Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique
Evidence
The issue is not that of culture as a value, which is what the critics of civilization, Huxley, Jaspers, Ortega y Gasset and others, have in mind. The point is rather that the Enlightenment must examine itself, if men are not to be wholly betrayed. The task to be accomplished is not the conservation of the past, but the redemption of the hopes of the past. Today, however, the past is preserved as the destruction of the past. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 24 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
- XREF: connects to: enlightenment is indefatigably self-destructive in its own tendencies; Enlightened thought itself contains the seed of its own reversal into domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 21; Enlightenment must critique itself rather than merely defend cultural values — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 24 (+14 more)
Broader Connections
- Enlightenment must critique itself rather than merely defend cultural values
#corroborates(0.95) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 24 - Enlightenment reason is fundamentally a project of self-preservation through mastery of nature
#qualifies(0.75) - Bourgeois Enlightenment traded freedom for self-preservation early on
#qualifies(0.72) - Being skeptical can blind one to the possibility of enlightenment.
#qualifies(0.70) — Dan Harris, 10 percent Happier, 1099 - The noble-savage ideal served as a Western vehicle for self-critique
#expands(0.70)