Concept of Enlightenment – Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer

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Concept of Enlightenment is an introductory chapter in Adorno and Horkheimer’s book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, in which they try to answer the question: What has happened to us that we’ve become humans with this kind of everyday existence? They are writing in a tough period, WW2; similar to Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, it has a pessimistic nature in which they both emphasize self-destructiveness of civilization. What Adorno and Horkheimer mean by enlightenment is neither the period of European Enlightenment nor particular philosophical, scientific movement; it is but whole way of thinking which found its fullest expression in European Enlightenment. They are talking about a large scale for sure.
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To analyze this scale, they give emphasis to notion of scientific culture. It is in general terms based on knowing and understanding by reason and rationality. Adorno and Horkheimer point at out forms of knowledge that existed before enlightenment and practiced by people: Magic, mythology. According to them, enlightenment is demythologising and disenchanting. All knowledges present themselves as liberation from mythology and blind belief; they tend to disenchant magical representations of the world. It is a form of deep suspicion against transcendent meaning or truth and increasing scepticism of any claims of access reach of transcendent. Besides, Adorno and Horkheimer underline the notion of transcendent content which means what’s beyond immediately thinkable. It is kind of meaning lying outside truth itself. This form of knowledge is rejection of what it cannot specify. At this point, you can see thought as context of pure immanence. The term immanent means being within limits of possible experience, knowledge. Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that enlightenment aims at containing everything. In this sense, anything transcendent is impossible and the ones that fall outside the limits is its mythology. Therefore, enlightenment is constantly demythologising, while it attacks every claim of different forms of knowledge. It includes methods of not only positivism but also empiricism; kind of exclusive focus only what can be directly sensed, quantifiable, systematized in math.
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Enlightenment leaves no space for anything that’s unknown. Human fear is the result of the unknown. Enlightenment determines to abolish that fear. At this point, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that “enlightenment compounds animate with inanimate”. It sees in the animate, inanimate. To be clearer, they suggest that enlightenment translate life into non-living mechanisms by numbers, chemical components, and physical laws. Here is the ultimate demythologisation and disenchantment. There are not any more spirits or gods, but numbers, particles; it removes all life from magic so that they can become completely calculable, knowable. Here is the thing; Myth: Act of looking at things, seeing living forces in them. Enlight! : De-myth! Because they are symmetrically opposed to each other and there is reversibility between the two, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest a common core between them. Actually enlightenment is not liberation from myth and fear. It is rather a form of taking relation between myth and unknown to an extreme degree. Myth deals with fear and problems of unknown through gods. Enlightenment takes this explanation to extreme in the way which nothing that cannot be measured is left in general. Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverse to myth. Enlightenment is already included in mythology. In other words, enlightenment tries to free myth but it becomes mythology.
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In dialectic of enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer also refer to Saussurean concept of sign although they were not structuralist. To summarize briefly, in Saussure’s terminology, in language, there is a signifier (material object) and signified (concept, idea) which together create a sign. Signification is a relation assigned by thought and knowledge. It is not motivated by what you find in nature. It is not the property of that object which motivates me to that a “TREE” for example. I call it “TREE” by thought and knowledge. Another linguistic concept; mimesis: In image there is a kind of repetition of what is being represented. Adorno and Horkheimer underline that when humans produce images they are repeating nature as they perceive them. Representation begins in repetition which evolves into sign. It is not connected to world by any relation of resemblance. It assigns a function; takes a sound and makes is the representation of certain object. At this point, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that sign is like money, numbers; a system of equivalences. It establishes an equation whose equivalence is not related with properties of the object; like the value of money has nothing to do with its paper or metal. In this sense, while image is operative representation of magic and myth, sign is a component of rationality. Image is like being like and part of nature while sign is simply to know the nature. Either you give up being part of nature (image-magic) and become scientific or you don’t become scientific and enlightened which means you give up the possibility of knowing nature. Here is the dialectic they try to point at. Theodor Adorno particularly associates this understanding of image as art and sign as science in modern bourgeoisie society. In modern society, art is useless; it is enclosed within the aesthetic sphere, separated from both technology and reality. Science is knowledge, domination of nature at cost of alienation from nature. At this point Adorno in his individual works proposes the idea of Authentic Art; as the real art that would bring image and sign together. In this kind, elements of magic and elements of knowledge may be brought together. Authentic art for Adorno is basically modernist art. It is avant-garde, anti-realistic, critical forms of art which would oppose social order, established hierarchies for example. He appreciates Franz Kafka as authentic artist very much.
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On the other hand, Adorno and Horkheimer try to find answers to question of why magic rituals imitate nature. Is the function of imitation has something to do with mimetic form of representation? Why do you imitate what you’re afraid of? Well, it does yield some kind of understanding. But basically, this comes from the fact that you’re identifying with it. You try to become that thing which you fear. You become part of it. Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that to avoid fear, you identify yourself with what you fear. It is like saying, “Don’t destroy me, I’m part of you”. Even in magic, there is enlightenment in the way that it intends to establish a relation with nature in order to control it and gain some kind of power in relation to what you fear. Therefore, magic includes elements of control, manipulation of nature.
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According to Adorno and Horkheimer, myth is further than magic; it is an advanced process. They refer to Greek mythology at this case. Gods don’t represent imitations of natural events, but invisible elements, principals or forces which explain and create a model of universe. Compared to myth, there is a greater separation between object and its separation from itself. Adorno and Horkheimer mention act of sacrifice here. An animal is treated as an example of a whole group of things that it represents. It is killed as representation of destroying the scapegoat, guilt in community. There is already separation between single element and concept it exemplifies. Animal is not simply an animal or the animal. It is a substitution of something else.
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So far I briefly tried to mention two main ideas Adorno and Horkheimer proposed in their work: Myth is already enlightenment: It tries to understand and explain nature in order to control it. They say that myth is a form of enlightenment and while enlightenment rejects myth, it is a denial of its own sources. Secondly, Enlightenment reverts to myth: Adorno and Horkheimer especially emphasize that it is the very blindness of enlightenment which turns itself into mythology. It is a mythology because it is blind to its connection with the myth. Additionally, enlightenment is imitating. In its positivist and empiricist nature there is some kind of desire to imitate nature. It imitates world of objects by becoming purely objective and disregarding everything that is invisible, subjective. On one hand science is trying to become the world of pure objectivity, and imitating what it is explaining on the other. At this point Adorno and Horkheimer propose the idea that imitating can be thought of mimicking death. Like it was in magic, death in modern society is the only reminder of nature. It is not solved by science and technology; it is a resistance to knowledge. Primitive people imitated what they feared; today similarly we imitate death by becoming things that happens through commodity fetishism. What Adorno and Horkheimer suggest in particular is that we turn ourselves into things in modern society. It is as if things happen between us; not people but objects in society. We are becoming things, and we want this to happen because we are afraid of that. By this thingification, we act as if we are immortal just like objects. Karl Marx was suggesting that in capitalist society humans value themselves as measure of possessions and market value of their labour which leads to alienation. Certainly there is a Marxist influence in Adorno and Horkheimer’s ideas on “mimicking death”, but which is opposed to Sigmund Freud’s. Freud underlined that death instinct is part of organism; Adorno and Horkheimer’s “death” is purely social. On the other hand, as we live like this we are in fact behaving as if we are things and imitate death because we are afraid of it. Therefore, all achievements of modernity become unconscious ways of magic (In early magic, death was more direct than today, people feared storms, all kinds of disasters, animals; death was always there, unexplainable). For Adorno and Horkheimer, mimicking death also includes self-destructive thirst in civilization.
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