作者：MaxHorkheimer/TheodorW.Adorno
出版社：StanfordUniversityPress
译者：EdmundJephcott
出版年：2007-3-13
页数：304
定价：USD26.95
装帧：Paperback
ISBN：9780804736336
内容简介
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“Dialectic of Enlightenment” is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. “What we had set out to do,” the authors write in the Preface, “was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.” Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.” This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.
作者简介
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Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.” This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.
评论 ······
历史进程上，人都有欲望要建构一个自为的机器，人创造概念，这些概念在大规模的传播下成为第二自然性，顺从这些就是所谓健康的体现，而反对它，反而需要超人一样的力量。一个社会越是文明，生产力越是得到解放，人的形象就越加孤独与支离破碎，人的内心也越加受到压抑。读的过程中也看到了今后像Foucault写规训与惩罚的影子
OK，我用自己的话把第一章翻译了一遍，但是仍然是感觉要梳理清楚批判理论的前因后果真是不容易啊！
用“不明觉厉”来形容这本极度艰涩的书中的某些理论实在是再适合不过了，而且平心而论有些地方是比较牵强的……难道是我觉悟不够……？
一本可读性很强的英译本。虽然在零星的看得懂与大量的看不懂间游荡徘徊，但是不得不说这本书带给我的震撼是很大的，特别是第一章和最后一章，以及对文化工业的分析，契合了很多我的既有想法。如果我对西方文学了解得再多些，知道第二三章都在说什么，估计从这本书中的收获会更大。
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