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Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory

Richard Wyn Jones

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

1999

2. Impasse: Emancipatory Politics After Auschwitz

 

Although Theodor Adorno had been affiliated with the IfS since the late 1920s, it was not until 1938 that he became one of its core members. It was then that he left Europe, after spending four miserable years of exile trying to establish himself at Oxford, in order to join Horkheimer and his colleagues in the United States. There he soon began to play an increasingly prominent role in the development of critical theory, a process given impetus by two parallel developments, namely, the U.S. entry into World War II and Horkheimer’s decision to move to California.

The U.S. entry into World War II led to the fragmentation of the institute as most of its members became involved in the Allied war effort. The centrifugal pressures were further intensified when Horkheimer left New York for California so that he might expend less time and energy on administrative tasks and more on his own research work. There he joined the brilliant German émigré community that included such luminaries as Arnold Schönberg, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, and Hanns Eisler. Both developments meant an end to the close–knit, collegiate atmosphere that had characterized the life and work of the IfS immediately after its exile; they also heralded a radical departure in the institute’s intellectual direction.

In 1941 Adorno traveled west to join his compatriot and immediately started work with Horkheimer on a manuscript that would eventually be published in 1947 under the title Dialectic of Enlightenment. This was a work that fundamentally changed the trajectory of critical theory; it was also a work that announced Adorno’s emergence as its main protagonist. It effectively heralded the abandonment of the version of critical theory outlined by Horkheimer in “Traditional and Critical Theory” and its replacement with another that Adorno would eventually fully develop in Negative Dialectics (1973) and Aesthetic Theory (1997).

Given its historical significance, the arguments developed in Dialectic of Enlightenment will be outlined and assessed in this chapter. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which the key notions of theory, technology, and emancipation are treated. I will follow this discussion with a critique charging that the despairing worldview underlying the work is based on an overly pessimistic assessment of the progressive possibilities extant in the modern world. Furthermore, and crucially, I will argue that any understanding of the shift from the position advanced in “Traditional and Critical Theory” to that exhibited in Dialectic of Enlightenment cannot simply be reduced to an account of the changing historical context. Although the barbarity symbolized above all else by Auschwitz had a profound impact on both authors, there were problems with the original theoretical model outlined in “Traditional and Critical Theory” that were in themselves quite capable of producing a profound impasse in critical theory.

 

Dialectic of Enlightenment

The research project that culminated in the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment was conceived in October 1941, soon after the Nazi regime banned Jewish emigration and decreed that all Jews within its jurisdiction would henceforth be required to wear the Star of David. Rumors that Jews were being murdered by the regime were already filtering out of Germany, yet the U.S. government was still reluctant to soften its immigration policy toward them (Rubenstein 1997 offers a spirited defense of the immigration policies of the Western liberal democracies). Another European war had begun, and world war was imminent; a catastrophic fate awaited European Jewry.

In these circumstances, Adorno and Horkheimer aimed at “nothing less than the discovery of why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new level of barbarism” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: xi). The starting point for this quest is stated clearly in the work’s introduction:

We are wholly convinced... that social freedom is inseparable from enlightened thought. Nevertheless, we believe that we have just as clearly recognised that the notion of this very way of thinking... already contains the seed of the reversal universally apparent today. If enlightenment does not accommodate reflection on this recidivist element, then it seals its own fate. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: xiii)

However, as will become clear, in their effort to reflect on this “recidivist element” within enlightenment while remaining true to its ideal of human freedom, Adorno and Horkheimer reach an understanding of the trajectory of human history so bleak as to undermine any hope that the promise of enlightenment might ever be realized.

The first move the authors take on this fateful path is to recast the whole conception of enlightenment itself. Enlightenment is no longer understood as the school of thought first developed in Scotland and France in the late eighteenth century, dedicated to the triumph of human reason over such atavistic tendencies as myth, magic, superstition, and religion. Rather, the concept is extended to include the whole of human history far back into mythic prehistory and is used to describe humankind’s growing domination over nature. Their understanding of this process leads to three, further related arguments. First, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that rather than opposing myth, enlightenment actually reverts to myth. Second, they argue that far from presaging the development of an ethical, rational society, enlightenment is deeply implicated in the irrationality and immorality so painfully apparent in contemporary society. Finally, and most strikingly given the epoch in which Dialectic of Enlightenment was written, they claim that “enlightenment is totalitarian” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 134).

Thus, to state the argument at its starkest, the barbarism that Adorno and Horkheimer were committed to understanding was not a negation of enlightenment but rather its culmination; Auschwitz was not the opposite of enlightenment but its result. But how could two participants in the Marxist tradition, a tradition that regards itself as the true heir of enlightenment thought, find themselves in a position in which they argue that enlightenment is implicated in the worst atrocities of the modern world? The answer lies in the role of instrumental reason in the human domination of nature.

“Instrumental reason” is the name given to the ways of thinking (and being) involved in the gradual domestication of nature, ways of thinking oriented toward technical control and manipulation. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that in the course of bringing nature (what they call “outer nature”) under human control, instrumental reason ultimately leads to the effacement of those aesthetic and instinctual elements in the human character (what they call “inner nature”) that are not reducible to the instrumental domination of nature. Humanity becomes solely concerned with means in themselves—the most effective ways to bring nature under its dominion—and does not reflect on the ends to which those means might contribute. Thus, far from establishing the sovereignty of humankind, the process of dominating nature that Dialectic of Enlightenment identifies with enlightenment leads to a tragic atrophic process in human history. In their drive for self–preservation, humans utilize instrumental reason whose continued development leads to what Albrecht Wellmer has aptly described as the “progressive reification of consciousness” (Wellmer 1983: 92).

As reason becomes more and more functionally oriented, and as the ends of human activity are subject to an ever–decreasing amount of self–reflexive consideration and mediation, human beings are increasingly alienated. One aspect of the resulting “new barbarianism” is the general population’s increasing susceptibility to various forms of irrationality (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 32). As people lose all sense of belonging and meaning in a world where all aspects of life are increasingly commodified and everything has a price but little has value, they are easy prey for myths of all kinds, be it the myth of the “volk” or that of astrology (on the latter see Adorno 1994: 34–127).

