Genealogy and critical historicism: two models of Enlightenment in Horkheimer and Adorno’s writings
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2318-9800.v22i2p13-38Keywords:
Enlightenment, historicism, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Frankfurt SchoolAbstract
This article argues that two distinct concepts of Enlightenment coexist uneasily in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. According to the first, genealogical concept, Enlightenment is a bewildered form of self-preservation that has existed since the dawn of Western civilization. The second, critical historicist concept views Enlightenment as the critical and anti-authoritarian ideals articulated - most radically in eighteenth-century France - during the uneven development of modern bourgeois society. After examining the origins of these two concepts in Adorno and Horkheimer’s early writings, the article demonstrates why the former became dominant in Dialectic of Enlightenment, while at the same time pointing to significant traces of the latter that remained. The article contends that a reconsideration of the latter concept reveals of a model of early Critical Theory that can still provide a compelling alternative not only to Dialectic of Enlightenment, but also more recent attempts to place Critical Theory on normative foundations.
Downloads
References
Abromeit, J. (2006). “The Vicissitudes of the Politics of ‘Life’: Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer’s Reception of Phenomenology and Vitalism in Weimar Germany”. University of Indiana Scholar Works. Disponível online: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/440 (acessado em 16.01.2017).
___________. (2011). Max Horkheimer and the foundations of the Frankfurt School. New York: Cambridge University Press.
___________. (2013). “Max Horkheimer et le concept matérialiste de la culture”. In: Les normes et le possible: Héritage et perspectives de l’École de Francfort. G. Raulet, P. F. Noppen, and I. Macdonald (eds.). Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme, pp.53–70.
___________. (2015). “Transformations of Populism in Western Europe”. In: Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas: History and Recent Tendencies, Abromeit et al (eds.). London: Bloomsbury.
Adorno, T. W. (1998). “Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America”. In: Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated by Henry Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press.
Arendt, H. (1968). The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt.
Bates, D. W. (2002). Enlightenment Aberrations: Error and Revolution in France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Benhabib, S.; Bonss, W.; McCole, J. (org). (1993). On Max Horkheimer. New Perspectives. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: The MIT Press.
Buck-Morss, S. (1977). The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute. New York: Free Press.
Calhoun, C. (ed.). (1992). Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Claussen, D. (1987). Grenzen der Aufklärung: Die gesellschaftliche Genese des modernen Antisemitismus. Frankfurt: Fischer.
Elias, N. (1982). The Civilizing Process. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Gay, P. (1966). The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 1, The Rise of Modern Paganism. New York: Norton.
___________. (1969). The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 2, The Science of Freedom. New York: Norton.
Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by T. Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [tradução brasileira de Denilson Luís Werle. São Paulo: Vozes, 2014].
Horkheimer, M. (1987). Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 9–10. Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (eds.). Frankfurt: Fischer.
Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Edited by. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr and translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press [Tradução brasileira: Dialética do Esclarecimento fragmentos filosóficos. Tradução de Guido Antonio de Almeida. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2006].
___________. (1956). “Ideologie”. In: Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, vol. 4, Soziologische Exkurse. Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Dirks (eds.). Frankfurt: Europaïsche Verlagsanstalt.
Jenemann, D. (2007). Adorno in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kant, I. (1991). “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. In: Political Writings. Hans Reiss (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kavanagh, T. (2010). Enlightened Pleasures: Eighteenth-Century France and the New Epicureanism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
La Mettrie. (1775). “Discours sur le Bonheur”. Oeuvres Philosophiques. Berlin.
Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon.
Marx, K. (1967). Capital. New York: International Publishers.
___________. (1978). “Introduction to The Grundrisse”. In: Robert C. Tucker (ed.). The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Norton.
___________. (1978a). “The German ideology”. In: Robert C. Tucker (ed.). The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Norton.
McCormick, J. P. (2007). Weber, Habermas, and Transformations of the European State: Constitutional, Social, and Supranational Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Montesquieu (1964). The Persian Letters. Translated by George R. Healy. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Nietzsche, F. (1969). On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Translated by W. Kaufmann and J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage.
Noerr, G. S. (2002). “Editor’s Afterword”. In: Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Edited by. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr and translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Postone, m. (1993). Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schorske, C. and Bender, T. (eds.). (1997). American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines. Princeton, NJ: Prince- ton University Press.
Schuster, M. (2014). Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sewell, W. (2005). Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wheatland, T. (2009). The Frankfurt School in Exile. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wolin, R. (1994). Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Information and conceptions on the texts are complete responsibility of the authors.
All the articles submitted before July 5th 2018 and those published after July 2021 are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND license – except those published between the aforementioned dates, which are under the CC BY-NC-SA license. The permission for the translation of the material published under the license CC BY-NC-ND by third parts can be obtained with the consent of the author.
Open access policies - Diadorim
Rules applied before July 5th 2018:
Presenting a submission to our Editorial Board implies granting priority of publication for “Cadernos de filosofia alemã”, as well as transferring the copyright of texts (once published), which will be reproduced only with the manifest authorization of the editors. Authors keep the right to reuse the texts published in future editions of their work, without paying any fees to "Cadernos”. We will not grant the permission to re-edit or translate the texts for third parts without agreement of the author.
