Vocabulary Flashcards: Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer & Adorno)

This set of vocabulary flashcards identifies the central terms, historical figures, and philosophical concepts used in Adorno and Horkheimer's 'Dialectic of Enlightenment,' focusing on the transformation of reason into domination.

Enlightenment

In the broad sense of progressive thought, its goal has always been to liberate human beings from fear and install them as masters; its program was the disenchantment of the world.

Disenchantment of the world

The core program of the Enlightenment aimed at dissolving myths and replacing imagination with actual knowledge.

Francis Bacon

The 'father of experimental philosophy' according to the transcript, who formulated the view that the superiority of man consists in knowledge and that 'knowledge is power.'

Knowledge for Bacon

A tool that does not seek 'satisfaction' or 'concepts,' but rather 'operation' and effective methods to establish man's sovereignty over nature.

Equivalence Principle

The logic of bourgeois society that makes disparate things comparable by reducing them to abstract quantities or numbers.

Mana

In the earliest stages of human development, the unknown or foreign that was recognized as supernatural; the 'holiness of fear' felt before the unknown.

Odysseus

The prototypical bourgeois individual in the epic who survives by trickery and self-preservation throughout his encounters with mythical forces.

The Sirens

Mythical figures whose song represents the temptation of the past; they represent the historical split between physical labor and artistic contemplation.

Culture Industry

A system composed of cinema, radio, and magazines that imposes uniformity and standardization on the masses through industrial production of culture.

Amusement (Vergnügen)

A prolongation of work under late capitalism, sought by the individual as a means to cope with mechanized labor while simultaneously replicating its patterns.

Pseudo-individuality

The illusion of individual uniqueness in the mass market, where individuality is actually produced as a set of standardized clichés and styles.

Logic of the Brand

The process where advertising and the culture industry merge, turning the 'style' of a cultural product into a recognized trademark for consumption.

Anti-Semitism

Characterized in the text as an 'element' of the Enlightenment's limit, involving 'false projection' and the return of civilization to a new form of barbarism.

False Projection

A psychological mechanism where the subject attributes their own socially taboo or repressed aggressive impulses to an external object, such as a minority group.

Mimesis

The organic adaptation to the environment; in modern civilization, it is suppressed by rational practice but returns in the form of 'false mimesis' or organized cruelty.

Schematism

A concept from Kant, repurposed to describe how the culture industry pre-processes perceptions for the consumer to save them from independent thought.

Udeis

The Greek word for 'Nobody,' used by Odysseus to deceive the Cyclops Polyphemus, representing the subversion of myth through the formalization of language.

Apathy (Apathie)

Defined by Kant as a 'moral health' and by Sade's Juliette as the 'strong side' of the criminal who acts without the interference of feelings or conscience.

Commodity Character of Art

The condition where art is no longer an autonomous expression but is openly and proudly produced as a standardized product for exchange.

Socialization of the Ego

The process where the individual ego is fully integrated into the collective through the machinery of the culture industry, eliminating true individuality.