Eclipse of Reason

by Max Horkheimer

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Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Theory, History, Society

139 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) was a leader of the so-called “Frankfurt School,” a group of philosophers and social scientists associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research) in Frankfurt am Main. Horkheimer was the director of the Institute and Professor of Social Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt from 1930–1933, and again from 1949–1958. In between those periods he would lead the Institute in exile, primarily in America. As a philosopher he is best known (especially in the Anglophone world), for his work during the 1940s, including Dialectic of Enlightenment, which was co-authored with Theodor Adorno. While deservedly influential, Dialectic of Enlightenment (and other works from that period) should not be separated from the context of Horkheimer's work as a whole. Especially important in this regard are the writings from the 1930s, which were largely responsible for developing the epistemological and methodological orientation of Frankfurt School critical theory. This work both influenced his contemporaries (including Adorno and Herbert Marcuse) and has had an enduring influence on critical theory's later practitioners (including Jürgen Habermas, and the Institute's current director Axel Honneth).

Reviews

[May · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mere prospect of reviewing Eclipse of Reason is rather terrifying…

In this short yet dense book, Horkheimer makes the distinction between subjective and objective reason. Subjective reason being concerned with ends, i.e., whether a certain procedure is adequate to achieve the goal we have in mind; while objective reason tests this end or goal to determine its virtues, without reference to some subjective gain or advantage. Then he traces the history of these seemingly antagonistic concepts and their relationship to religion, the Enlightenment, and Industrialization.

"Since ends are no longer determined in the light of reason, it is also impossible to say that one economic or political system, no matter how cruel and despotic, is less reasonable than another. According to formalized reason, despotism, cruelty, oppression are not bad in themselves; no rational agency would endorse a verdict against dictatorship if its sponsors were likely to profit by it. Phrases like 'the dignity of man' either imply a dialectical advance in which the idea of divine right is preserved and transcended, or become hackneyed slogans that reveal their emptiness as soon as somebody inquires into their specific meaning."

Horkheimer's criticism of Pragmatism, Positivism, and Neo-Thomism is relentless.

*While pragmatism can be a useful philosophy to adopt at times, it is not the sole indicator of the validity of a proposition; it undermines the importance of contemplation and philosophical thought; leads to serious logical difficulties; and makes all ideas equally desirable, as long as they are enjoyed by their adherents.

*For the Neo-Thomists, 'the concepts that they claim to derive from their theological doctrines no longer form the backbone of scientific thought'; they formalize their own religious ideas in order to adjust them to reality, and so the religious end becomes mundane means; and their doctrine can be made a sanction of all kinds of undertakings.

*Positivism ignores the fact that science can be used 'to serve the most diabolical social forces', not to mention that it is unable to contribute -except in limited ways- to morality and politics. The positivists also seem to confuse science as a tool to reach the truth with the truth itself; moreover, since it is an element of the social process, it is not immune to changing social standards and the interactions of economic, technical, political, and ideological forces. Positivism turns a blind eye to the profound limits of the scientific method.
"How is the principle of observation itself to be justified? When a justification is requested, when someone asks why observation is the proper guarantee of truth, the positivists simply appeal to observation again."


Chapter three, The Revolt of Nature, was by far the most fascinating, in my opinion. In it, Horkheimer describes the relationship between man and nature as that of domination and repression; domination of man over external nature, which is then internalized as repression of man himself. Nature is viewed as a mere tool to be exploited.

"The story of the boy who looked up at the sky and asked, 'Daddy, what is the moon supposed to advertise?' is an allegory of what has happened to the relation between man and nature in the era of formalized reason. On the one hand, nature has been stripped of all intrinsic value or meaning. On the other, man has been stripped of all aims except self-preservation. He tries to transform everything within reach into a means to that end. Every word or sentence that hints of relations other than pragmatic is suspect. When a man is asked to admire a thing, to respect a feeling or attitude, to love a person for his own sake, he smells sentimentality and suspects that someone is pulling his leg or trying to sell him something. "

Horkheimer draws of very bleak image of modern life, from mass culture, propaganda, and economic insecurity to oppression, totalitarianism, and social injustice.
Instead of looking at the world with a critical eye, instead of trying to fight oppression and pursue truth, individuals find themselves compelled, from a very young age, to conform, to "willingly embrace or force themselves to accept the rule of the stronger as the eternal norm." Instead of changing her reality, she identifies with it. However, the sense of repression remains, and expresses itself in a 'devious undercover life' or a desire to persecute, and this desire maintains the system that produces it. "In this respect, modern man is not very different from his medieval forerunner, except in his choice of victims. Political outcasts, eccentric religious sects like the German Bibelforscher, and 'zootsuiters' have taken the place of witches, sorcerers, and heretics; and there are still the Jews."

