Enlightenment is kind only by confronting reason’s link to domination.

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)

In philosophy, the Distinction, especially in its Is/Ought form, was perhaps the dominating problem in moral thought. As the philosopher Charles Taylor has asserted, “the fact/value split” has become “a dominant theme in our [twentieth] century” and has undergirded “a new understanding and valuation of freedom and dignity.” What needs to be said in addition is that it determined the entirety of our conception of reality, which Taylor appears to subsume under “freedom and dignity.” Powerfully expressed in the Kantian notion of autonomy, freedom ceases to denote God’s omnipotence and becomes instead an expression of man’s own natural powers of reasoning. Human reason becomes the sole arbiter in the project of objectifying the world, of submitting it to its own demands and will, which now have turned relentlessly instrumentalist. The pursuit of happiness, utility, and much else that is subservient to these imperatives—such as preservation of life and protection of private property—become natural rights derivable from the natural order by what is/was seen as far-sighted, calculating reason. Formerly restricted by the power of revelation as defined by the Catholic Church, reason now becomes, like a free market, free and unbound by any restricting consideration or enduring moral principle. It is reason on the loose. Yet, in the very outburst of Enlightenment reason against the absolutism of Church and monarch, precisely in its mighty reaction against such powers that had ruled over it with utterly free absolutism, Enlightenment reason’s distension and extension went the full circle of replicating the very tyranny that caused its rise in the first place, but this time it was not just people who were its subject of rule, but also nature and indeed the world in its entirety. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Enlightened thought itself contains the seed of its own reversal into domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 21; The Enlightenment accepts only what conforms to computation and utility; Enlightenment serves domination even while attacking priestly falsehood. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 55 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique #expands (0.85)
• Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182
• Totalitarianism expresses rather than repudiates Enlightenment’s inherent dynamic. #corroborates (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 786
• The Enlightenment liberated man only to enslave him more effectively #corroborates (0.82) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 833
• Enlightenment undermines repressive orders only until harnessed to the dominant mode of production. #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 82
• Enlightenment does not eliminate myth but re-enters it as secularized domination #corroborates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46
• Enlightenment must critique itself rather than merely defend cultural values #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 24
• Kant’s sublime theory is complicit with domination #exemplifies (0.75)
• Enlightenment serves as a tool for making people smaller and more governable #corroborates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 714