This course examines how the idea of "the modern" develops at the end of the 18th century in European philosophy and literature, and how being modern (or progressive, or hip) became one of the crucial criteria for understanding and evaluating cultural change. Are we still in modernity, or have we moved beyond the modern to the postmodern?
From Critical Theory to Postmodernism II
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Из курса от партнера Wesleyan University
The Modern and the Postmodern (Part 2)
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From Critical Theory to Postmodernism
Through a consideration of Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno along with Michel Foucault, we confront the philosophical effort to escape from totality in order to understand the politics of control.
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Michael S. Roth
So, here's from Pages 5 and 6 of the Introduction to the Dialectic of
Enlightenment. Man's likeness to god consists in
sovereignty over existence. In lordly gaze.
In the command. So, here we see that the enlightenment,
as Horkheimer and Adorno see it, makes the human subject the the replacement of
God. Following the enlightenment program,
getting rid of the transcendent, getting rid of the transcendental dimension.
But in man's replacing God, it, man becomes the agent of, that gives
commands. Give, is the subject that decides what
will happen. And the only thing that counts is
understanding or knowledge is the power to make things happen through
quantitative methods. Enlightenment, they write, is a dictator.
Page 6. Human beings purchase the increase in
their power. With estrangement from that over which it
is exerted. That's the, you can see this, the kind of
the, the legacy of Marcus here, can't you, that that we purchase the increase
in power with extrangement from that over which it is exerted.
We have more power but we are aliened from the thing that we're trying to
understand in the first place. Enlightenment stands in the same relation
to things as the dictator to human beings.
They have a particular dictator in mind in the 1940s, right.
He knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them.
That, That, that's the core of their objection.
Knowledge becomes the ability to manipulate things.
And that, will eventually sew the seeds of our own destruction.
Not even eventually, it's happening. That's what they see, right?
They see modern technology being used for mass killings, modern technology being
used for efficient murder, modern technology being used for control of, of
people against their interest. And that's a great victory[LAUGH] all
right, for enlightenment, because it shows I really do understand, because I
can manipulate. That, that's really the gist of it.
If you can only show you understand something by your power of manipulation
understanding is linked to tyranny. And, and that's how they explain the
persistence of domination. Let's go back to their words.
on page nine, this is a point they make about equality and uniformity.
Here's what they say. Each human being has been endowed with a
self of his or her own different from all others, so that it could all the more
surely be made the same. I'll come back to this.
But because that self never quite fitted the mold, enlightenment throughout the
liberalistic period has always sympathized with social coercion.
Enlightenment has always sympathized with social coercion.
The unity of the manipluated collective consists in the negation of each
individual and the scorn poured on the type of society which can make people
into individuals. that gets hard to follow, I realize.
The the the language is a little dense. But, I want you to see is that they,
their point is that the persistent pursuit of equality actually creates the
grounds for more coercion. Then you're, as students we, we can
remember some of the, not to far back, standardized testing.
Right? Standardized testing is suppose to treat
everybody the same because but equality is a good thing, everybody will be
treated the same. But of course standardization also
provides the, the tools for control. Right, making everybody the same makes
them easier to control. Social coercion is the tip, is the best
way to manipulate the thing you're trying to understand.
And if you're trying to understand society, manipulating society, coercing
society, into the mold you want. is, what is going to allow you to show
that you have real knowledge. Adorno and, Horkheimer are, are concerned
that the pursuit of equality will actually erase difference because we
want. We want to treat everyone the same.
We have to find ways, either through medication, through political control,
through infringements on freedom of expression, to, to make everybody
comfortable, everybody happy, everybody controlled.
This is the totalitarian state, not yet named as such.
that they see growing around them, especially in fascism, but not only in
fascism. In the enlightenment that even the
liberal democracies see at, at the core of the political regimes.
One of the things that Horkheimer and, and Adorno argue in, in this introduction
to Dialectic of Enlightenment. Is that, is that, there is no alternative
to enlightenment, that, that, that people in modernity can imagine in respectable
terms. That is, that is all forms of knowledge
are pulled into the enlightenment mold. Are pressured to conform to the
scientific model of understanding. The technological model of understanding.
