Enlightenment advances not to liberation but to a mythless compliance with nature.

Evidence

According to the Introduction, the second excursus, `Juliette, or Enlightenment and Morality’, was intended to demonstrate the reversion of enlightenment into mythology, using Kant, de Sade and Nietzsche as examples of those who relentlessly consummated the process of enlightenment in the areas of law and morality. To speak of a reversion of enlightenment into mythology was misleading to the extent that Horkheimer and Adorno were trying to prove the existence of a process of demythologization which had been going on since the age of myths, or indeed since pre-mythic times. This was a process which did not lead back to the old forms of myth compliant with nature, but instead led forward to a mythless compliance with nature, to a mythless mythic attitude. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1384

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the misleading label ‘reversion of enlightenment into mythology’ by distinguishing demythologization from both old myth and genuine liberation.
• XREF: connects to: Enlightenment does not eliminate myth but re-enters it as secularized domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46; Enlightenment regresses into the very myth it claimed to escape; Enlightenment disenchantment makes gratitude toward nature seem irrational — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 489 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment does not eliminate myth but re-enters it as secularized domination #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46
• Enlightenment regresses into the very myth it claimed to escape #corroborates (0.85)
• Enlightenment reason is fundamentally a project of self-preservation through mastery of nature #expands (0.85)
• Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature #corroborates (0.82) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182
• Enlightenment disenchantment makes gratitude toward nature seem irrational #corroborates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 489
• Secular naturalism cannot ground gratitude toward nature because nature lacks intention #corroborates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 492
• Enlightenment itself, not its corruption, leads to disaster in the Dialectic #contradicts (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1370
• Enlightenment reason reshaped religious providence rather than displacing it #complicates (0.70) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 122