Horkheimer, Adorno, and the Myth of Enlightenment

Abstract: I provide a brief reading of Horkheimer and Adorno’s understanding of “myth” in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. I further argue that Horkheimer and Adorno suffer from the very will-to-enlightenment that they seem to want to critique; whether this defeats their project as a whole whole I leave as an open question.

In the preface to the 1944/1947 versions of the Dialect of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno set the stage for their critique of enlightenment thought:

The aporia which faced us in our work thus proved to be the first matter we had to investigate: the self-destruction of enlightenment. We have no doubt—and herein lies our petitio principii—that freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking. We believe we have perceived with equal clarity, however, that the very concept of that thinking…already contains the germ of the regression which is taking place everywhere today. (Adorno/Horkheimer; xvi)

Immediately, we encounter the paradox of enlightenment thought: because enlightenment thinking remains the dominant form of thought in the Western world, subversion of enlightenment thought, the “self-destruction” of enlightenment’s confines, becomes something of a self-referential impossibility. How is one to subvert that which constitutes the very processes of thought by which and through which one engages the world? There is, always and already, the presence of enlightenment classification and categorization, insofar as the enlightenment has structured not only the subject of knowledge and intellectual discourse, but the very structure of knowledge and intellection itself (thus, “freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking”). There is no real “outside of” or “beyond” enlightenment thinking; the critique originates not from a critique of enlightenment as a total and hegemonic experience, but from the fear of that “germ of the regression” that has taken hold of enlightenment thought and threatens to subject society to a “barbarism” of intellectual blindness: a world where a near-mathematical worldview (that is, the rigidity of classification that orders knowledge according to axioms, rules, regulations—sets and schemas of clear and perceptible modes of communicable logicism) claims an authority that it has not rightfully obtained. Enlightenment thinking, which, far from overturning the mythological systems of thought that preceded it and against which it has claimed a total victory, has, as Horkheimer and Adorno claim, appropriated and transformed the very processes of abstraction and hierarchization that dominated the signs and systems of myth. The relationship between enlightenment and myth, with man conquering nature only to be subjugated more fully and wholly to it, is one of a reflective and near-symbiotic nature.

And so, the work of Horkheimer and Adorno originates at the vortex of this complex relationship. As they recognize the seeds of regression being sown among the cracks and ruptures of the modern intellectual system, their work can, as they claim, utilize enlightenment thought to somehow eliminate the dangers of enlightenment thinking and substitute a regression into barbarism (which is always a regression that operates under the banner of progress) for a more radical critical methodology.

With this lexicon of critical and analytical “tools,” they set forth to analyze the processes of enlightenment and mythology; they begin their critique with the analysis of Odysseus’ encounter with the sirens. Their initial claim situates Odysseus’ action—commanding his sailors to plug their ears with wax, as he is bound to the mast in order to hear the siren’s song as the ship passes by the tempting isle—as an exemplar of the “intertwinement of myth and rational labor” (Adorno/Horkheimer; 35), for Odysseus’ calculating division of labor also institutes a hierarchy of experience in which Odysseus “cannot give way to the lure of self-abandonment, as owner he also forfeits participation in work and finally even control over it, while his companions, despite their closeness to things, cannot enjoy their work because it is performed under compulsion, in despair, with their senses forcibly stopped.” (Adorno/Horkheimer; 27) Odysseus’ struggle thus becomes a microcosmic exploration into both the height of myth and the emergence of a regressive enlightenment. On these grounds, they implicitly begin to unravel the relationship between myth and enlightenment through the close reading of a myth with emphatic images and traces of enlightenment thought.

But instead of opening a new space of radical interrogation, a space that could perhaps undo the threads that bind enlightenment thought to its supposed opposite of mythology, they fail to account for the fact that the structure of their own thought, which is inseparable from the hierarchies, classifications and categorizations that flow through the discourse of enlightenment cosmology, ultimately works through and by the same conduits of meaning they seem so ready and eager to denounce. For it is fruitless to speak of a “segment,” “dimension” or “portion” of enlightenment thought (a “germ of regression”), just as it is conceptually contradictory to speak of a “single” myth: on the one hand, because both myth and enlightenment thought draw from the same understandings, abstractions and practices; and, on the other hand, and with a much more profound implication, in each and every myth, as in each and every classification derived from enlightenment thought, the structure and form of myth is represented, preserved and implied. There is a repetition that simultaneously accounts for difference as it subjects the entire field of conceptualization, signification and representation—in a phrase, language—to the confines and limits of the prescribed discourse. Two myths, two competing myths, even, are nevertheless subjects of a mythological worldview, and present, in their difference, a mythological engagement with the processes of representation.