"Modern mass culture, although drawing freely upon stale cultural values, glorifies the world as it is. Motion pictures, the radio, popular biographies and novels have the same refrain: This is our groove, this is the rut of the great and the would-be great—this is reality as it is and should be and will be."

Finally, the author describes what the role of philosophy is: to offer a true critique of reason, both subjective and objective. "The two concepts are interlaced, in the sense that the consequence of each not only dissolves the other but also leads back to it."

Horkheimer dissects and diagnoses the cultural debacle of our time, as he calls it, accurately and comprehensively. For all its bleakness, this book is crucially relevant to this day and age. There were numerous ideas and eye-opening observations that I couldn't go into in this review, so I highly recommend reading Eclipse of Reason for yourself. It will probably require some effort to get through, but it will be worth it, all the same.

[Liam O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video Review here
Horkheimer's saying that before the war, philosophical movements central to German-speaking countries changed reason from a 'way of knowing' to a 'motive for doing'. People didn't say 'I logically infer this is possible using reason', but rather, 'I have a reason to do this'.

This semantic shift placed the emphasis on having a feasible method, but not a beneficent purpose, for doing something. The justification is self-proclaimed desire, won over by rhetoric, but the argument's strength was based on pragmatism — could it be done and would it fix your problem? That allowed strong oration to be sufficient to convince the public to commit atrocities under order of bad rulers — given there was enough weapons, money and medals supplied, there was reason to make use of them to destroy such-and-such.

I've realized in myself that this is why I dislike people who refer to actions as 'reasonable' because it seems like a continuation of this ideology of subjective reason which spurs progress at the risk of corruption. The tradeoff is not worth it; there is no price on morality.

I walkthrough this in more general terms in my video review, but keep it simple, because critical theory isn't super accessible to me or anyone who doesn't read politics or sociology texts. The structure of the essay is highly abstract and theoretical, so it's hard to grasp general concepts. The GoodReads review by sologdin is a much more detailed and excellently thorough walkthrough of the main idea of this book, and shows its complex form, but above I wanted to give the take-home message for general readers.

Initial Reaction:

There's way too much to write about here. I think I might need to do this in stages to keep a record of all of my thoughts. This review is currently in a state of existential crisis, please excuse it.

So I'll begin with personal reflections then an outline of the higher concepts of this important book. I'm moving out and going through a lot of life changes and am very busy, so my thoughts are in flux. This review is currently very incomplete. Everything here is subject to change until this paragraph is deleted.

Personal Reflections
Everyone, I think there is something seriously wrong with the world. We do not understand anti-semitism; we do not clearly understand why Nazi Germany happened; we do not understand why Hitler came into power. How can we prevent future warfare without understanding this? Has the pandemic not reminded us that the state of the world can change overnight?

As a boy I disliked history. I think I still do. It seemed boring and cruel in comparison to psychology, geography, religious studies and english literature. You learn about body counts, dates and policies. It seemed to glorify death by scrutinizing the casualities and length of war. I never found we discussed ideologies, the motivations of rulers, the underlying beliefs of the populace. I wanted to know why it happened psychologically. These are people, not bodies. We never heard their story — history is told by those who win. We only learned our own role in the war and what we thought about it. What were the events that predisposed the everyman to be involved as the target and deployer of bombs? How could it have been prevented with words? What forgiveness was needed?

Interestingly, totalitarian rulers commonly use pathological terminology to dehumanize its victims. The sign of a bad ruler is that they call 'bad people' parasites, viruses, leeches, toxic, contagious. It reflects a similar weirdness I see in virology and biology in general. We know viruses exist, and we learn how to exterminate them. But we never learn WHY viruses came into existence. We teach the children 'random selection'. But in later biology, we learn that 'evolutionary niches motivate certain mutations over others' — that at the very least selective breeding promotes certain mutations over others. So what was the evolutionary niche that motivated a given specific deadly element to emerge out of nothingness? Somehow, we never question this. We are too busy fixing to try learn from our mistakes for the future. So in summary, there is a strangely unresolved notion of where the things that threaten mankind come from? What determines when threats to humanity rise, and their form? Be it a virus, or a ruler who wants to declare war, what elements create this so that we can recognize and dismantle them in the future?

