Critical theory pursues liberation and repression within Enlightenment thought simultaneously.

Evidence

The liberating elements in enlightenment and pragmatism are to be brought out just as much as the repressive ones. The attack on the ruling ideology should take place in critical analysis both of the decisive intellectual spheres and of mass culture. The success of such analyses essentially depends on their orientation towards concrete insights into the latest economic developments. For the work as a whole aims to overcome political stagnation. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 337

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Institute’s program for the planned book: immanent critique of ruling ideology across intellectual spheres and mass culture, judged against concrete economic analysis.
• DEEPTHINKING: The dialectical committment to extracting liberating content from enlightenment and pragmatism while exposing their repressive side is the methodological core of the Horkheimer-Adorno project.
• XREF: connects to: Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique; Nietzsche and critical theory both recognised enlightenment’s self-reversal into its opposite. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 914; Critical Theory’s freedom consists in accepting bourgeois ideals in their distorted or manipulated forms. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2341
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique; Nietzsche and critical theory both recognised enlightenment’s self-reversal into its opposite. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 914; Critical Theory’s freedom consists in accepting bourgeois ideals in their distorted or manipulated forms. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2341

Broader Connections

• Nietzsche and critical theory both recognised enlightenment’s self-reversal into its opposite. #corroborates (0.92) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 914
• Critical Theory’s freedom consists in accepting bourgeois ideals in their distorted or manipulated forms. #complicates (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2341