A secret utopia within the concept of reason intermittently shapes history.

Evidence

There existed for them a secret utopia in the concept of reason'. Those phases of history which did not fit into the idea of an irresistible process of demythologization could then be explained by saying that, in such cases, the anti-authoritarian tendency of enlightenment being acted out within manifest history was still in communication with the utopia in the concept of reason’, `though of course only in a subterranean form’. Adorno and Horkheimer saw manifest forms of genuine, i.e. self-possessed, enlightenment in Jewish religion, in liberalism and in themselves. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 354

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines one of the most load-bearing concepts in the Frankfurt School’s late philosophy of history: the suppressed utopian content lodged inside reason itself.
• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that reason carries a hidden redemptive promise which surfaces only subterraneously is dense enough to sit with for days — it reframes the entire enlightenment-as-domination thesis.
• XREF: Connects to Walter Benjamin’s messianic-materialist notion of history and to Habermas’s later ‘unfulfilled promise of modernity.’ — connects to: A secret utopia within reason explains phases resisting demythologization — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1389; Utopian fulfillment splits into temporal tendency and perceptual latency of present things.; Ideologies apply the logic of an idea to history as an unfolding process. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1061 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: A secret utopia within reason explains phases resisting demythologization — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1389; Utopian fulfillment splits into temporal tendency and perceptual latency of present things.; Ideologies apply the logic of an idea to history as an unfolding process. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1061 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• A secret utopia within reason explains phases resisting demythologization #corroborates (0.97) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1389
• An ideology claims the key to history or universal hidden laws #complicates (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 432