Closely related to this “mutual implication of enlightenment and myth” is the tendency of enlightenment to slip into immorality. As enlightenment is reduced to what might be called, in stark contrast to Kant’s formulation, a “kingdom of means,” truth becomes equated with scientific systematization. At this point, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, enlightenment “seals its own nullity,” as thought is thus proscribed from “reflective consideration of its own goals” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 85). The logical outcome of such thinking is that ultimate symbol of amoral depravity, the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette. In the kingdom of means

enlightenment possesses no argument against... [any] perversion of its proper nature, for the plain truth had no advantage over distortion, and rationalization none over the ratio, if they could prove no practical benefit in themselves.... Once it is harnessed to the dominant mode of production, the Enlightenment—which strives to undermine any order which has become repressive—abrogates itself. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 93)

Against all its stated intentions, enlightenment cannot supply a defense or justification for moral behavior undertaken for its own sake.

Yet a further hardening of the case against enlightenment is provided in Adorno and Horkheimer’s charge that “enlightenment is totalitarian” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 134). This charge does not simply mean that enlightenment creates a society populated by damaged, alienated, nonthinking individuals who are susceptible to the blandishments of various totalitarian ideologies. Rather, as should already be clear, this in itself is a sign of a deeper malaise. “Enlightenment is totalitarian” in the sense that it, or more specifically its deification of instrumental reason, pervades every aspect of society, from its institutions to the very psyches of the individuals who populate it. Furthermore, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that it is increasingly unlikely that humankind will be able to escape the atrophy of thought and being brought about by the all–pervasive impact of instrumental reason. This increasing unlikelihood is due to the crucial role they accord to what they term the “culture industry.” Drawing on their experience of both Nazi propaganda and the media industry in the United States, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that the (then largely) nascent culture industry was quickly undermining human subjectivity itself. By transforming every aspect of human life—including its cultural forms—into a commodity, the industry was rapidly ensuring that every human need and every human emotion was programmed and attuned to the needs of monopoly capital. In such a society, “the individual is an illusion” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 154).

Fifty years later, in an age of global media penetration, global media empires, global soap operas, an age in which local cultural production values ape ever more closely those of the global media players and the media generally has an ever greater impact on the lives of those exposed to it, their words appear prophetic indeed. It is thus disturbing to note that they believe that it is ever more unlikely that humankind will escape the shackles of this second–rate, superficial society:

It is idle to hope that this self–contradictory, disintegrating “person” will not last for generations, that the system must collapse because of such a psychological split, or that the deceitful substitution of the stereotype for the individual will of itself become unbearable for mankind.... For centuries society has been preparing for Victor Mature and Mickey Rooney. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 155)

Thus Dialectic of Enlightenment points to the development of what Helmut Dubiel has dubbed a “hermetic society”: a society from which there is not only no political escape route but also no “private, individual escape, indeed not even an escape within one’s own imagination” (Dubiel 1985: 122). It is little wonder, therefore, that enlightenment is seen as a form of “mass deception” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 120–167).

Adorno and Horkheimer go on to claim that the anti–Semitism disfiguring the world as they wrote Dialectic of Enlightenment was itself the result of the malignancy they had identified as lying at the heart of the enlightenment project. Rejecting the notion that anti–Semitism is an aberration, a throwback to more primitive times, they argue that it is the most extreme manifestation of the rise of instrumental reason. Further, they argue that “the rational domination of nature [that] comes increasingly to win the day... and integrates all human characteristics” has disastrous implications for humankind (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 233). “In situations where blinded men robbed of their subjectivity are set loose as subjects,” the result is anti–Semitism (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 233).

But why should the blinded men turn on Jews in particular? It is precisely because the Jews are stubbornly determined to be different #and not to assimilate and conform wholly to the mores of the host population. In a world where individuals have surrendered their subjectivity, Jewish difference becomes an unbearable affront. Thus, for Adorno and Horkheimer, anti–Semitism is not a negation of enlightenment but arises out of it. Here the “dialectic of enlightenment” stands fully revealed: On the one hand, enlightenment has created the material basis for an emancipated society, but the very mode of thinking that makes this possible condemns humanity to ever greater barbarism. Not only is this tragic duality exhibited in the Nazi death camps, where some of the era’s most modern technology was utilized in order to commit some of the most heinous crimes in human history, it permeates all aspects of life. So, for example, “the serum which a doctor gives a sick child is obtained by attacking defenceless animals” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 223): Reason and domination are revealed as inextricably entwined.

The arguments advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment are almost unremittingly bleak—so bleak as to imply that the original aim of the book—to recover the emancipatory impulses of enlightenment—is doomed to failure. The grip of instrumental reason is so tight and all–embracing that nothing can ever hope to escape it. Occasionally, the text seems to resist this logic. At one point Adorno and Horkheimer suggest a route to redemption that appears even more unlikely when one considers the time of writing:

If thought is liberated from domination and if violence is abolished, the long absent idea is liable to develop that Jews are human beings. This development would represent the step out of an anti–Semitic society... and into human society. This step would also fulfil the Fascist lie, but in contradicting it: the Jewish question would prove in fact to be the turning point of history.... Mankind would develop from a set of opposing races to the species which, even as nature, is more than nature. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 199–200)

However, they hint at no possible means by which this liberation may be attained, and indeed, if society is as hermetic as they suggest, no escape is possible. Adorno and Horkheimer are aware of this predicament:

All work and pleasure are protected by the hangman. To contradict this is to deny all science and logic. It is impossible to abolish the terror and retain civilization.... Various conclusions can be drawn from this—from the grovelling respect for Fascist barbarity to refuge in the circles of Hell. But there is another conclusion: to laugh at logic if it runs counter to the interests of men. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 217–218)

Although laughing at logic may be an entirely laudable reaction under their circumstances, it hardly represents a coherent plan for political action. Indeed, Dialectic of Enlightenment represents the moment when critical theory—or at least the strand represented by Adorno and Horkheimer—abdicated the political battlefield. If, as the authors suggest, “under the given conditions, the mere continuation of an existence maintaining individual skills of a technical or intellectual nature leads to cretinism even in the prime of life,” then all resistance is useless (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 240–241).

