ABSTRACT
We have been concerned in the first chapter of this book with the central arguments of Dialectic of Enlightenment. Adorno and Horkheimer contend that reason aims to liberate humanity from the fear of nature. This aim to go beyond the mythic fear and ignorance of nature is ‘enlightenment’. The way that reason has so far set about trying to achieve this aim is by reducing nature to the inert and meaningless object of rational domination. Reason itself is affected by this. First, reason has, in setting up the hard and false division between itself and nature, forgotten that it is in some senses also natural. Second, reason has become inert, like the nature that it dominates. Enlightenment is not as finally distinct from myth as enlightenment would like to make out. In this way, it is ‘dialectical’. Adorno and Horkheimer do not suggest, however, that the project of enlightenment should simply be written off as a disastrous experiment. Enlightenment resulting in rational domination of nature is incomplete enlightenment. What is required is the completion of enlightenment, the achievement of its fundamental aims, so that human nature may be fully reconciled with itself and with nonhuman nature.