I can't tell whether the pandemic motivated these thoughts, or the formal end of my long educational journey to define human suffering, or the dissolution of a long-term relationship, or the fact I am packing my suitcase in search of meaningful employment. All I know is, these thoughts feel like the direction of clarity, strength, and order.

I'm only 28, but I'm mediating on what it means to be a man. Yes to be independent, and yes to provide and support a family, if that is our desire. But I realize only now that, that is the beginning of manhood. These are man's inferior duties, within the nuclear family. But think — only young men read specifically about how to be strong, independent and supportive to women. It is the sign of an immature male reader (my past self included), to be wholly preoccupied with books that define individuality. It's far better than an illiterate personal development, but it's still self-absorbed. Because, now, just think of any older admirable male reader you know. What are they reading? Old men read only about God or war.

I used to think this was because old men were just boring. Like dusty history books, too. But now I think the advanced duties of men are to transcend grief through spirituality and to dismantle violence through history or politics. These are man's superior duties, to protect the intergenerational stability of the world. Thinking beyond the family. Men saving the world by actually thinking on that level — we're raised to be duped by the ideological discrepancy in contemporary superhero stories where the hero is solely focused on saving the damsel but by a ridiculous coincidence somehow end up saving the world, too. Surely we need to think beyond ourselves? I think it is a real man who can not only have a family, but can (and help others to) transcend death and dismantle evil that threatens mass society.

So I guess I'm experiencing a growth spurt in my opinion — I now pity men who grow up so fast with women who love them before they have had the time to mediate on these inferior and superior duties of man. It's not that these men can't recognize this in their maturity, but a man in love has his development somewhat arrested and when that occurs too young they rarely think beyond the comfort of a relationship. They succumb to the denial it brings about the global state of affairs and fail to strive for a 'meaningful' professional potential. I'm talking about the husbands you would wonder whether would survive or save others or themselves alone. A mindless dayjob, a family on autopilot, which is nice until a midlife crisis later which asks for greater maturity. I don't want to be that guy — nobody wants to be that guy! (And I'm betting some women, too, don't want to be like that guy, or married to one like him, either!)

------------

Having come down from this realization, I still think it holds. I see now a much deeper purpose for books, to ensure our legacies safely and beneficently extend beyond us. We live in an era where fake news exists, deep fake technology is rapidly emerging, and we rely on wikipedia for information. We might truly need books to keep society healthy, happy and together. I'm suggesting here that this unalterable physical form of information may not yet have reached its maximum need in this increasingly digital age, even though, yes, this book is even older than my Dad! We might one day need to remember that critical theory texts exist to guide us through the political mindgames of the future.

[Ali Reda · Rating 5 out of 5]

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I'VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE!

In this important work, which explains the Frankfurt School doctrines, Horkheimer tries to answer the following question:

The present potentialities of social achievement surpass the expectations of all the philosophers and statesmen who have ever outlined in Utopian programs the idea of a truly human society. Yet there is a universal feeling of fear and disillusionment. It seems that even as technical knowledge expands the horizon of man's thought and activity, his autonomy as an individual, his ability to resist the growing apparatus of mass manipulation, his power of imagination, his independent judgment appear to be reduced. Advance in technical facilities for enlightenment is accompanied by a process of dehumanization. Thus progress threatens to nullify the very goal it is supposed to realize the idea of man.

He starts with an explanation of the Objective theory of reason then he explains its decline and the rise of subjective reason, which he gives a few ideological examples for it until we reach pragmatism. He then explains the effects of the subjective reasoning on the individual and the society, then he ends with his solution to this problem.

You can find my complete analysis on my Blog

[sologdin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet little text, but probably one of the more significant foundational documents of the Frankfurt School, here by the most frankfurty of the bunch. (Marcuse, Fromm, and Adorno are all more famous, but this guy captures the Frankfurt principle best, I think.)

Five essays. First is an argument regarding subjective and objective reason. The former is “the force that ultimately makes reasonable actions possible,” “the faculty of classification, inference, and deduction, no matter what the specific content” (3). (We might think of it as ‘formal rationality,’ maybe, were we lawyerly about it.) “It is essentially concerned with means and end, with the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted and supposedly self-explanatory.” (Id.). This form of reason does not concern itself with analysis of the content or ends, but rather assumes that the ends are for the benefit of actor of the means. Author regards this as “naïve or superficial,” of course (4).

