Enlightenment’s self-destructiveness presupposes genuine prior progress beyond nature.

Evidence

The point of the first chapter had been the self-destructiveness of enlightenment. What was that to mean if all enlightenment remained compliant with nature from the start, and if their formulation `the cyclical nature of the advance of history’ was intended seriously? — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 354

Categorization

• QUESTION: If all enlightenment was always compliant with nature, what does ‘self-destructiveness’ even explain? Worth chasing whether Horkheimer and Adorno ever resolved this tension.
• DEFINE: Pinpoints the internal contradiction in the Dialectic of Enlightenment’s central thesis — a definitional problem in the concept itself.
• XREF: connects to: enlightenment is indefatigably self-destructive in its own tendencies; The self-destruction of enlightenment really means false enlightenment blocking true enlightenment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 356; Individual identity resists destruction because it depends on nature beyond the will (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: enlightenment is indefatigably self-destructive in its own tendencies; The self-destruction of enlightenment really means false enlightenment blocking true enlightenment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 356; Individual identity resists destruction because it depends on nature beyond the will (+2 more)