There is no alternative to it. The technological model, the scientific
model of understanding will debunk religion.
It'll debunk political pieties. It'll debut magic of course.
It'll In other words it, it wants subsume all things within its paradigm.
And for Horkheimer and Adorno that's what makes it a myth.
That it, it, it wants to, it wants to provide an explanation for every form of
cognition. There's nothing outside the
enlightenment. so here's from, we're getting towards the
middle of the essay, Page 11. Human beings believe themselves free of
fear when there is no longer anything unknown.
So, when you can have explanations of everything, human beings believe that we
are free from fear. This has determined the path of
demythologization of enlightenment. Enlightenment is mythical fear
radicalized. One of their few short, punchy sentences.
Enlightenment is mythical fear radicalized.
That is to, in order to defeat fear, they make anything that's not fitting into
the, the enlightenment paradigm an object of fear.
so positivism, what they call positivism sees every other kind of intellection,
every other kind of thinking process. As being somehow corrupted by religion
and magic, which are objects of disdain or kind of a, an a dawn a thing of fear
they see. And this is clear around Page 19 to 20 of
the essay. They see the triumph of the quantitative
as being part of this mytholigized enlightenment process.
Insofar as you have the triumph of the quantitative, what they call positivism,
this scientistic paradigm of enlightenment.
They see that knowledge always will reproduce the status quo.
This is around Page 20. They write, the actual is validated,
knowledge confines itself to repeating it.
Thought makes itself mere tautology. The more completely the machinery of
thought subjugates existence. The more blindly it is satisfied with
reproducing it. Enlightenment thereby regresses to the
mythology it has never been able to escape.
What they mean here is that our scientistic ways of approaching the world
are only validated by mirroring the world as it is.
Rather than trying imagining the world as it might be, rather than taking critical
perspective on the status quo, the positivists quantitatively orientated an
enlightened mode of thinking. Horkheimer and Adorno argue Reproduces
the reality in front of us. That's the only thing that counts as, as
possible and as real. And so, knowledge, rather than being used
to steer change of the status quo, in the enlightenment mode, knowledge just
reproduces what's right there in front of the investigator.
So this subsumes the thoughtful person in the status quo.
It subsumes the person who is reaching for difference.
For alternatives in the current reality. it creates the conditions.
For total control through enlightenment or scientific modes of action.
Everything is used to increase the powers of manipulation and domination.
Those are what are called rational procedures.
From Horkheimer and Adorno's perspective.
[FOREIGN].
[FOREIGN]. [FOREIGN].
They're writing again in the, in the mist of World War II, that publishes just at
the end of World War II, they are desperately trying to understand why we
participate in our own domination. And the answer in part is we think we're
being rational when we participate in our own domination, that's what it means.
To be rational is to reproduce the status quo.
We had a candidate for presidency in the United States very recently, while I'm
teaching this class, who made fun of President Obama for saying that he wanted
to keep the seas from rising. I don't know if you remember his phrases
for those of you who follow American electoral politics, that somehow was
crazy to try to keep the seas from rising.
We just want to do, we just want to work with what's out there in the world, he
was saying. He was being more rational, more
reasonable, so it seemed. That was his appeal.
But that's because you just not rational or reasonable discourse reproduce what's
happening and what's happening is global warming.
If what's happening is the sea levels are rising, well, you can't do anything about
that. That would be the rational response is to
just not try to do anything about it. Not try to change but try to mirror
reality. That mode of mirroring reality of
reinforcing the status quo reinforces domination and oppression, Horkheimer and
Adorno argue. Is there an alternative?
Well, again, we are readin just a small peice of a small book for this class.
But Horkheimer and Adorno and many of the Frankfurt School people, they really
focus on diagnosing the problem and not in giving you solution.
But still, towards the end of our essay in the in the Pages 25 and following,
they do suggest some, some ways out. Some, some, some escapes, perhaps.
Of this mode of, of thinking.
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