Subjective reason had replaced an older objective concept of reason, wherein reason was “a force not only in the individual mind but also in the objective world” (id.), a “principle inherent in reality” (5). (We might consider this to be substantive rationality, perhaps.) Both concepts are ancient, but they are not merely opposed; “the predominance of the former over the latter was achieved in the course of a long process” (6). The task of this essay is to lay out that process, wherein reason is subjectivized and formalized. it becomes mere “coordination of means and ends” (5) rather than “an instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them” (10). Process starts with classical Athens, goes through Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment--good stuff, standard Frankfurt long view.

One way point in this development is “the neutralization of religion,” “reduced to the status of one cultural good among others,” which “contradicted its ‘total’ claim” to objectivity &c. (17). However, author intones, “the history of reason or enlightenment from its beginnings in Greece down to the present has led to a state of affairs in which even the word reason is suspected of connoting some mythological entity” (18). The enlightenment critique of religion was too thorough, and all systems of objective rationality were displaced in favor of liberalism’s ‘tolerance’ for all species. All that’s left is the subjective component: “Having given up autonomy, reason has become an instrument” (21). The empire of liberalism’s tolerant relativism transforms subjective reason (with its core of self-interest) into a “magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced” (23). And the greater the critique brought against it, “the more easily it lends itself to ideological manipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies”(24). (To readers of Dialectic of Enlightenment, the trajectory should be very familiar here.) “Subjective reason conforms to anything” (25), exemplified by chattel slavery in the US.

During subjective reason’s course, “the concept of the nation became a guiding principle,” tending “to displace religion as the ultimate supra-individual motive in human life” (19). Nation draws “its authority from reason rather than revelation” (id.). But: “the idea of the national community (Volsgemeinschaft), first set up as an idol [cf. Nietzsche], can eventually be maintained only by terror” (20). We see therefore that “the founding of modern democracy” was grounded in “speculative assumptions” such as “the same spiritual substance or moral consciousness is present in each human being” (26-27). “In other words, respect for the majority was based on a conviction that did not itself depend on the resolutions of the majority” (27). And if the foundations of objective reason erode? “Deprived of its rational foundation, the democratic principle becomes exclusively dependent upon the so-called interests of the people, and these are functions of blind or all too conscious economic forces” (28). Not a problem if we are all happy enlightenment liberals; but if industrialists “find it useful to set up a dictatorship and abolish majority rule, no objection founded on reason can be opposed to their action” (28-29).

With the rational foundations gone, the idea of the majority has “assumed a completely irrational aspect” (30). Any idea might “become the nucleus of a new mythology, and this is one of the reasons why the advance of enlightenment tends at certain points to revert to superstition and paranoia” (cf. Dialectic of Enlightenment) (30). In the end, “No wonder that whole nations--and Germany is not alone in this--seem to have awakened one morning only to discover that their most cherished ideals are merely bubbles” (34). As though it were not already plain: “The reduction of reason to mere instrument finally affects even its character as an instrument. The anti-philosophical spirit that is inseparable from the subjective concept of reason, and that in Europe culminated in the totalitarian persecution of intellectuals, whether or not they were its pioneers, is symptomatic of the abasement of reason” (54).

Anyway, that’s great stuff. Other essays are interesting, but not nearly as tidy; they include critiques of positivism, pragmatism, Thomism, scientism. Slick essay on ‘individualism’ as a doctrine, which essay is fairly useful, and ends with: “Fascism used terrorist methods in the effort to reduce conscious human beings to social atoms [cf. Neumann], because it feared that ever-increasing disillusionment [cf. Mannheim] as regards all ideologies might pave the way for men to realize their own and society’s deepest potentialities; and indeed in some cases social pressure and political terror have tempered the profoundly human resistance to irrationality--a resistance that is always the core of true individuality. The real individuals of our time are the martyrs [!] who have gone through infernos of suffering and degradation in their resistance to conquest and oppression […] The anonymous martyrs of the concentration camps are the symbols of the humanity that is striving to be born. The task of philosophy is to translate what they have done into language that will be heard, even though their finite voices have been silenced by tyranny” (101).

