Abstract

In my dissertation, I argue that Juergen Habermas misinterprets Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Habermas claims that Adorno and Horkheimer universalize instrumental reason, and that they hence undermine their own discursive-rational contribution. He thinks critical social theory can only be reflexively grounded if it recognizes as its pragmatic truth-condition a counterfactually conceived communicative procedure that would be free of distortion. In my view, Habermas dedifferentiates the dialectic of enlightenment. Adorno and Horkheimer do not reduce thought to instrumental reason, and they characterize enlightenment as a historically differentiated process. They maintain that enlightenment comprises both instrumental and critical thought, critical thought being understood by them as determinate negation. I interpret Dialectic of Enlightenment as a theory of the formation of the subject. Furthermore, I contend that Adorno's Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory eschew Habermas's mistaken reading of Dialectic of Enlightenment. They develop the latter's dialectical account of subjectivization. Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory advance against the backdrop of Dialectic of Enlightenment's theory of the progressive instrumentalization of the self the idea of an unregimented subjective knowledge and experience of nature.