Enlightenment’s totalitarianism lies in deciding outcomes before inquiry begins

Evidence

Totalitarianism was less the repudiation of liberalism and the values of the Enlightenment than the working out of their inherent dynamic. The exchange principle underlying the Enlightenment notion of nature as fungible atoms was paralleled in the increasing atomization of modern man, a process that culminated in the repressive equality of totalitarianism. The instrumental manipulation of nature by man led inevitably to the concomitant relationship among men. The unbridgeable distance between subject and object in the Enlightenment world view corresponded to the relative status of rulers and ruled in the modern authoritarian states. The objectification of the world had produced a similar effect in human relations. As Marx noted, although restricting it to an effect of capitalism, the dead past had come to rule over the living present. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 786 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

When the Frankfurt School came, under the circumstances of fully empowered fascism, to examine the problem of “ideology,” they therefore had strong reasons to treat it as requiring not much more than the analysis of the mass manipulation of administered “illusions.” In their efforts to reconstruct how the Age of Reason had produced, as its result, the Destruction of Reason, Adorno and Horkheimer were forced to look back at the irrationalist element which, they argued, had always been present in the Enlightenment dream: they unearthed what they called “The Dialectic of Enlightenment.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 342 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The Enlightenment’s focus on rationalism and science did the opposite of what might be expected, inspiring new legions of monsters in domestic and foreign spaces, rather than eradicating them. … All of this inspired new categories of monsters that emerged as a way for the imagination to express itself in socially acceptable ways that did not offend religious morals. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Totalitarianism expresses rather than repudiates Enlightenment’s inherent dynamic. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 786; The Frankfurt School saw Enlightenment’s collapse into totalitarianism as latent in its own reason — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 342; Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352

Broader Connections

• Totalitarianism expresses rather than repudiates Enlightenment’s inherent dynamic. #corroborates (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 786
• The Frankfurt School saw Enlightenment’s collapse into totalitarianism as latent in its own reason #corroborates (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 342
• Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them #expands (0.72) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352