Critique of enlightenment is possible only from a standpoint that refuses submission to it.

Evidence

Replying to a memorandum from Pollock on a discussion in New York between himself, Paul Tillich and Adolph Löwe on Julien Benda’s La Trahison des Clercs, Horkheimer wrote, `We have to understand this development [the irresistible process of enlightenment] and we can understand it only if there is something in us which does not submit to it. Such an attitude is shown in each of your discussion remarks, particularly when you are in a somewhat desperate defensive, but in no word of the two other interlocutors.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 355

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s prior highlights on the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason, where a residual ‘something’ resisting subsumption underwrites critique. — connects to: Immanent critique cannot function without some measure of transcendence. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 453; One cannot not be an essentialist to some degree, even in critique. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 55; Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: A dense formulation of critical theory’s self-grounding problem: the critique of enlightenment must itself occupy a position outside enlightenment without recourse to a positive philosophy.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Immanent critique cannot function without some measure of transcendence. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 453; One cannot not be an essentialist to some degree, even in critique. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 55; Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique #complicates (0.80)
• One cannot not be an essentialist to some degree, even in critique. #complicates (0.74) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 55