}</ref> The introduction of the radio, a [[Mass media|mass medium]], no longer permits its listener any mechanism of reply, as was the case with the telephone. Instead, listeners are not subjects anymore but passive receptacles exposed "in authoritarian fashion to the same programs put out by different stations."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=l-75zLjGlZQC&pg=PA95 pp. 95–6]  quotation: {{quotation|The step from telephone to radio has clearly distinguished the roles. The former liberally permitted the participant to play the role of subject. The latter democratically makes everyone equally into listeners, in order to expose them in authoritarian fashion to the same programs put out by different stations. No mechanism of reply has been developed...}}</ref>

By associating the [[The Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] and [[Totalitarianism]] with [[Marquis de Sade]]'s works—especially [[Juliette (novel)|''Juliette'']], in [[excursus]] II—the text also contributes to the pathologization of [[sadomasochism|sadomasochist]] desires, as discussed by historian of sexuality Alison Moore.<ref>Moore, Alison M. 2015. ''Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology''. Lanham: [[Lexington Books]].  {{ISBN|978-0-7391-3077-3}}. 
</ref>

==Editions==
The book was first published as ''Philosophische Fragmente'' in New York in 1944, by the [[University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research|Institute for Social Research]], which had relocated from Frankfurt am Main ten years earlier. A revised version was published as ''Dialektik der Aufklärung'' in Amsterdam by [[Querido Verlag|Querido]] in 1947. It was reissued in Frankfurt by [[S. Fischer Verlag|S. Fischer]] in 1969, with a new preface by the authors.

There have been two English translations: the first by John Cumming (New York: [[Herder and Herder]], 1972; reissues by [[Verso Books|Verso]] from 1979 reverse the order of the authors' names), and another, based on the definitive text from Horkheimer's collected works, by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

==See also==
* [[Counter-Enlightenment]]
* ''[[Das Kapital]]''
* [[Kant and Sade]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*"[http://marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception]." Excerpt of "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" from ''The Dialectic of Enlightenment'', transcribed by A. Blunden [1998] 2005.
*"[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/#2 Dialectic of Enlightenment]," in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.

{{Theodor W. Adorno}}
{{Critical theory}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dialectic Of Enlightenment}}
[[Category:1944 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:1947 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Age of Enlightenment]]
[[Category:Critical theory]]
[[Category:German non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Marxist books]]
[[Category:New Left]]
[[Category:Works by Max Horkheimer]]
[[Category:Works by Theodor W. Adorno]]
[[Category:Criticism of rationalism]]
[[Category:Books in philosophy of technology]]