Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer

Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer
73 pages2-hour read
Nonfiction
Essay Collection
Adult
Published in 1947

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Essay Topics

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, religious discrimination, sexual violence, and death.

1.

Analyze how the book’s fragmented structure contributes to challenging the totalizing logic of myth and Enlightenment.

2.

How does Dialectic of Enlightenment connect de Sade’s philosophy with the culture industry, and what does this connection reveal about the relationship between freedom, pleasure, and control in modern capitalist society.

3.

The authors' analysis of The Odyssey presents Odysseus as the prototype of the bourgeois individual. What is the psychological and social cost of this transition from the mythical world to the rationalized self?

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