[FRA:] Reason

[simon smith]

In message <s3eea7a2.082 at IGATE.NEWSCHOOL.EDU>, Alexei Procyshyn 
<proca430 at newschool.edu> writes
>Simon,
>
>I suggest you read the preface to to the Dialectic of Enlightment --
>where Adorno and Horkheimer write,
>
>"we have no doubt -- and herein lies our petitio principii -- that
>freedom in society is inseperable form enlightenment thinking" (xvi).

I think it has become clear that the almost exact identification of 
Adorno's and Horkheimer's work on DoE was wishful thinking on the part 
of Adorno, in deference to his mentor and friend.

 From Dialectic of Enlightenment, Editor's afterword, page 221:-

" "Preface": This is present among Horkheimer's posthumous papers in a 
number of typed sections which bear numerous handwritten corrections by 
Horkheimer and a few corrections by Adorno. No draft is to be found in 
Adorno's posthumous papers." "

(As I remember Robert Hullot-Kentor, in "Back to Adorno," Telos 81, does 
a detailed dissection the authorship of DofE, but I would have to go to 
the local university library to read it. Hullot-Kentor is at great pains 
to distinguish Adorno's thought from Horkheimer's.)

Stealing from Ralph Dumain's recent post:-

"As Susan Buck-Morss has shown, on this point Adorno stood much closer 
to the "dialectic of enlightenment" than to the concept of 
"interdisciplinary materialism" and precisely this emphasis was probably 
what hindered his line of thought from achieving more influence on the 
development of early critical theory. For Horkheimer at the beginning of 
the 1930s, there could be no question of anticipating the "dialectic of 
enlightenment." Like Adorno, he saw an increasing trend toward 
irrationalism but did not interpret these symptoms of a crisis as an 
irreversible destruction of reason. Rather, they appeared as a 
temporary, socially conditioned regression that was to be illuminated by 
the positive, specialized sciences. And the integration of these 
sciences, in turn, was understood to be fundamentally rational, inasmuch 
as the "detour" of analyzing the regression would uncover the 
possibility of bringing about a realization of reason."

Wolfgang BonB, "The Program of Interdisciplinary Research and the 
Beginnings of Critical Theory," p120.


Again stealing from Ralph Dumain: Habermas:

"Horkheimer is troubled by this aporia. He shies away from the 
conclusion that the very act of enlightened knowledge is affected by the 
process of self-destruction, depriving it of its liberating effect. He 
would rather entangle himself in contradictions than give up his 
identity as an enlightener and fall into Nietzscheanism. The old trust 
was obstinately reaffirmed in the preface: "Enlightenment must reflect 
on itself if humanity is not to be totally betrayed" "(DA, 5/DE, xv). 
Jurgen Habermas, "Remarks on the Development of Horkheimer's Work," 
p56-59.


My feeling is that for Adorno 'instrumental reason' was _intrinsic_ to 
the Enlightenment (god I'm fed up of typing that word) and to its 
success as a form of domination, a new myth.
Yet somehow Enlightenment also clears room for the possibility of a 
substantive reason, one that is open to non-identity. Quite how though, 
is not elucidated in DofE.

I'll come back to you if the library lets me see the Telos Hullot-Kentor 
essay.

-- 
Simon Smith




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