Horkheimer comforted himself that tyranny historically sows the seeds of purer culture

Evidence

The only consolation which one can still entertain for humanity is that this dreadful time of confusion, which may well last for some decades yet, will, like the decline of antiquity, sow the seeds of a new and purer culture. There are very few seeds, and every day more disappear. But ultimately this experience cannot simply continue without having some effect on people. Tyranny and slavery in antiquity produced the concepts of the infinite value of the individual soul, of mercy and of the brotherly community. And even totalitarian mass hysteria will give way to a more concrete vision of freedom than was previously the case … The fact that the night will not last for ever is a comfort even to those who perish in it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1082

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that slavery’s evils produced mercy and brotherhood as their dialectical fruit — a genuinely provocative inversion worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer saw Soviet events as clinging hope, not demonstrated success