 

Theory

The critique of instrumental reason advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment effectively heralds the end of the vision of critical theory that animated the Frankfurt School’s work in the 1930s. As detailed in Chapter 1, Horkheimer’s original vision was of a theoretical orientation that attempted to integrate the insights of the specialized, “bourgeois” sciences within a framework organized intellectually by Marxian social theory and committed to developing an understanding of society in order to aid in the task of its transformation. The extent of the rupture from this position represented by Dialectic of Enlightenment is made explicit in the book’s introduction:

Even though we had noticed for some time that in the modern scientific enterprise great discoveries are paid for with the growing decay of theoretical culture, we still thought that we might join in to the extent that we would restrict ourselves largely to criticizing or developing specialized knowledge. Thematically, at any rate, we were to keep to the traditional disciplines of sociology, psychology and the theory of knowledge. The fragments collected in this volume show, however, that we had to abandon that confidence. (translation from Habermas 1984: 454; Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: xi)

In Dialectic of Enlightenment the specialized sciences are regarded as irredeemably tainted by instrumental reason: They have no critical purchase on their objects; nor is there any possibility that it could ever be acquired. According to this analysis, the familiar disciplines of the social sciences are configured to gain a form of instrumental knowledge about society that will aid its further manipulation, and it is useless to hope that this could ever change.

In response to this situation, Adorno and Horkheimer “philosophized” critical theory (see Dubiel 1985: 94–95). Instead of attempting to integrate the insights of philosophy and the specialized sciences, they effectively truncated the project of critical theory. Rather than standing “between philosophy and social science,” to recall the title of a collection of Horkheimer’s early essays, critical theory was repositioned to become a purely philosophical enterprise (Horkheimer 1993). According to this wholly philosophical conceptualization, critical theory was regarded as “a mental preserve, a critical island, an encapsulation resistant to the instrumentalistic Zeitgeist” (Dubiel 1985: 95). Critical theory did not attempt to engage theoretically with the real world; it became an effort to escape from that world’s clutches and a denial that the world contained any truth. One important result of this effort was that the possibility of immanent critique, a critical tool Horkheimer had championed in “Traditional and Critical Theory,” was abandoned.

As discussed in Chapter 1, immanent critique was a technique adopted by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s in order to criticize any prevailing order without appealing to an external, ahistorical Archimedean point in order to ground that critique. Immanent critique depends on comparing an object (a particular institution or situation) with the unrealized possibilities existent within it. But of course if it is true that enlightenment and domination are thoroughly entwined, as the “black writers of the bourgeoisie” argue (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 117), if the baleful effects of instrumental reason have insinuated themselves into every aspect of human existence, if Adorno is correct to argue that “nothing complicitous with this world can have any truth” (Jameson 1990: 177–178), then immanent critique becomes impossible. In the hermetic society dissected in Dialectic of Enlightenment, there is no immanent “ought” or “might be” according to which the “is” might be measured.

The abandonment of immanent critique left Adorno and Horkheimer with two choices. They could either succumb to a thoroughgoing relativism or attempt to identify a source of truth and grounding for critique external to society. Given their hostility toward relativism, which they regarded, to quote Adorno, as making “common cause with untruth” (Bronner 1994: 206), it is hardly surprising that they chose the latter path even if it left them open to many of the same charges that Horkheimer had made against traditional theory in “Traditional and Critical Theory.” As will be briefly discussed in the concluding remarks to this chapter, Adorno sought for truth in aesthetics, whereas Horkheimer adopted a godless theology. What is important to note here is that both men effectively abandoned all hope that progressive change was possible in the social realm.

A further theoretical corollary of the critique of instrumental reason advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment was the ending of critical theory’s orientation toward political practice. The Horkheimer of “Traditional and Critical Theory” remained fully committed to Marx’s famous dictum in the “Thesis on Feuerbach”: “Philosophers have thus far only sought to understand the world; the point is to change it” (Marx 1976b: 5). Although he was less than sanguine that revolutionary change could be affected and certainly entertained no illusions about contemporary Communist parties, he still argued that the aim of the critical theorist should be to form “a dynamic unity with the oppressed class, so that his presentation of societal contradictions is not merely an expression of the concrete historical situation but also a force within it to stimulate change” (Horkheimer 1972: 215). But in the hermetic society depicted in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the proletariat has lost its emancipatory vocation. In a society wholly controlled by the iron logic of instrumental reason, Adorno and Horkheimer argue, human subjectivity has become an empty shell. Human beings have become mere pawns of instrumental rationality and in particular its most powerful modern manifestation, the culture industry. People cannot think for themselves let alone work for a better world.

The philosophized critical theory of Dialectic of Enlightenment does not hope to change this situation. Indeed, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that any attempt to do so would inevitably implicate the theory in the logic of instrumental rationality. The tragedy of the position in which the critical theorists found themselves is overwhelming. If their analysis is correct, then silence in the face of the prevailing order is tantamount to acquiescence with it. However, any attempt to intervene practically to change that order is doomed to succumb to and even strengthen the very instrumental rationality that they are attempting to resist:

It is characteristic of the sickness [of contemporary society] that even the best intentioned reformer who uses an impoverished and debased language to recommend renewal, by his adoption of the insidious mode of categorization and the bad philosophy it conceals, strengthens the very power of the established order he is trying to break. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: xiv)

Caught between the Scylla of mute acceptance and the Charybdis of self–defeating efforts at political relevance, the only possible course open to Adorno and Horkheimer is that of pure negation.

In a hermetic society all critical theory can do is criticize the false totality in which it finds itself. It cannot hope to propose alternatives or exhort people to action; rather, critical theory must consist solely of the steadfast rejection of any notion that the world contains anything remotely resembling justice, liberty, and beauty—“nothing complicitous with this world can have any truth.” And of course, given the totalitarian and totalizing impact of instrumental rationality on society, Adorno and Horkheimer are aware that it is highly unlikely that there can ever be an audience for their work. In response, they came to regard critical theory as a message in a bottle to be thrown at the mercy of history, its destination unknown. Even if the message should one day be taken up, then, in the words of Horkheimer, “we can hope for no more than that, would day ever break, our writings will be recognized as a very little star that had shown, though barely perceptible, in the horrible light of the present” (Dubiel 1985: 84). But of course the whole point of the analysis advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment is that day will never break, and critical theory is thus condemned to perpetual practical irrelevance.

 

Emancipation

Emancipation is central to the version of critical theory developed by Horkheimer in “Traditional and Critical Theory.” Immanent critique depends on the possibility of emancipatory social change, and critical theory’s view of its own place in society—its ultimate aspiration to be involved in political praxis—also depends on such change being achievable. But the analysis advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment leads to the abandonment of all hope in the possibility of progressive development. However, a concept of emancipation continues to play an important role even in this revised understanding of critical theory, though the notion of what emancipation might mean has been certainly greatly modified.