Recommended for those who would attack general concepts, including the concept of the general concept, readers who express resistance to the threatening relapse into mythology and madness, and consummate supermen, against whom no one has warned more anxiously than Nietzsche himself.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poglavlja ove knjige su poput stepenica, gde svaki korak vodi na novi sprat, krcat raskošnim pokućstvom. Treba kondicije da bi se stiglo do vrha, ali doći do njega je prava privilegija, oslobađanje i radost za um. Horkhajmerov kolos je veličanstven u svom obuhvatu. „Pomračenje uma” predstavlja zapravo ontološku i istorijsku odbranu uma, ali i niz blistavih razmatrana o individuumu, radu, umetnosti, ideologiji, odnosu filozofije i nauke, totalitarizmu i, što je meni posebno zanimljivo, nemogućnosi uspostavljanja dvojstva prirode i duha.

Malo ko ubedljivo poput Horkhajmera pokazuje da se može istovremeno biti i nepokolebljivo precizan u pojmovnom aparatu i apsolutno svestan njegove moguće rastočenosti. Svaki pojam se, stoga, mora posmatrati kao „fragment jedne uključujuće istine u kojoj nalazi svoj smisao” (147). Nema lakog puta do definicije i mišljenje da filozofski termini treba da budu fiksirani, priklješteni, jeste jedan od simptoma traženja izvesnosti, kakav postoji u, danas u potpunosti obožavanim, prirodnim naukama. Matematizacija uma i „diktat logičke istovetnosti” izrazi su njegovog zatomljenja i namesto potrage za istinom stvari, nameće se imperativ upotrebljivosti, uočljiv u pozitivizmu i pragmatizmu. Horkhajmer oštro i uspešno kritikuje smer intelektualnog puta čovečanstva, što je, kao i sama filozofija svom najboljem vidu, ne samosvrhovita rabota, već prilika za korigovanje i poziv na nove kritike. Društvo spektakla u kome živimo i koje nas obuhvata, pokušava da anestezira moć kritike, namećući čitav spektar njenih surogata. Na taj način nešto što deluje da je sasvim subverzivno postaje samo delić narastajuće slagalice. Za (n)ova vremena, verujem, potrebne su nove strategije otpora i volja za novom kritičkom oštricom, koja bi imala istinski kapacitet emancipovanja. To je golem posao, gde nema unapred poznatog recepta i gde je neophodna prava temeljnost i posvećenost. Bez obzira na to nepristajanje na zamke savremenosti daje mi cilj, snagu i slobodu. Smisao, dakle.

Maksu duboki naklon i hvala!

[Yakup Öner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bunalım...Disiplinlerin gerçek anlamda sürüklendikleri akıl tutulmalarından yaşadıkları bunalım. Karşı mevzilerde olmak, çatışmalı, tamamen farklı olgulardan bahsetmek, konvansiyonel olmayan tutumlar, disiplinleri aynı akıl tutulmalarından alıkoyamamıştır. Sular onları farklı ırmaklardan akıtarak aynı göle taşımıştır ve bir arada olduklarını görmek mümkün...Genele baktığımda ortaya çıkarabildiğim hakim olan tematik durum budur. Sebebi doğallığındaMax Horkheimer ve Okulu olan Frankfurt okulu'nun ortaya koyduğu temel teori, Eleştiri Teorisidir. Bu okul bir diğer anlamda tüm disiplinler ( Felsefe Okulları veya Teorileri) üzerinde, kritik etme görevini üstlenmiş, benim fark edebildiğim kadarıyla, disiplinlerin daha çok ortaya çıkış noktasına değil, bu disiplinlerin diğerleri ile giriştikleri ideolojik çatışmalardan doğan sonuçlar üzerinden eleştiri teorisi geliştirmişlerdir.
Kitabın giriş kısmında çevirisi ile Orhan Koçak, yaklaşık elli sayfalık bir önsöz ile bize Max Horkheimer ve Frankfurt Okulu hakkında detaylı bilgi vermiştir.Önsöz ile bu okul hakkında detaylı bilgiye ulaşmış oluyoruz.
Okulun Marksizm, Marksist kurumlar ile ve ayrıca kendi içindeki hesaplaşmaları da açıkça öğrenmiş oluyoruz.
Kitap içerisinde düşünsel yaşamda araçlar-amaçlar, öznel-nesnel akıl paradokslarını detaylı görebiliriz. Bununla birlikte; bize önerilen reçetelerin kendi aralarındaki çatışmalarını, tehlikeli düşünsel süreçlerin doğa içerisindeki biyolojik sistemleri kullanışı, dolayısıyla bunlar karşısında bireyin yükselişi aynı zamanda düşüşü ilginizi çekebilir.
Modernitenin bilinci nerelere kadar sürükleyebileceğini ve bizler üzerindeki tahakkümünden dolayı bedenimizin, zihnimizin, sosyal yapımızın ve bir çok alanımız ile araçsallaşmış görüntümüze ayna tutarak farkındanlığımıza yardımcı olmaktadır.
Direnen birey, doğruluğun gerekleriyle varoluşun akıl dışı niteliğini uzlaştırmaya yönelik her türlü pragmatik çabaya karşı çıkacaktır.s.133

