282 Part III: Emigration Years
Fragments gradually assumed concrete shape. In a letter to his mother
on 10 February, Adorno wrote: ‘The first large section of the book that
I am doing with Max and that is supposed to contain our whole
philosophy... is now ready. In addition, I have an equally large draft in
front of me, a historico-philosophical interpretation of Homer, which
we shall also plough our way through together.’^47
The whole manuscript was finally ready in May 1944 and was
published in a small mimeographed edition of 500 copies, with a dedica-
tion ‘For Friedrich Pollock on his Fiftieth Birthday’ and an elegant,
burgundy-coloured binding.
The Philosophical Fragments did not actually appear in book form
until 1947, when it was published by the Amsterdam exile publisher
Querido Verlag with its definitive title of Dialectic of Enlightenment.^48
This publication – Adorno referred to it in a letter to Horkheimer as
‘our first legitimate child’ – was the living proof that, after barely more
than two years of their collaboration, the two authors had succeeded
in completing a project that they had been carrying around with them
since the mid-1930s. What they had now produced in 310 pages was an
act of self-clarification about the premises of a critical theory in the
socio-historical circumstances of the day.^49 ‘These days are full of sadness’,
Horkheimer lamented in a letter at the end of 1942. ‘The annihilation
of the Jewish people has assumed historically unprecedented dimen-
sions. I believe that the night that follows these events will be very
long and that it might well consume mankind.’^50 At the same time, he
admitted how much it cost him personally to reflect on the philosophical
implications of this relapse into barbarism. Sometimes I fear that this
enterprise exceeds my powers.’^51 Nevertheless, neither he nor Adorno
succumbed to a facile resignation in the face of the horrors of history.
‘The possibility that sooner or later we too might fall victim to the
concentration camps must not be allowed to justify our abandoning the
desperate search for the words that could become deed and liberate us
all.’^52 And it was Adorno whose unflagging energy drove him to come
up with new ideas and arguments, and it was he who ensured that the
book was finally completed. And what the two authors had attempted
was no small feat. Their endeavour to settle accounts with a world that
had become ‘a system of horror’ involved nothing less than the uncover-
ing of principles that were inextricably enmeshed with enlightenment
and rationality.
Enlightenment is thought of here as something that goes beyond the
designation of a particular historical and intellectual epoch. It is treated
as the epitome of modern consciousness. For the modern consciousness
the subject’s striving for complete understanding of the causal relations
at work in nature, human actions and society is constitutive. Since
enlightenment leads to a constant expansion of freedom in the spheres
of pragmatic action, moral duty and emotional desire, it proves to be
the guarantor of sustained progress. The concept of reason, the general