COURSERA COURSE:

THE MODERN AND THE POSTMODERN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

Peer Assessment 5

Respond to one of the two following prompts:

What human beings seeks to learn from nature i show to use to dominate wholly both it and
human beings. Nothing else counts. Horkheimer and Adorno.

Discuss how the idea of domination plays a role in two of the authors we have read this semester
(you may write on Horkheimer and Adorno [as one thinker]).

Or

Horkheimer and Adorno and Foucault see progress as a kind of trap in which we ensnare
ourselves. Discuss one of them in relation to another thinker in our course who also saw
progress as a trap.


ENLIGHTMENT AS A TRAP IN HORKHEIMER, ADORNO AND ROUSSEAU

Mario Ramos Salas


Horkheimer and Adorno wrote the Dialectic of Enlightment in 1944, one year prior to the
conclusion of one of the most vile and sinister passages known to human history. Both authors
had closely experienced the scourges of war, and their main concern, in the piece of work
considered in the present essay, was to understand the persistence and attraction of the urge for
domination prevailing in society at their time instead of the desire to rebel to the oppression
being faced.

Their study led them to the conclusion that is none other than the majestic project of enlightment,
of civilization and progress, the one how had triggered such shattering consequences in modern
life. However, despite how insightful their work might be, their assertions are not the first of
their kind in western philosophical thought. The proposals of Horkheimer and Adorno, being
born in the 20
th
century, can be at least traced approximately two hundred years back to the
ones sustained by J ean J acques Rousseau.

Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as Rousseau, shared the view that enlightment rather than
signifying mans emergence of his own self-incurred immaturity
1
through the use of reason
as Kant had claimed was instead barren a road that lead to oppression and to the gradual
degeneration of moral and virtue in Rousseaus terms through the domination of one human
being in detriment of another. Consequently, Horkheimer and Adorno stated that:

[e]nlightment understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed
at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly
enlightment earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. Enlightments program was the
disenchantment of the world
2
.

Rousseau held a similar view of enlightment, specifically regarding the influence of the arts and
sciences in the society of his time. Concretely, he stated that the progress of the arts and sciences
was self-defeating to the human natural disposition to liberty. In this sense, he stated that:

in their common life, the arts, literature and the sciences, less despotic though perhaps
more powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down. They stifle
in mens breasts that sense of original liberty, for which they seem to have been born; cause
them to love their own slavery, and so make of them what is called a civilized people
3
.

In other words, for Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as for Rousseau, enlightment is a project
which is characterized by its corruptive nature.

Moreover, the adverse effects of progress were directly linked to development of technology for
both set of authors. Horkheimer and Adorno believed that technology, as the essence of
enlightment knowledge aims to produce neither concepts nor images, nor the joy of
understanding, but method, exploitation of the labor of others
4
. In similar manner, Rousseau
claimed that [a] scientific jargon, more despicable than mere ignorance, had usurped the name
of knowledge and opposed an almost invincible obstacle to its restoration
5
.

Now then, the main difference that one could draw between the proposals of Horkheimer and
Adorno, on one hand, and Rousseau, on the others, is their take on the possibilities for changing
such paradigm. The former thinkers held the view that, insofar as it art does not insist on being
1
Immanuel Kant. (1984). What is Enlightment?
2
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. (1947). Dialectic of Enlightment.

3
J ean J acques Rousseau. (1750). Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.

4
Supra note 2.

5
Supra note 3.

treated as knowledge
6
it could gain the same stand as pleasure in societal life, and thus it may
enable us to discover new alternatives for change in the past as a living entity. Conversely,
Rousseau believed that it was impossible to take a step back from the process of enlightment, as
if its consequences were written in stone, and consequently declared that one should let learned
men to let them received the only reward worthy of them; by the credit they enjoy, to contribute
to the happiness of the People to whom they have taught wisdom
7
.

Thus, one could draw as a general conclusion that both Horkheimer and Adorno, and Rousseau,
were strong critics of the pathway which enlightment has lain before us due to the logic of
domination that it introduces between individuals. Nevertheless, their proposal in response to
such assertion varies greatly; Horkheimer and Adorno could be said to be more optimistic since
they sustain the view that through art we may be able to find new alternatives that were
unexploited in the past, while Rousseau was willing to rely on the positive efforts that might
come though due to the beneficial influence of learned men and women.

6
Supra note 2.
7
Supra note 3.