"Dialectic of Enlightenment" is undoubtedly the most influential publication of
the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and
circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "W
hat we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less t
han to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking
into a new kind of barbarism."
Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique o
f contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of We
stern history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural for
ces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threateni
ng experiences of the present.
The book consists in five chapters, at first gl
ance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses
concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formali
zed morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid b
ehavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limit
s of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, th
e tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlighten
ment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the pres
ent, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the
National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted
deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.
