Abstract

One of the constant themes of Adorno’s work, running from his early essay “The Idea of Natural History” through his unfinished Aesthetic Theory, is the notion of the experience of power within the natural realm and the relation of rational “enlightenment” to this experience. On the one hand, “Enlightenment is mythic fear turned radical” ; on the other hand, “Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity”. What concerns Adorno is precisely the dialectic that enlightenment itself is. As the attempt to free humanity from fear of the force of nature, enlightenment is an attempt to demythologize nature, to strip nature of its power. Yet, in this very activity, enlightenment becomes that power itself. If reason is the response to the force of nature, then reason itself has to be force as well: “Myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology”.