181Modernity as the Unfolding of the Dialectic of Enlightenment
In the Dialectic of Enlightenmenta theory of modernity is developed that Adorno con-
tinues to adhere to in his later writings as well. The crucial problem here is that of the
self-destruction of the Enlightenment: “We had set ourselves nothing less than the
discovery of why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sink-
ing into a new kind of barbarism.”^56 Given the programmatic ideals of the Enlighten-
ment—the “project of the modern,” as Habermas would later call it—and given the
progress made in the fields of technology and science, and the links between the
two phenomena (the Enlightenment, after all, was the signal for the start of the in-
dustrial revolution and thus of the flowering of scientific thought), how could hu-
manity end up in a situation so far removed from the ideals of the Enlightenment as
to be its complete opposite?
Horkheimer and Adorno see part of the answer to this question in an ambigu-
ity that is inherent in Enlightenment itself. In order to explain this ambiguity, they
make an implicit distinction between critical rationality—reason, that is, in its most
authentic and unqualified guise—and instrumental rationality, which is thinking re-
duced to purposes of utility or to mere calculation. While instrumental rationality is
solely concerned with deciding on the most appropriate means to achieve a given
goal, critical rationality also aims to subject to reason the goals aimed for. These two
forms of rationality resemble each other, but they are opposites too, since instru-
mental rationality can be deployed to achieve goals that from the point of view of
critical-rational thought are anything but reasonable.
The dialectic of Enlightenment consists precisely in the fact that through the
process of rationalization, critical rationality—the rationality that was at the origins of
the project of Enlightenment as a project of emancipation—is being reduced to in-
strumental rationality. This reduction implies that it is no longer the project of eman-
cipation that guides development. It is rather the efficiency of the system itself that
becomes the sole guiding principle. Enlightenment thus ends up as its own opposite:
the programmatic attempt to give reason priority over myth in fact leads to the dom-
inance of an efficiency that upholds the system, while this efficiency is mythical
rather than rational. Thus, Horkheimer and Adorno stress the counterpastoral ten-
dencies that are inherent to the dialectic of the Enlightenment and that foreclose the
possibility of realizing its programmatic intentions.
A similar dialectical process takes place in the individual who acts as an en-
lightened subject: the rational mode of behavior that is a requirement of enlightened
thought turns out to be possible only when one’s inner, natural impulses are re-
pressed; the result is an aporetic figure by which people can fashion an identity for
themselves as rational beings only by betraying their identity as natural beings.^57
Adorno and Horkheimer see Enlightenment, therefore, as connected with a
tendency to dominate, that has as its object as well nature outside man as man’s re-
pressed inner nature. And yet the authors do not reject Enlightenment. Despite the
destructive effect of the dialectic of Enlightenment, meaning that genuine progress180