The understanding of emancipation adopted in “Traditional and Critical Theory” is an orthodoxly Marxian one. Horkheimer shares the classic Hegelian–Marxist vision of an emancipated society as a rational society. Such a society would result from a process in which humankind brought nature under its control through organized development planned in such a way that it benefited the species as a whole rather than simply individuals within it. But of course, according to the analysis advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the very process of the domination of nature, far from leading to emancipation, in fact leads to ever greater domination of humankind’s inner nature. The type of rationality necessary to domesticate and control the natural world leads to ever greater barbarism in human relations.

In the light of this analysis, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest an alternative conceptualization of emancipation. Unsurprisingly, this conceptualization envisages a different relationship between humankind and nature wherein emancipation lies through a “reconciliation” with nature (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 54). Emancipation requires a realization by humanity that it is of nature rather than above nature and a concomitant development by humanity of a noninstrumental, nontechnical relationship with nature. Humanity must somehow learn how to value nature in and of itself. But given that the critique of instrumental rationality advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment is itself based on totalizing assumptions about humankind—in effect, a set of anthropological claims about humanity’s relations with its material surroundings, as well as intraspecies relationships—all such depictions must remain at the level of hypothesis. Adorno and Horkheimer cannot point to any concrete examples of what types of institutions and relationships might characterize a more emancipated society. Such examples have never existed, and given the all–pervading effects of instrumental rationality, it is clear that they never could.

So the radically revised notion of emancipation advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment is utopian in the negative sense: It has no relationship to the real world; it is literally unimaginable (Wellmer 1983: 92). To be sure, emancipation remains a kind of regulative ideal for Adorno and Horkheimer. But given that it is, by definition, indescribable and that any attempt to describe it inevitably succumbs to the very instrumentalist logic it endeavors to resist, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the commitment of critical theorists to emancipation became merely metaphysical in character.

 

Technology

As discussed in Chapter 1, the version of critical theory developed by Horkheimer in “Traditional and Critical Theory” depended on a benign understanding of technology. Developments in the forces of production available to society—that is, more sophisticated technology—were regarded in a positive light; such developments created the possibility for a more emancipated society even if that potential was not always realized in the context of the class–ridden contemporary world. However, Adorno and Horkheimer’s subsequent analysis totally reversed this understanding.

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, technology is regarded as the embodiment of the instrumental rationality that is exposed and criticized in the work. Thus technology is seen wholly negatively: It is a means to control and manipulate and is thus inimical to human freedom. Technological innovation in the name of human enlightenment leads to ever greater domination and, ultimately, the effacement of those very human characteristics that fueled efforts to attain enlightenment in the first place: “Machinery disables men even as it nutures them” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: 37). Indeed, in a dramatic inversion of the familiar enlightenment teleology of an inevitable advance toward a more rational and civilized society—a feature of both Marxism and liberalism—Adorno and Horkheimer postulate a deterministic progression toward an ever more oppressive society dominated by ever more destructive technology. According to this dystopian vision, technology, the material embodiment of instrumental rationality, is pushing humanity inexorably toward certain destruction. As Adorno was to argue memorably: “No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb” (Adorno 1973: 320). And even those who recognize that this process is occurring are powerless to intervene and halt it.

 

Critique

There is no doubt that Dialectic of Enlightenment possesses a certain pathos. It reflects the bitterness and bewilderment of a group of left–wing German Jewish intellectuals who felt they had been thoroughly betrayed in general by history, and in particular by the culture they had been brought up to venerate. But there can also be little doubt that the work contains much that is contemporarily relevant. It speaks powerfully to those troubled by the apparent paradox whereby the most advanced technology of the age is utilized to perfect the most unspeakable acts of barbarity. It speaks to those concerned by the damaging effects of humanity’s exploitative relationship with the natural world on both humankind and nature. It also resonates with those who reject postmodern praise of popular culture and point to the apparently relentless dumbing down of contemporary society. Yet despite such prescience, the position taken by Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment is flawed in important respects. The argument they advance is overly deterministic and ultimately yields to a paralyzing relativism in relation to politics. Furthermore, the authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment are forced into a position in which they cannot adequately account for the basis of their own critique of instrumental rationality.

One of the many paradoxes of Dialectic of Enlightenment is that a work that sets out to rescue the progressive impulses of enlightenment ultimately ends up as one of the most far–reaching dismissals of that tradition ever written. Another, related paradox is that two writers who emerged from a strain of Marxist thought that rejected the determinism so apparent in more orthodox (that is, party–aligned) Marxism eventually found themselves promulgating a version of determinism even more far reaching than the one that they originally rejected.

The crux of the argument put forward by Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment can be summarized as follows:

As Habermas points out, Adorno and Horkheimer attribute the cause of the problems of their own epoch to “the anthropological foundations of the history of the species” (Habermas 1984: 379). Dialectic of Enlightenment therefore implies a telos—or perhaps anti–telos—to history: History is conceived in totally mechanistic and deterministic terms, as the inexorable march of instrumental rationality, from mythic prehistory to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

The argument of Dialectic of Enlightenment is deeply problematic (for critiques by the successor generation of critical theorists, see in particular Habermas 1981; 1984: 366–399; 1991: 106–130; 1992a; Wellmer 1983). One basic flaw is the redefinition of enlightenment to encompass the whole history (and prehistory) of civilization. By expanding the meaning of the term to include literally everything, it becomes analytically meaningless. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Adorno and Horkheimer’s claim in the preface to Dialectic of Enlightenment that the work was written in order to redeem the hopes of enlightenment as they are more conventionally understood, that is, in terms of the history of ideas (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: xi).

But how do the values of freedom, justice, and solidarity that are normally associated with enlightenment fit in to the worldview advanced in Dialectic of Enlightenment? In what sense can Adorno and Horkheimer describe them as enlightenment values? And if indeed they can, what is the relationship between the enlightenment analyzed in Dialectic of Enlightenment and the enlightenment of David Hume, Adam Ferguson, Voltaire, and Immanuel Kant? By so extending the meaning of the term, Adorno and Horkheimer deny themselves the vocabulary necessary to reflect on whatever recidivist elements exist within enlightenment thought while still keeping faith with the hopes of that tradition. Defenders of their work might well respond by arguing that this contradiction is precisely what they are seeking to expose. Another, less charitable response is that this particular contradiction is of their own making.