[Turbulent_Architect · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frankfurt School Critical Theory has received some strikingly bad press from cultural conservatives in recent years. I’ve always thought there was quite a bit of irony in this, since several members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research espoused views that were, by any standard, strikingly conservative. Like their contemporary detractors, they would have viewed much of New Left politics as rooted as destructive modern tendencies: social atomization, instrumentalization, and subjectivation. And like them, they would have seen our growingly naturalistic outlook as the product of a dehumanizing scientism.

This is perhaps especially true of Max Horkheimer, who was director of the Institute from 1931 to 1953 and virtually set the agenda for its research for the entire 20th century. Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason (1947) is one of the undisputed classics of the Frankfurt School. As the German title, Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft indicates, the book is a critique of what is often called instrumental rationality. Instrumental rationality in the relevant sense is means-ends thinking: What is rational is the adequacy of the means chosen for the ends that one is pursing. If I am pursuing outcome X and select the means most likely to produce outcome X, I am behaving rationally.

The book’s thesis is that the process of social modernization strips reason of its substantive elements and reduces it to its instrumental dimension. The result is a sharp distinction between facts and values: The first, being objective and quantifiable, can be objects of serious inquiry, whereas the latter cannot. In this way, the fact-value distinction gives way to a narrow scientistic worldview: Questions of value, being beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, are reframed as subjective preferences. The result is that politics becomes, strictly speaking, irrational: The choice between one regime, one law, one value and another is nothing more than an arbitrary preference imposed by the majority on the minority.

Horkheimer wrote Eclipse of Reason while in exile in the United States during the Second World War, and there can be no doubt that his experience of American culture had a profound influence on his thinking. His assault on the “dictatorship of relativism,” his Ideologiekritik of the culture industry, his emphasis on the family as the locus of individuation, and his faith in the utopian potential of religion can all be understood as reactions to the rampant consumerism, mindless subjectivism, and repressive thought-control he encountered there. And insofar as these tendencies have done nothing but spiral further out of control since the mid-twentieth century, his book is as prophetic a cry in the wilderness for us now as it was then.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you rate a theoretical work? I certainly don't know. Here's some of what I got out of it.

In this book Horkheimer examines how reason, once used to identify societal goals such as truth, justice, and freedom, has become instead divorced from its objective roots and is now a subjective tool used to justify any particular means and ends regardless of their nature. In particular, Horkheimer wrote this book to address the actions of Third Reich Germany and how Nazism was able to make its genocidal goals appear reasonable and therefore justifiable. Instead of using reason to organize and create society around ideals that we find meaningful, we now use reason to adapt to society as it exists and to make ourselves into as efficient cogs in the machine as we can be. Through rationalization, philosophical concepts have become streamlined and stripped of complexity, which is necessary to the discovery of truth. Truth can only be discovered through dynamic thought: complexity, contradiction, challenge. But truth is no longer perceived as an end in itself; rather functionality has become the dominating ideal of society. (Much of this reminded me of Weber’s iron cage of rationality.) Subjective reason can be used to support ideologies of oppression just as easily as ideologies of progress. “Totalitarianism is bad” becomes no longer an objective truth but a subjective one, applicable only to those who do not benefit from totalitarianism, i.e. its victims. Differing forms of government become simply other patterns to which we must adapt, not question. Democratic arguments become unable to oppose totalitarianism because these arguments lack truth and call upon empty ideals.

The paradox of progress is that technological advances can and have been used for both noble and dehumanizing, violent ends. Progress will not necessarily be a straight line towards "good" despite the fact that it is commonly conceptualized that way. The rationalization of Nazi society (of fascism in general), reflected in the emotionless efficiency of concentration camps and the Final Solution, is a symptom of reason becoming an instrument for determining practical means (“are they efficient, properly classified, methodically rationalized?”) rather than a way of interrogating truth in search of higher ideals to guide society.

