Theodor Adorno and the Dialectic of Enlightenment

Hey everyone. For our next meeting we're keeping the Critical Theory train going and discussing Adorno and Horkheimer's classic, Dialectic of Enlightenment, which exposes how the "civilized" world actually entails unprecedented barbarity. No pressure to get through the whole book, but it would be great if everyone read the chapter on Culture Industry. Here's a PDF:

https://monoskop.org/images/2/27/Horkheimer_Max_Adorno_Theodor_W_Dialectic_of_Enlightenment_Philosophical_Fragments.pdf

Will host online and in person. Location TBD!

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Last meeting, we discussed Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, which investigates why we comply with an economic system that harms us as individuals, sows social disorder, and threatens our very planet. See below for an excerpt of the essay I wrote on his life and thought:

"Applied to capitalism, the analytic-philosophy orientation suggests the system is rational: it’s advancing us technologically, it’s raising our living standards, etc. Using negative thinking, Marcuse pulls back this pseudo-rational veneer, exposing the irrationality of an economic system defined by “the domination of man by man.” If we accept that reason is inextricable from morality, capitalism’s ostensible rationality becomes untenable in light of the harm it causes: we are overworked and underpaid. We are deprived of basic needs if we can’t afford them, even though there is enough food and housing for everyone. We are in a perpetual nuclear arms race that could annihilate our species at any moment. We are destroying the planet, and with it our means of survival. And we live alienated lives, feeling estranged from our work, ourselves, and others."

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