As well as being too broad, the understanding of enlightenment proffered in Dialectic of Enlightenment is also, paradoxically, too reductive. Adorno and Horkheimer reduce all forms of rationality to one: instrumental rationality. But those very values that the work was written to defend suggest a different sense of rationality—one that is not reducible to pure instrumentality. And indeed, in Eclipse of Reason, a book originally published in 1947 that delivers some of the main themes of Dialectic of Enlightenment in a more accessible form, Horkheimer does formally distinguish between instrumental rationality and substantive rationality, the latter being concerned with ends and not simply means (Horkheimer 1974: 3–91). But in Eclipse of Reason and, in an even more pronounced fashion, Dialectic of Enlightenment, the tendency is to reduce all rationality to its instrumental form. Given that almost all human activity—from the most basic urges for self–preservation to the most advanced scientific research—is seen as embodying instrumental rationality, then, by definition, it becomes extremely difficult for Adorno and Horkheimer to give an account of any other form of rationality. As I will discuss later, Adorno in particular attempted to give such an account through his aesthetic theory. However, even in the aesthetic realm, he argued that the hold of more substantive forms of rationality was extremely tenuous and uncertain. Thus Habermas seems to be correct when he argues that despite the intentions of its authors, the argument of Dialectic of Enlightenment tends to reduce all rationality to instrumental rationality and thus to produce a critique of rationality per se (Habermas 1984: 366–399; 1991: 106–130).

Quite apart from the dangers inherent in the slippage into an antirational position, another problem that arises from the deterministic and reductive approach to rationality adopted in Dialectic of Enlightenment is that it leaves the authors totally unable to account for the basis of their own critique. How can one advance a rational critique of rationality—for that is surely the aim of the work—if all worldly rationality is purely instrumental in nature? How, for example, can Adorno and Horkheimer account for their own social position as theorists? Do they enjoy some especially privileged position that gives them a certain critical distance form the machinations of instrumental rationality and allows them to expose and criticize its effects? If so, what is the basis of this position? Given their own outlook on these matters, their position must be social rather than biological, so can one presume that it relates to class, background, or education? But does this in turn not suggest that the insight they possess is, in principle at least, accessible to many more? And if this is indeed the case, then surely instrumental rationality is not as all–pervasive and totalitarian as they claim. Adorno and Horkheimer are unable to address these issues precisely because of the deterministic and reductive claims on which their theoretical position is based. But their own biographies—to say nothing of those people and practices existing in all societies whose behavior is not simply based on instrumental concerns or calculations—suggest that some of these central claims are hollow.

Apart from this failure of self–reflexivity, another conspicuous casualty of the unwarranted overgeneralization and oversimplification that characterize Dialectic of Enlightenment is the analysis of anti–Semitism contained within it. When examined in detail, the understanding proffered by Adorno and Horkheimer is wholly unconvincing.

As I have already discussed, Dialectic of Enlightenment argues that anti–Semitism is the outcome of the process of enlightenment; it is a symptom of the rise of instrumental rationality. Such a line of argument fails to address some of the most basic questions concerning this most intractable of phenomena. It cannot hope to explain why anti–Semitism has been a characteristic of so many different societies, at so many different stages in their development. If anti–Semitism is a product of modernity, why did it also feature in premodern times? Indeed, how is it that anti–Semitism is particularly associated with antimodern sentiment? Furthermore, why was it Germany that bore host to one of the most determined and certainly the most murderous strain of anti–Semitism (see and compare Goldhagen 1997, Finkelstein 1997)? If we pursue the logic of Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument, we must conclude that the virulence of anti–Semitism under the Third Reich is a sign that Germany was somehow more enlightened than other countries and that instrumental rationality had penetrated more thoroughly into German society than elsewhere.

When stated in these bald terms, the absurdity of their position becomes apparent. Jeffrey Herf provides a salutary and succinct rejoinder:

They [Adorno and Horkheimer] mistakenly attributed to the Enlightenment what was in fact the product of Germany’s particular misery. Germany did not suffer from too much reason, too much liberalism, too much enlightenment, but rather not enough of any of them.... Hitler’s Germany was never more than partly and woefully inadequately enlightened. Auschwitz remains a monument to the deficit and not the excess of reason in Hitler’s Reich. (Herf 1984: 234)

Dialectic of Enlightenment simply does not begin to grasp the historical specificity of the very barbarism that it was intended to explore.

An even more troubling feature of Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis is the downplaying of individual responsibility that is implicit in their argument. If Auschwitz is the inevitable outcome of enlightenment, and if instrumental rationality is too powerful to resist, then can we expect an individual Nazi to act in a different fashion? In the hermetic society the individual is a mere cipher, and if this is the case, can any individual really be blamed for his or her behavior? These questions highlight an ethical lacuna at the heart of Dialectic of Enlightenment. Despite the obvious intentions of the authors, their analysis generates a logic that renders them unable to differentiate meaningfully between different actions in the political realm. If “nothing complicitous with this world can have any truth,” then surely everything that exists in the real world must be judged equally untrue or false. But if this is so, how are we to evaluate efforts at securing change in contemporary society?

Let us consider the ending of apartheid in South Africa. Although the citizens of that country cannot be adjudged to be free after the overthrow of the apartheid system, surely they are freer. Although the establishment of liberal democracy there offers no panacea, it is a better system than the totalitarian one that it has replaced. But although Adorno and Horkheimer as individuals would almost certainly have rejoiced in the downfall of the apartheid system, as theoreticians they seem to be unable to provide us with any grounds for favoring one particular set of social institutions over another. Here we have a bizarre inversion of the relativism to which contemporary poststructuralist approaches are prone. By arguing that there are no grounds to choose between different accounts of reality, poststructuralists are inevitably forced to accept that all accounts of a given reality are true. They can make no judgment on these claims that is not arbitrary (Norris 1992; Hunter and Wyn Jones 1995). Similarly, by arguing that everything in the world is equally false, Adorno and Horkheimer can make no judgment as to why we might prefer some forms of behavior and some set of practices over others.

Here the impasse into which the analysis of Dialectic of Enlightenment leads its authors stands in bold relief. The determinism and reductionism of their argument is ultimately paralyzing. It was, of course, Antonio Gramsci who popularized the injunction that all those intent on changing society should attempt to face the world with a combination of “pessimism of the intellect” and “optimism of the will.” This position has much to commend it given the propensity of radicals to view society with rose–tinted glasses. However, the limitations of this position are nowhere better illustrated than in Dialectic of Enlightenment, in which the pessimism is so thoroughgoing that it becomes absolutely debilitating. Any attempt to challenge the status quo already stands condemned as futile. The logical outcome of this attitude is resignation and passivity.

