Horkheimer and Adorno chose the essay form to present independent philosophical fragments.

Evidence

In an advertisement for the mimeographed volume, Horkheimer and Adorno had emphasized that it consisted of fragments of a philosophical work in progress', the completion of which would take several years. But they insisted on the independent status of what they were presenting: in explaining their ideas, they had used the essay form in the tradition of Montaigne and Nietzsche, as it seemed appropriate to them for research studies which probe hitherto unexplored regions of thought’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 348

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that Dialectic of Enlightenment was published as fragments of a ‘work in progress’ rather than a completed system — useful for citing the book’s formal status accurately.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno reframed their fragmentary collaboration as an end in itself rather than a failure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2393; For Adorno, the essay was the very form of free thought. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 564
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno reframed their fragmentary collaboration as an end in itself rather than a failure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2393; For Adorno, the essay was the very form of free thought. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 564