Enlightenment serves as a tool for making people smaller and more governable

Evidence

Nietzsche already recognises that ‘progress’ often means progress in making things controllable. In a posthumous fragment cited by Adorno in the introduction to Dialectic of Enlightenment (see Adorno and Horkheimer 2002, p. 36), he writes the following: ‘Spiritual enlightenment is an infallible means for making men unsure, weaker in will, so they are more in need of company and support – in short, for developing the herd animal in man. Therefore all great artists of government so far (Confucius in China, the imperium Romanum, Napoleon, the papacy at the time when it took an interest in power and not merely in the world), in the places where the dominant instincts have culminated so far, also employed spiritual enlightenment – at least let it have its way (like the popes of the Renaissance). The self-deception of the mass concerning this point, e.g., in every democracy, is extremely valuable: making men smaller and more governable is desired as “progress”!’ — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 714

Categorization

• XREF: Nietzsche’s ‘progress as making controllable’ dovetails with the instrumental-reason thesis in Dialectic of Enlightenment — core to the reader’s political-economy line. — connects to: Enlightenment is kind only by confronting reason’s link to domination.; Enlightenment eliminated negation from language, silencing the oppressed. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 791; The Enlightenment liberated man only to enslave him more effectively — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 833 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique #complicates (0.85)
• The Enlightenment was instrumental in building empire and colonization projects #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 587
• Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182
• Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them #contradicts (0.80) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352
• The Enlightenment’s core project displaced local moralities with universal rational ones #expands (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 71
• Totalitarianism expresses rather than repudiates Enlightenment’s inherent dynamic. #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 786
• Enlightenment does not eliminate myth but re-enters it as secularized domination #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46
• Bourgeois Enlightenment traded freedom for self-preservation early on #expands (0.80)
• Enlightenment reason is fundamentally a project of self-preservation through mastery of nature #expands (0.75)
• The Enlightenment’s self-image required the Rest as its suppressed opposite. #expands (0.75)