Adorno attempted to make a virtue of the detached attitude that he and Horkheimer adopted toward the political struggles of their own age by claiming: “If one is concerned to achieve what might be possible with human beings, it is extremely difficult to remain friendly towards real people.” However, considering that it is only “real people” who can bring about a better society, Adorno’s “complex form of misanthropy” ultimately leads only to quiescence (Wiggershaus 1994: 268). Thus, despite the clear similarities in the influences and interests of the founding fathers of critical theory and Gramsci, the resignatory passivity of the authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment led them to a position on political practice far more akin to that of Oswald Spengler or Arthur Schopenhauer than to that adopted by the Sardinian Marxist Gramsci, even as he languished in a fascist prison.

In view of the traditional Marxist emphasis on the unity of theory and practice, it is hardly surprising that Adorno and Horkheimer’s rejection of any attempt to orient their work toward political activity led to bitter criticism from other radical intellectuals. Perhaps the most famous such condemnation was that of Lukács, who acidly commented that the members of the Frankfurt School had taken up residence in the “Grand Hotel Abyss.” The inhabitants of this institution enjoyed all the comforts of the bourgeois lifestyle while fatalistically surveying the wreckage of life beyond its doors. Whereas Lukács’s own apologias for Stalinism point to the dangers of subordinating theoretical activity to the exigencies of day–to–day practical politics, Adorno and Horkheimer sunder theory and political practice completely, impoverishing the theoretical activity itself. Their stance leads to an aridity and scholasticism ill suited to any social theory that aspires to real–world relevance.

Furthermore, the critical theorist’s position on political practice is based on an underestimation of the potential for progressive change that exists even in the most administered societies. It is instructive to contrast the attitude of Adorno and Horkheimer with that of Raymond Williams, who delivers the following broadside against “high culture Marxists” such as the members of the Frankfurt School:

When the Marxists say that we live in a dying culture, and that the masses are ignorant, I have to ask them... where on earth they have lived. A dying culture, and ignorant masses, are not what I have known and see. (R. Williams 1989: 8)

As I will discuss in Chapter 6, the evidence suggests that Williams is closer to the truth. People acting both individually and collectively, through social movements and state institutions, can actually influence the world around them in a progressive direction. Adorno and Horkheimer’s pessimism is unwarranted.

One plausible explanation for the extraordinarily bleak worldview propounded in Dialectic of Enlightenment is extratheoretical. Given the historical context in which the work was written, its left–wing German Jewish authors were certainly more than entitled to adopt an apocalyptic view of contemporary society. Awareness of the particular historical context in which Adorno and Horkheimer were working is undoubtedly a key element in understanding the impasse in which critical theory found itself in the 1940s. However, it would be a mistake to view the deterministic pessimism of Dialectic of Enlightenment solely in terms of a legitimate reaction to the appalling brutality of the Holocaust, Stalinism, and World War II. This pessimism also reflects basic problems in the theoretical model on which critical theory is based. In other words, the impasse of Dialectic of Enlightenment—a work that, in effect, declares that a critical theory of society is impossible—not only is a reaction to Auschwitz but also reflects serious weakness in the intellectual basis of critical theory as set out in Horkheimer’s “Traditional and Critical Theory.”

 

Problems with Horkheimer’s Original Formulation

Several recent studies have focused on the weaknesses of Horkheimer’s original formulation of critical theory and have argued that these weaknesses were enough to produce the subsequent theoretical impasse in the work of the Frankfurt School. Specifically, Axel Honneth criticizes the philosophy of history underlying Horkheimer’s views of human action; Moishe Postone and Barbara Brick point to deficiencies in the political economy that underlies the work of the first generation of critical theorists; and Wolfgang Bonß emphasizes Horkheimer’s underdeveloped understanding of the relationship between the two basic elements of critical theory—the specialized sciences (traditional theory) and the guiding framework of progressive social philosophy.

According to Honneth, Horkheimer’s version of critical theory is blighted by the fact that it is “rooted in a philosophy of history that conceptually reduces the process of social development to... the domination of nature” (Honneth 1993: 187). Such a reduction gives rise in turn to an understanding of human social behavior that is far too narrow. Social behavior is regarded as being driven by the quest to dominate nature; it provides the impetus for human action. Furthermore, it is the process of human domination over nature that is perceived as harboring the potential for human emancipation, with “potential” being identified as the difference between the productive forces available to dominate nature and the prevailing relations of production that fail to utilize those forces fully and rationally.

Honneth charges that the notion that the perfection of scientific domination over nature is somehow best served via the institutions that radicals have historically associated with a rational society—planning, workers’ control, and so on—is fallacious; there is no necessary connection between them. Indeed, Honneth argues that it is another form of human activity that provides the basis for the hope that emancipatory transformation of society is possible and hence for critical theory itself. This type of action is “a kind of activity that has not nature but ‘society itself’ as its object” (Honneth 1993: 195). It is “social struggle” or “critical activity” oriented toward changing society, not in order to improve the efficiency of human domination over nature, but in order to humanize that process.

Although Horkheimer’s work clearly implies an understanding of human activity in this second sense, the philosophy of history on which his work is based cannot accommodate it theoretically. This has profound implications, for as Honneth argues: “This conceptual reductionism prevents Horkheimer from grasping the practical dimensions of social conflict and struggle as such” (Honneth 1993: 199).

The most striking result of this “sociological deficit” in Horkheimer’s critical theory is that it leads him to locate the locus of critical, emancipatory potential in the wrong place. Horkheimer sees emancipation as arriving in the wake of scientific domination over nature. When this fails to occur—for example, in Auschwitz, where modern scientific techniques were utilized to commit mass murder—this leads him to despair at the very possibility of emancipation. Thus, according to this critique, Horkheimer’s pessimism is a product of the particular philosophy of history on which his work is based and the resulting narrow conception of human activity that arises from it. Had he correctly recognized that critical activity is a different order of activity to the scientific–technical domination of nature, arising from a different set of social practices, the “pessimistic turn” might well have been avoided. Horkheimer might then have recognized the residual “resources of hope,” to use Raymond Williams’s phrase, that continued to exist despite the barbarity of the age.