The decline of religion in society coincided with the decline of objective reason. Religion and reason once both served higher objective goals, but the Enlightenment weakened the foundations of both concepts. Over time, the nation displaced religion as the supraindividual mode of human life, and capitalism came to determine the interests of the nation-state. Liberalism (and neo-liberalism) upholds nationalism and subjective reason by extolling the principles of self-interest and of tolerance—i.e. the willingness to compromise with opposing ideologies, such as fascism, rather than resisting them. Concepts and ideals lose their philosophical roots and become vulnerable to ideological manipulation. Capitalism’s emphasis on competition and individualism lends itself to authoritarian control; we compete within established patterns of society and are so preoccupied with self-preservation/self-gain that we do not think to question those patterns. Individualism becomes valorized even while individual choices and ability become less relevant to the course of your life, because your future and circumstances depend instead on “the national and international struggles among the colossi of powers.”

The destruction of objective reason has microlevel, psychological effects as well as macrolevel ones. Hobbies become rationalized as functional because they keep people in good spirits (i.e. fit to continue performing capitalism) rather than as activities valuable for their own sakes. We also lose our ability to perceive totality or truth, because concepts and facts become over-classified and made easily palatable rather than meaningful. Eternal activity/productivity becomes the only meaningful way to spend one’s life in industrialized society.

Horkheimer also talks at length about the subjugation of nature by man and what the implications of this are. (I’ll admit that this is the section where I was most confused, having not studied this sort of thing before.) “Nature” encompasses a wide range of concepts, including the environment, but also referring to “passions” within human beings that must be repressed in civilized society. However the urge to express these feelings remains beneath the surface, resentful, and often reemerges in the form of persecution of other people—people so othered that they are perceived as sub-human and therefore “nature.” Therefore fascism represses nature while also exploiting people’s rebellious tendencies towards that repression in order to cause further subjugation.

(Horkheimer also notes however that the transition from objective to subjective reason, while detrimental in its current state, was necessary to historical progress. Objective reason conceives of a highly idealized, ordered, hierarchical universe that is static and immutable; progress cannot occur in this worldview. Progress itself is a problematic and cold concept as well, because, when idolized, the contradictory character of progress becomes lost, leaving progress vulnerable to manipulation. Contradictions, as Horkheimer says, are essential to discovering truth.)

To resist totalitarianism and the subjectivization of reason, Horkheimer says we must resist conquest and oppression by consciously exposing ourselves to the terroristic annihilation perpetrated by totalitarianism which other people experience only subconsciously. And we need to develop ideas without caring about their usefulness/functionality, or else we will adapt them to be useful to something, and that something could be good or bad. Genuine progress, or fascism. People currently lack the understanding that they are functionaries in their own oppression (due to alienation), and therefore while we have the material conditions to organize, we have not yet done so. Rather than use reason as a tool of domination, it must return to its function as a path towards discovering truth. Social systems create the concepts that can later be used to dismantle them (how Marxist). Philosophy, as a critique of history and reason as it is currently used, can serve as our “memory and conscience” as we try to find our way towards truth.

This book fascinated and baffled me—I really wish any of my classes in college had discussed it, though I suppose it is outside the purview of introductory sociology, which is what a sociology B.A. essentially is. But now having finished it and thought about it in writing this review, I think this book is a crucial foundation to understanding totalitarianism and domination in modern society.

[Nick]

(Draft edit) I decided to read Horkheimer because of his interest in Arthur Schopenhauer, a philosopher usually not so dear to those in the Marxist tradition given his intense personal hatred of Hegel and his association with Nietzsche and reactionary social views. His metaphysical pessimism seems to go against the gospel of the inevitable triumph of the workers and the possibility of an end to human misery in the communist society.

But Horkheimer and other western Marxists, especially the Frankfurt School of which he was a founder, were willing to explore the boundaries of Marxist theory. They were puzzled as to why the working class didn't revolt after World War I? Why didn't the Bolshevik Revolution spread to Western Europe and succeed?Marxism was considered a scientific theory at the level of Darwin's by its followers, with the triumph of socialism an inevitable result of the laws of nature.

What instead happened was fascism. It could be argued that the ideological wave inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution was fascism rather than communism, which swept over Europe from the 1920s until after World War II. In an economically advanced and educated Germany came a fanatical regime which in the course of twelve years tried its best to transform the entire world order.

