ADORNO’S AND HORKHEIMER’S CRITIQUE OF MASS INDUSTRIAL CULTURE BASED ON ENLIGHTENMENT IDEAS OF FREEDOM, MIND AND EQUALITY

Abstract

Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s understanding of the reality of the modern man, and a critical attitude towards the same shows a tendency which brings to the attention the consistency of destructive tendencies of the 20th century, but also finds the causes of such destructiveness much earlier, first in ideas that were viewed by the Enlightenment. The ideas of the Enlightenment, mind, freedom and equality, losing their original goal of human nature, have created a new cultural-historical epoch, based on the enslavement of man and nature, but also dehumanizing ideologies such as National Socialism and Fascism. The key question that Adorno and Horkheimer ask is the question of how the world has ever come to the present condition, if the Enlightenment and tendencies that it brings promised a better world for man. How did it come to the situation that progress in civilization at the same time also means a return to barbarism? The aim of this paper is certainly not only to display the questions and dilemmas that Adorno and Horkheimer set, but also to draw attention to Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s solutions of the crisis, which are based on the critical examination of the Enlightenment and Enlightenment ideas.