Some of the critique advanced by Postone and Brick pursues themes similar to those developed by Honneth. The crux of their argument is that Horkheimer’s pessimism was due to deficiencies in the understanding of political economy underlying his theory. Specifically, they argue that despite his Marxist leanings, Horkheimer adopted a concept of labor far narrower than the one posited by Marx himself. For Horkheimer, labor was identified with the domination of nature, whereas for Marx, labor mediated “the relations among people as well as between people and nature” (Postone and Brick 1993: 235). Crucially, Horkheimer goes on to locate the possibility of emancipation within this constrained understanding of labor: Emancipation is equated with increasing the efficiency of the labor process by bringing it under rational control and removing the contradictions in the relations of production that hinder the fullest utilization of the available means of production.

This understanding of emancipation is, of course, dependent on the existence of contradictions that require progressive change in social structures in order to be resolved. As I have already noted, without such contradictions, there can be no immanent critique and no possibility of emancipation. According to Postone and Brick, critical theory took its pessimistic turn when Horkheimer began to accept an argument made by Friedrich Pollock that there was no necessary contradiction between highly developed productive forces and totalitarian political structures. Pollock claimed that contrary to classic Marxist analysis, totalitarian societies had established the primacy of the political over the economic. He argued that under state capitalism, economic crises and contradictions could be ameliorated through state intervention without the need for major progressive reform (democratization and socialization) of the state’s institutions.

By adopting the basic thrust of this analysis in his 1940 essay “The Authoritarian State,” “Horkheimer now radically called into question any social uprising based on the development of the forces of production” (Postone and Brick 1993: 239). He began to view history as a process whereby the development of forces of production is accompanied by increased repression. According to Postone and Brick, Horkheimer “had fallen back to a position characterized by an antimony of necessity and freedom” where “freedom is grounded in a purely voluntarist fashion as an act of will against history” (Postone and Brick 1993: 239). Thus the possibility of a better world was not inherent or immanent within society but was an impossible demand that cut against the grain of history.

Postone and Brick argue that history has demonstrated the flawed nature of the political economic assumptions made by Pollock and subsequently used to underpin the analysis of Dialectic of Enlightenment.

The most recent historical transformation of capitalism, which began in the early 1970s... can be viewed, in turn, as a sort of practical refutation of the thesis of the primacy of the political. It retrospectively shows that critical theorist’s analysis of the earlier major transformation of capitalism was too linear and strongly suggests that the totality has indeed remained dialectical. (Postone and Brick 1993: 246)

As a result, Postone and Brick call for a rearticulation of critical theory on the basis of a political economy that is receptive to Marx’s broader understanding of human labor and all its potentialities (see Postone 1993).

The focus of Wolfgang Bonß’s critique is different. He highlights what he regards as serious deficiencies in the epistemological basis of Horkheimer’s conception of critical theory as developed in “Traditional and Critical Theory.” Horkheimer regarded critical theory as an interdisciplinary research project aimed at integrating research in the specialized disciplines of social science within a framework oriented by the work of progressive social theory. The aim of such an approach was twofold: to give traditional theory a more radical and critical direction and to ensure that radical metatheoretical reflection incorporated into itself the latest work in the empirical realm. Although Bonß is supportive of the intent behind this approach, he is critical of the way in which it was operationalized in the work of the Frankfurt School. He gives the following account of the division of labor between social theory (philosophy) and social science in the institute’s work:

[Social theory’s] task is to transform the “big questions” into the standards of the individual disciplines and treat them comprehensively with the available methodological tools. Work in the individual sciences results in a transformation and securing of the universalizable concepts of social philosophy, which acquire a new form through their objectivation in the sciences and receive a deeper grounding. (Bonß 1993: 114–115)

The crucial point to note here is that despite the formidable criticisms leveled against traditional theory, the institute’s own work accepted “the standards of the individual disciplines.” Horkheimer therefore seems to ignore his own insight that the way these disciplines are configured in terms of their basic assumptions (their “standards”) leads to reification and conformism. To suggest that the inherent structural deficiencies of traditional theory exposed in “Traditional and Critical Theory” can be overcome simply by placing the theoretical activity in another context is to ignore the ways in which disciplinary logics discipline those who work within them. Critical theory can only hope to be effective if it challenges “the standards of the individual disciplines”; if it accepts them, the critical theory project becomes epistemologically incoherent, as both of the parts that should form the whole—social theory and social science—must remain unintegrated and dialectical mediation between them impossible. Accordingly, Bonß delivers the following verdict:

It becomes clear that the “capsizing” of interdisciplinary materialism... was neither accidental nor historically contingent. Given these weaknesses, the program—whose epistemological inconsistencies should be noted above all—could hardly have resolved the crisis of science, quite apart from the traumatic experiences of fascism and emigration. (Bonß 1993: 122)

Bonß goes on to argue that any contemporary attempt at critical theorizing must learn from this epistemological aporia that stands at the heart of the critical theory of Horkheimer (a point I will return to and develop in Chapter 5).

 

Emancipatory Politics After Auschwitz

Working with Adorno, Horkheimer attempted to develop a theoretical account of the barbarity symbolized above all by Auschwitz. Whereas the critical theory of “Traditional and Critical Theory” was firmly Marxist in its outlook and assumptions, the position developed in subsequent years and set out most famously in Dialectic of Enlightenment broke away from these Marxist moorings. Although Dialectic of Enlightenment professes a loyalty to the ideals of the radical wing of the enlightenment tradition—that is, the ideals of the Marxists and socialists more generally—the book offers such a thorough critique of enlightenment that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Adorno and Horkheimer regarded those ideals (in any meaningful, social sense) as illusory.

The argument of Dialectic of Enlightenment is based on the claim that enlightenment is the process whereby humanity gains mastery over nature. This process is itself operationalized and articulated via instrumental rationality; the form of rationality concerned with technical control, manipulation, and domination—with means. Adorno and Horkheimer charge that the increased role that instrumental rationality plays as society develops leads to the atrophy of reason. Those forms of rationality concerned with the ends of human activity gradually become marginalized and redundant. The only forms of knowledge that are considered true knowledge are those that are quantified and calculable. In its ultimate expression of positivistic science, enlightened thought becomes solely concerned with charting or plotting repetition, and as concern with repetition is one of the motifs of the mythic, Adorno and Horkheimer claim that enlightenment reverts to myth.

The atrophy of reason that characterizes the deification of instrumental rationality has disastrous effects on the human subject. As reason atrophies, so does the moral consciousness of human beings. Instrumental rationality is incapable of justifying and defending moral behavior; its sole concern is the efficient achievement of given ends, be it developing water purification treatments or perfecting methods of mass slaughter. Thus the deadening and all–pervasive effects of instrumental rationality lead to the suppression of humanity’s inner nature and of those qualities that are articulated in the ideals of radical enlightenment. The resulting damaged individuals, alienated both from themselves and from the rest of society, are easy prey to the irrational doctrines of fascism and Stalinism and the blandishments of the culture industry.