Thus, we re-encounter the sirens as creatures not external to or beyond the system of the enlightenment, but, rather, as nodes of reference, abstractions of “fulfillment,” and illusions of desire deeply bound to, and integrated within, the processes of enlightenment domination—they are, far from some “force” or “experience” in contrast to and in competition with the enlightenment, embodiments and carriers of enlightened reflection. Odysseus calculates his strategies, he relays his commands, and he fulfills his “duty” in reference and relation to this stabilizing factor, which is ultimately the factor not only of a supposed fulfillment of immense and profound desire, but of that stabilizing force of the enlightenment that thrusts the mechanisms of enlightened thought into play through a constant and consistent “mirror effect,” or, to be more precise, through the play of alternatives that forever threaten to undo, displace and undermine the hegemony of the calculating, probing and measuring mind. In the image of the sirens, like that of the lotus-eaters, Circe, and Polyphemus, the artifice of the enlightenment is embodied and transcribed, and the tapestry of the myth assumes, apart from a narrative arc, a series of stabilizers and nodes of meaning.

Without the sirens, which do not represent “nature” in a holistic sense, but rather the threads of a totalizing and fulfilling experience (note the language, which seeps with the very vicissitudes of “calculation” and “measurement” against which Adorno and Horkheimer mobilize their critical energies), there would be no need for calculation, no need for Odysseus to order his sailors to plug their ears with wax as he, in an act of pure self-regulation and under the banner of a nearly-political form of foresight, is bound to the mast to hear the sirens’ song from a distance; every aspect of enlightenment thought, including the fulfillment of gratification, desire and longing, is subject to a dynamic, interconnected and mutually-dependent field of difference. To speak of “fulfillment” is not to speak of some veritable “way out of” or “experience beyond” the enlightenment frontier; rather, it is to superimpose the same methodology of enlightened thought to a fulfillment not of individual realization, but of the realization of the enlightenment’s total domination, which is the submission to the image of the sirens as representatives of the enlightenment’s total control.

Dismantling the master’s house with the master’s tools has proven to designate, at least in this instance, an ineffective re-assemblage and transposition of that very house at a different location, in a different time: it is simply a play of spatio-temporal illusion, at most a general reordering of the subjects of enlightenment thought through the preservation and reproduction of the structure and systematic methodology of enlightenment thinking. Horkheimer and Adorno begin to structure their universe as a mirror-image of the enlightenment, as an unusual miseen abyme in which the regulated structures and orders of language, and hence of perception and the classification of knowledges, cradle and nurture the very “germ of regression” they so keenly wish to dispel. Their focus is Odysseus and the ship and crew he commands; the topology of the myth, the other salient factors (as, for example, the sirens) fade into a “background” reading of the text, becoming little more than the setting or stage upon which the myth of Odysseus, and hence the critique of enlightenment thought, germinates. And so they direct their critical energies towards the delegation of responsibilities on the ship and the calculating, distancing mentality of Odysseus, claiming that “The way of civilization has been that of obedience and work, over which fulfillment shines everlastingly as mere illusion, as beauty deprived of power.” (Adorno/Horkheimer; 26)

It is this version of critique, a critique that focuses merely on the ship and Odysseus, which reflects enlightenment thought in its cohesive self-limitation. The arena of interrogation that follows in the wake of this critique is limited: does the alternative—complete fulfillment, death, sailing toward the Sirens—present an acceptable choice? Has Odysseus’ delegation of responsibilities instituted an enlightenment hierarchy of classification, division of labor, and self-defeating experience? The answer of these questions, which signals both the genesis and termination of critique, and to which Horkheimer and Adorno devote most of their intellectual prowess, must always utilize the structuring categories of a mytho-enlightenment thought to order the system of critical analysis or more general experience of argumentation. Horkheimer and Adorno’s very critique already has the stamp of enlightenment—it already retains a similitude to enlightenment systematization precisely because it has partitioned and abstracted from the myth only a particular dimension, as it fails to account fully for the structure of the myth as a holistic unit, as a universe of discourse within itself; that is, it fails to appropriately address the presence of the sirens as the stabilizing element of the mythic imagination, and views them instead as a simple “problem” to which Odysseus finds “a loophole in the agreement, through which he eludes it while fulfilling its terms” (Adorno/Horkheimer; 46), or, at most, as the promise of a fulfillment that somehow threatens the presence of enlightenment thought. Horkheimer and Adorno have, through the analysis of Odysseus, “amputated the incommensurable” (Adorno/Horkheimer; 9) in the interest of providing a particular and highly-measured frame of analysis.

