Notes to pp. 281–283 555the “theses”, without constituting a finished programme, were nevertheless
related to their own time in a concrete fashion. They reformulated politics
as the philosophy of history, the history of philosophy as politics....For
Benjamin, fascism was the event that fundamentally and definitively refutes
the optimism that was most effectively expressed in the profane form of
traditional expectations about progress’ (Ralf Konersmann, Erstarrte
Unruhe: Walter Benjamins Begriff der Geschichte, p. 174). Adorno was
of the opinion that Benjamin’s ‘Theses’ ‘summed up the epistemological
considerations that accompanied his thinking about the design of the
arcade project’ (Adorno, ‘Charakteristik Walter Benjamins’, GS, vol. 10.1,
p. 250).
46 Adorno, ‘George und Hofmannsthal’, in Prisms, p. 225.
47 Frankfurter Adorno Blätter, V, 1998, p. 37.
48 This first publication was in fact a revised version of the original text of
- For publication Adorno and Horkheimer reformulated a number
of concepts that had originally been taken from Marx’s analysis of capital-
ism, and translated them into more clearly sociological terms. The chapter
on ‘Elements of Anti-Semitism’ was supplemented by a seventh thesis.
The authors then undertook a second revision for the first publication by
Fischer Verlag (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), and in the course of this they
softened a number of provocative statements about the function of religion.
The entire publication history has been described in detail by Gunzelin
Schmid Noerr, ‘Die Stellung der “Dialektik der Aufklärung” in der
Entwicklung der kritischen Theorie’, Horkheimer, GS, vol. 5, p. 423ff.
Schmid Noerr’s edition of the Dialektik der Aufklärung for Horkheimer’s
Collected Works is the first to have satisfied the criteria of a historical-
critical edition. The present author, however, has used the version in
Adorno’s Gesammelte Schriften (GS, vol. 3).
49 When the book appeared in 1947 it made no impact on the public. The
first edition was still obtainable from bookshops until the early 1960s.
The sensational success of the volume set in after a delay of two decades.
When Adorno and Horkheimer offered their manuscript to Fritz H.
Landshoff, the director of Querido Verlag, their intention was to create
closer ties to the publishing house. They would have liked to see the
revived Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung appearing there. Moreover, Adorno
offered the text of his Minima Moralia to the same publisher. See
Marbacher Magazin, ‘Fritz H. Landshoff und der Querido-Verlag 1933–
1950’.
50 Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 17, p. 385.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., p. 274.
53 Adorno and Horkheimer left it in no doubt that the human species
depends on appropriating nature through purposive activity. It follows
that not ‘all acts characterized by ends–means rationality... mean “labour”,
and social labour does not inevitably amount to the plundering and
destruction of nature’ (Jürgen Ritsert, Ästhetische Theorie als Gesell-
schaftskritik: Umrisse der Dialektik in Adornos Spätwerk, p. 15). Ritsert
points out that, for Adorno, ends–means rationality has the rank of a
positive norm in the sphere of social labour since it is a form of self-
preservation. It is only because of this normative value that it is possible