Adorno's pessimism

[jln]

>The critique of capitalism by early critical theory might nowdays sounds
>old fashioned, but surely Adorno's critique of culture and enlightenment
>is too weak. The question is same then and now: What is the meaning of
>qritique and protest in critical theory?


It seemed to me that the critique of culture is part of a broader critique
of totalitarian thought, of which capitalism is a result and nazism the
extreme epitome.  The chaper on the culture industry in DOE relates
everything to money and totalizing thought.


JLN                             "The architectonic structure of the Kantian
jlnich1@pop.uky.edu                system, like the gymnastic pyramids of

                                   Sade's orgies and the schematized
                                   principles of the early bourgeois

                                   freemasonry reveals an organization of
                                   life as a whole which is deprived of
                                   any substantial goal."
                                     from  _The Dialectic of Enlightenment_