Adorno's Philosophical Thoughts

 

Adorno and Horkheimer's View on Enlightenment and Its Impact

• Adorno and Horkheimer challenge the optimistic view of enlightenment's effects on society.
• They argue that enlightenment has always aimed to liberate men from fear and establish their sovereignty.
• They challenge the developmental schema of human thought, which posits that human history progresses through stages of cognitive classification and apprehending reality.
• They argue that both myth and enlightenment represent reality and attempt to explain and account for it.
• They argue that enlightenment's rationalization of society reverts to a mythical order, a betrayal of enlightenment's emancipatory ideals.
• They view enlightenment as a demythologizing mode of apprehending reality, aiming to establish human sovereignty over material reality and nature.
• They argue that the realization of human sovereignty requires the dissolution of myths and the disenchantment of nature.
• They believe that enlightenment is conceived of as superseding and replacing mythical and religious belief systems, which are often inability to discern the subjective character and origins of these beliefs.

Adorno and Horkheimer's View on Enlightenment and Mythology

• Adorno and Horkheimer argue that enlightenment reverts to mythology, arguing that humans' attempts to control nature are primarily instrumental.
• They argue that nature is seen as an object for human will, with humans as distinct entities capable of subordinating nature to their will.
• This instrumentalist conception of nature leads to a hierarchical relationship between humans and nature, with reason instrumentalized.
• Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the drive to dominate nature results in a form of reasoning and a general world-view that appears independently of humans and is characterized by a systematic indifference to human suffering.
• They insist that individual self-preservation in 'enlightened' societies requires conformity to the dictates of instrumental reason.

Adorno's Defense of the Controversy

• Adorno argues that authoritative forms of knowledge have become synonymous with instrumental reasoning, deeming reality discernible only in the form of objectively verifiable facts.
• He argues that human beings are increasingly incapable of legitimately excluding themselves from the determinative processes thought to prevail within the disenchanted material realm.
• He argues that the very constituents of this way of thinking are inextricably entwined with heteronomy.
• Adorno and Horkheimer argue that material reality appears as an immutable and fixed order of things, pre-structuring and pre-determining our consciousness of it.
• They argue that enlightenment reverts to mythology, which they never really knew how to elude, as it had the essence of the status quo: cycle, fate, and domination of the world reflected as the truth and deprived of hope.

Adorno and Horkheimer's View on Enlightenment and Nature

• Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the instrumentalization of reason and the epistemological supremacy of 'facts' establish a single order and mode of representing and relating to reality.
• They believe that the pursuit of human sovereignty over nature is predicated on a mode of reasoning that subsumes all of nature within a single, representational framework.
• They believe that this mode of configuring reality originates from a desire to dominate nature, reducing the diversity of nature to a single, manipulable form.
• They view enlightenment as aspiring towards a form of reasoning that is fundamentally universal and abstract, positing the existence of a unified order, a priori.
• They present the aspiration towards achieving human sovereignty over nature as culminating in the institution of a mode of reasoning bound to the identification and accumulation of facts.
• They believe that the aspiration to fully master nature culminates in the institution of a social and political order over which we have lost control.
• They argue that thought and philosophy aid and abet this order by seeking to mirror or 'objectively' reflect that reality.

Adorno's Moral Philosophy and Nihilism

Adorno's Moral Philosophy
• Adorno criticizes the instrumentalization of reason and the lack of a moral basis in modern societies.
• He argues that morality has been replaced by instrumental reasoning and capitalism, leading to a nihilistic world where moral beliefs and reasoning have no rational authority.
• Adorno argues that morality has become a tool of power under nihilistic conditions, with the influence of any moral vision being an expression of the material interests that underlie it.

Effects of Nihilism within Moral Philosophy
• Adorno identifies the effects of nihilism within moral philosophy, particularly the moral theory of Immanuel Kant.
• Kant's account of the moral law demonstrates the reduction of morality to the status of subjective knowledge.
• Adorno criticizes Kant for emptying the moral law of all substantive moral claims, excluding the pursuit of human happiness as a legitimate component of moral reasoning.

Nihilism and the Role of the Critical Theorist
• Adorno does not believe that nihilism can be overcome by a mere act of will or affirming some substantive moral vision of the good life.
• He believes that reason has become entwined with domination and has developed as a manifestation of the attempt to control nature.
• Adorno considers nihilism a consequence of domination and a testament to the extent to which human societies are no longer enthralled by moral visions grounded in some naturalistic conception of human well-being.
• The critical theorist must aim to retain and promote an awareness of the contingency of such conditions and the extent to which such conditions can be changed.

Adorno's View on the Culture Industry

Adorno's Perspective on Mass Entertainment
• Adorno, a philosopher, viewed mass entertainment as a manifestation of domination.
• He viewed both abstract philosophical texts and easily consumable media as manifestations of domination.

The Culture Industry
• Adorno saw the culture industry as a principal source of domination within complex, capitalist societies.
• He argued that areas of life that many people believe are free from work obstruct freedom and the development of a critical consciousness.

Defense of the Culture Industry
• Adorno argued that the culture industry is a key integrative mechanism for binding individuals to modern, capitalist societies.
• He argued that the culture industry maintains a uniform system, to which all must conform.
• He argued that individuals' integration within the culture industry restricts the development of a critical awareness of social conditions.

Adorno's Defense of the Culture Industry
• Adorno argued that cultural commodities are subject to the same instrumentally rationalized mechanical forces that dominate individuals' working lives.
• He argued that systematic exposure to the culture industry has the fundamental effect of pacifying its consumers.
• He presented the pacifying effects of cultural commodities in the underlying uniformity of such goods.

The Culture Industry as a Manifestation of Identity-Thinking
• Adorno conceived of the culture industry as a manifestation of identity-thinking and as being effected through the implementation of instrumentally rationalized productive techniques.
• He presented the culture industry as an endless repetition of the same commodified form.
• He argued that the standardized character of cultural commodities results from the increasingly mechanized nature of the production, distribution, and consumption of these goods.

Adorno's Analysis of Culture Industry

• Adorno's main focus is on music, a medium that reveals the culture industry's features and effects.
• He argues that industrialized production techniques have changed the structure and reception of musical commodities.
• Adorno presents musical commodities as set pieces eliciting set responses, promoting a general condition of immaturity.
• He contrasts the fetishism of music with a regression of listening, where listeners lose freedom of choice and responsibility, and reject the possibility of conscious perception of music.
• Adorno's analysis extends to other areas of the culture industry, including television and astrology columns.
• He sees astrology as a symptom of complex, capitalist societies, conditioned by impersonal, external forces.
• Adorno argues that astrology contributes to a fetishistic attitude towards conditions that confront individuals' lives, promoting a vision of human life as determined by forces beyond our control.
• Adorno argues that the culture industry fundamentally prohibits the development of autonomy by forming individuals' consciousness of social reality.
• He sees the culture industry as an essential component of a reified form of second nature, with which individuals must conform and adapt.
• Despite the 'rubbish' commodities produced by the culture industry, their effects on individuals are serious.