CRITIQUES OF ADORNO AND HORKHEIMER ON MODERN SOCIETY: A PESSIMISTIC APPROACH

Year 2011, Volume: 1 Issue: 2, 16 - 21, 23.07.2016

Burcu Yaman

Abstract

Critical Theory that has been developed by Frankfurt School is one of the most important schools of thought that criticizes modern society with a Marxist manner but at the same time they differentiate themselves from classical Marxist approach in some aspects. In this paper, the critiques of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno towards modern society will be covered with the light of their article of Culture Industry; Enlightenment as a Mass Deception. The discussion will mainly cover the bringing of modernity including Enlightenment era with its rational, instrumentalist and positivist manner and also culture industry which is one of the most criticized aspect of capitalist order by them. Their critiques of culture industry will be analyzed in more details and it will help us to see how Critical Theory has a more pessimistic approach than classical Marxism in terms of understanding and evaluating modern world that is surrounded by a manipulated culture industry

Keywords

Enlightenment, Modernity, Culture Industry

References

• Adorno, T. W. with Max Horkheimer. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
• Geuss, Raymond (1981). The idea of a critical theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt school. Cambridge University Press.
• Held, David (1980). Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. University of California Press.
• Jay, Martin (1996). The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research. University of California Press.
• Wiggershaus, Rolf. (1995). The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press