That is, rather than Odysseus being the central focus of the study, there should instead exist the evaluation of that which forces Odysseus to calculate, that which thrusts the ship’s crew to accept certain restraints, delegations and constrictions, and that which causes the entire discourse of enlightenment thought to surface in a referential and consequential relationship: in short, if the intention is to critique enlightenment thought, the focus should not be exclusively on Odysseus’ manipulation of the “primeval contract”, but on the seemingly superior and grounding party of that contract—the sirens, Circe, etc. Indeed, there is little talk about such “grounding” techniques: what are the properties of the sirens’ beauty; why are men so attracted to them; what archetypes of power do they retain; how is this power invested in them; how is this power stabilized, and how does it in turn stabilize enlightenment thought and provide the impulse for its movement into being? For the sirens are precisely that literary trope toward which this particular section of the myth has channeled its representative capacities; without the sirens, there is simply Odysseus, his men, his ship, and the sea. Perhaps there is a specialization, a certain “economy” of persons and bodies on the ship—but the chance to employ enlightenment thought in the face of the unknown, to account for that “incommensurable” aspect of the total fulfillment, which is here hidden behind the veil and mystery of a awesome and powerful nature, is lacking. The sirens are truly the representative element that provides the arche for enlightenment thought to emerge; it is through and by the sirens that we come to understand and recognize, which is paradoxically a product of enlightenment classification, the pharmakon-like dynamic of Odysseus’ decision (after all, he does avoid death, for both him and his sailors; but at what price? Have “all songs ailed” (Adorno/Horkheimer; 47) as a result?).

Rather than accounting for this structure that helps stabilize, narrate and control the flow and direction of the myth, rather than accounting for the myth as a whole, rather than exploiting the myth’s own integration and incorporation of that aporia of the “unknown” which is, paradoxically, represented in the song of the sirens and which flaunts a certain enlightenment abstraction, Horkheimer and Adorno will simply claim that “freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking,” as though this disclaimer, which simply divides, partitions, and separates out the otherwise densely interconnected threads of enlightenment expression, is enough to overturn the “barbarism” that rests on the bank of the Rubicon, waiting to ruin the civilized world. By abstracting from the myth, by drawing clear lines of demarcation around the properties of enlightenment thought, by exchanging “myths” for “Myth” (as though the two were interchangeable, the system of difference, the grounding of difference, reducible to its Odysseus-like excess), they participate only in extending the classifying and categorizing domination—a domination that relies on an ordered universe, a universe in which all things can be properly explained (and thus, hold the intrinsic property of being explainable) and analyzed, as Horkheimer and Adorno so eloquently prove—toward the realm of myth, which is, in essence, the image of enlightenment itself. Their achievement is thus characterized by a doubling-back of the enlightenment upon itself, a “folding in” that fails to amputate or eliminate the seeds of “barbarism” by the very reason that it is founded upon a vision of the world that values and qualifies abstraction and expressibility at the expense of the “whole myth,” the “unexperiential” properties of the myth (we can never experience the sirens and live to tell about it), and, ultimately, of the enlightenment’s inclusion and appropriation of this stabilizing structurality. By analyzing only certain vehicles of enlightenment thought, Horkheimer and Adorno failed to destabilize, disrupt or disentangle the subjects against which enlightenment thought is forced to measure itself, and by which it continues to grow and develop. Wading about in the self-imposed shadow of enlightenment domination, the critique of enlightenment cannot approach the margins or limits of the perceptible intellectual frontier on account of its inability to account for the element of the unknown that, nestled inside the discourse of the enlightenment, propels the gears of enlightenment thought, like Odysseus compelled toward Ithaca, ever forward.