Enlightenment is mythic fear turned radical against all outsideness.

Evidence

Enlightenment is mythic fear turned radical. The pure immanence of positivism, its ultimate product, is no more than a so to speak universal taboo. Nothing at all may remain outside, because the mere idea of outsideness is the very source of fear. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 40

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The collapsing of myth and enlightenment into the same fear-driven dialectic is the chapter’s organizing thesis — paradigm-shifting within the book.
• XREF: Central to the reader’s stated purpose: this is the precise causal mechanism behind the culture-industry pacification thesis Burns invokes. — connects to: Enlightenment regresses into the very myth it claimed to escape; Enlightenment’s mastery over nature exceeds anything nature itself threatened humans with. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 258; enlightenment is indefatigably self-destructive in its own tendencies (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment’s mastery over nature exceeds anything nature itself threatened humans with. #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 258
• Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature #expands (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182
• enlightenment is indefatigably self-destructive in its own tendencies #expands (0.75)