Thus the horrors of Auschwitz are seen by Adorno and Horkheimer as the result of humanity’s attempts to dominate (outer) nature—a result of the very process of civilization itself. All of this is regarded in wholly deterministic terms, with no prospect for successful resistance and no real grounds for hoping that another way might be possible. Human agency ceases to exist in the world of Dialectic of Enlightenment; Auschwitz had demonstrated that emancipatory politics was an impossibility.

There is a bitter irony in all of this. Critical theory was intended to give a new, sophisticated voice to Marxist analysis, yet it found itself attacking the very intellectual tradition from which Marxism emerged—the enlightenment tradition—as the cause of the death camps of World War II. Critical theory aimed at a relationship with emancipatory political practice, yet it found itself in a position where all attempts at reforming society were dismissed as worse than futile. Critical theory aimed at rescuing the analysis of society from the aridity of traditional theory, yet it found itself arguing that all thought oriented toward society was irredeemably tainted and that the only thought that might retain any integrity was that oriented toward extrasocietal, extrahistorical remainders of the falsity of the real world. Critical theory aimed at developing an interdisciplinary research project, yet it was transformed into the most obstruse and rarefied form of philosophy. The promise of an epistemologically and methodologically advanced understanding of society, aimed at the transformation of its object, was wholly abandoned. The critical theorists saw themselves in terms reminiscent of a millennial religious cult—as a small group bearing witness to truth in a world where all around them had succumbed to falsity and evil. The difference, of course, is that whereas cultists expect to be rewarded for their steadfastness, Adorno and Horkheimer believed that redemption was an impossible dream.

The intractability of the theoretical impasse that Adorno and Horkheimer had constructed for themselves by writing Dialectic of Enlightenment is starkly demonstrated by their subsequent intellectual trajectories. Both returned to Frankfurt after the war, encouraged by energetic attempts by the U.S. occupation authorities to attract German émigrés back to reform the educational system and aid in the fostering of a liberal civic culture. There Horkheimer’s professional career blossomed. He was appointed rector of Frankfurt University, becoming the first Jew to hold such a position at a German university, and was a prominent figure in academic life. But his intellectual contribution waned. As Habermas notes, “The late philosophy of Horkheimer is caught in a dilemma: Dialectic of Enlightenment cannot maintain the last word, but it blocks off the way back to the materialism of the 1930s” (Habermas 1993a: 73).

Horkheimer’s response to this dilemma was twofold. First, he moved to distance himself from his early radicalism, which included actively seeking to bar his postwar students from gaining access to the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Habermas 1980: 116). Second, in order to try to ensure that Dialectic of Enlightenment did not maintain the last word, Horkheimer turned to a version of theology. The appeal of theology was precisely that it does not depend on reason—the critique of Dialectic of Enlightenment having blocked an appeal to that quarter. Within this framework, Horkheimer attempted to develop a “philosophy of pity” relying purely on sentiment rather than any form of rationally based morality (Stirk 1992). However, this framework (which has interesting resonances with the work of Richard Rorty [1993]) remained fragmentary and undeveloped, and the elderly Horkheimer relapsed into a conventional, liberal veneration of bourgeois culture. Politically, this was accompanied by an uncritical attitude toward the Cold War. Horkheimer was generally sympathetic to the United States’ intervention in Vietnam, and his attitude toward Chinese communism was, frankly, racist (Jay 1973: 353).

Inevitably, Horkheimer’s high profile coupled with his apparent recantation of his radical past brought him into bitter conflict with the radicalized student body of the 1960s. Ernst Bloch spoke for many when he stated: “As far as Horkheimer is concerned, he became reactionary” (cited by Tar 1985: 206). Despite his own frosty relationship with Horkheimer, Habermas provides a somewhat rounder and more generous assessment, admitting to having “changed my opinion of Horkheimer after his death, when I read his diary entries” (Habermas 1980: 120). These revealed that Horkheimer lived in apprehension, even fear, following his return to Germany, continually searching for signs of a fascist revival: He never recovered from the historical tragedy in which he was embroiled.

Adorno’s response to the impasse of critical theory was far more creative. One reason for this response was that Dialectic of Enlightenment did not represent the same break in his work as it did for Horkheimer. As Susan Buck–Morss (1977) points out, the main themes of the critique of instrumental reason had already been prefigured in Adorno’s work—as well as the work of his close collaborator Benjamin—long before the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment. Adorno’s vision of the potential role of critical theory had always been more circumspect. Although—or perhaps because—Adorno had far more practical experience of work in the social sciences than Horkheimer, he always had less faith in their critical potential. For him, critical theory was always an essentially philosophical enterprise.

Another reason for Adorno’s greater calm in the face of the impasse of Dialectic of Enlightenment was that his aesthetic theory allowed him an escape route not open to his coauthor. Adorno argued that “art may be the only remaining medium of truth in an age of incomprehensible terror and suffering” (cited by Bronner 1994: 190) and that the task of critical theory was to recover the truth sedimented in the aesthetic realm.

According to Adorno’s aesthetic theory, the erosion of human subjectivity by instrumental rationality meant that this truth was not present in the content of art: Adorno regarded the intentions of the artist as essentially irrelevant (Wellmer 1983; Habermas 1984; Jameson 1990; Bronner 1994; Wyn Jones 1996a; the fullest exposition is in Zuidervaart 1991). Rather, truth—traces of that emancipatory moment that have been wholly expunged from society—could be found in the form of those types of art that escape, to some extent, the grip of the culture industry, namely, the avant–garde. These traces can be found in the tension between the different elements of an artwork. When viewed by observers who possess the necessary technical knowledge and who are cognizant of the work’s artistic and societal contexts, this tension generates what may be termed a “tremor.” This tremor serves as a reminder that an alternative might exist to the uniform barbarity generated by instrumental rationality; it exposes the fact that truth and freedom have been lost from the world.

Whatever the intrinsic interest of this approach and of the insights it generates in the aesthetic realm, it has little or no relevance politically. The only attitude it sanctions toward the social realm is one of pure negativity; the only attitude it sanctions toward political practice is a refusal to participate. Thus, socially and politically, the impasse remains. Adorno’s later work can offer no assistance to the task of lending intellectual support to the practical struggle for emancipation. For him, even to dream that this might be possible was to succumb to a dangerous delusion.