Horkheimer saw resistance to enlightenment’s trap as depending on an inner refusal to submit.

Evidence

Replying to a memorandum from Pollock on a discussion in New York between himself, Paul Tillich and Adolph Löwe on Julien Benda’s La Trahison des Clercs, Horkheimer wrote, `We have to understand this development [the irresistible process of enlightenment] and we can understand it only if there is something in us which does not submit to it. Such an attitude is shown in each of your discussion remarks, particularly when you are in a somewhat desperate defensive, but in no word of the two other interlocutors.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1391

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: Horkheimer’s private letters as the unwritten ‘simple answer’ — in-group solidarity and subjective non-submission as the de facto foundation for critique.
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer and Adorno posited a hidden utopia within reason to explain resistance to demythologization. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1389; The Enlightenment’s self-image required the Rest as its suppressed opposite.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer and Adorno posited a hidden utopia within reason to explain resistance to demythologization. #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1389
• The Enlightenment’s self-image required the Rest as its suppressed opposite. #corroborates (0.75)