This forced in the west a reexamination of the fundamentals of Marxist theory, from its philosophical foundations. The question of Eclipse of Reason is how in the post-enlightenment west could people be so blind to their interests under capitalism and rationalize the irrational brutality of fascism?

Horkheimer argues that what the Nazis did, barbaric as it was, was nonetheless guided by a kind of rationality. The regime used brutal technological efficiency to control and exterminate millions of people.

Approaching the book one must understand that common discourse aside, there are different kinds of rationality, which is the only way to understand how the Nazis could be called rational. Horkheimer argues that this kind of rationality has pervaded western thinking, as not only a German or class phenomenon.

Horkheimer present three kinds of reason: objective, subjective, and instrumental.

Objective reason deals with ends, determining actions by how reasonable their purpose is. Objective reason sees facts as leading to ethical ends, is determining ought. This is the reason used by Plato and Aristotle. Objective reason is connected with religion which has ethical and explanatory dimensions. Philosophy emerges which critiques religion, hoping to replace superstition and prejudice with reason. Horkheimer identified German idealism within this tradition, as against those who accuse the tradition of inspiring relativism.

Subjective reason determines the end by what the individual wants and rationality is determined by the means available without regard to outside purposes or morality. Something is rational if it gets me what I want. This kind of reason emerges in the early modern era with Descartes and Hobbes and is linked with psychology and law with the rise of the individual subject. The only "universal" value of subjective reason is one’s own good. Subjective reason coincides with the rise of capitalism and the breakdown of traditional modes of being. There is a christian element to subjective reason however, rooted in thinkers like Abelard and finds its fulfillment in enlightenment classical liberalism a la Kant.

Instrumental reason is a formalization of subjective reason which dispenses with ends altogether, instead adopting the criterion of usefulness or formality. If ends cannot be defined from means, they are useless and meaningless. Pragmatism and positivism are representatives of instrumental reason, wanting to emulate the sciences in the experimental method (pragmatism), logical rigor (positivism) and in eliminating metaphysics. Instrumental reason's goal is the unification of science, the elimination of metaphysical language, and value free knowledge. This is the product of late capitalism when the individual is subsumed to new technological social organization. As opposed to subjective reason, not all aims are equal. The very notions of the subject and introspection are not formalizable and so rationalizes social structures above individual agency.

Horkheimer prefers objective reason out of the three because it doesn't just seek domination of nature, but also understanding. There is some kind of moral grounding for our actions, a healthy criticism of our ends, and resistance to certainty. Subjective and instrumental reason in contrast see reality as foreign and even dangerous in so far as they are out of our control. Sir Francis Bacon's dictum "knowledge is power" is the essence of instrumental reason. Knowledge also becomes a tool of social domination, as human nature becomes demystified and unified with the rest of nature as an object to be controlled.

But objective reason have served as justifications for totalitarianism. Hegelian idealism and Marxist materialism were no doubt philosophical influences behind twentieth century fascism and communism. Subjective reason is based on the agency of the subject the sense that there's no privileged position of knowledge as with objective reason, and that ends are not dictated by the means as with instrumental reason but means are dictated by ends. Liberating I think. German idealism was either a reaction against the enlightenment or an attempt to ground such principles depending on your perspective.

Unfortunately for conservatives we can't just go back to older forms of objective reason like Thomism. A critical point of Horkheimer is that ideas are rooted in culture and society. Subjective and instrumental reason rose within capitalist society. Thomism was made to reconcile Christian doctrine with Aristotle, one of the few authorities available on science. In today's world of quantum physics, Thomism is lost. Today's secularized and individualized world has little need for scrutiny of arcane Christian dogma for Horkheimer.

The best chapter of the book is The Rise and Decline of the Individual. Here he defines individuality in historical consciousness, not just spatial temporal and sensual existence. The development of the self is determined by external factors, which we must gain knowledge of to be free and not have our identity be determined from without. The western individual Horkheimer says comes from Greek tragedy. "The tragic hero originates in the conflict between the tribe and its members, a conflict in which the individual is always defeated." The individual is defined by its conflict with external forces and circumstances to eliminate that division is to eliminate the individual. Resistance to irrationality is the core of true individuality. Formalized reason eliminates irrationality by control of nature, and in the process comes to eliminate the individual.

The resistance to instrumental reason can only come from a philosophy devoted to criticism from outside the inner rationality of the system, using philosophical dialectics. Horkheimer however rejects the higher synthesis that Marx and Hegel's dialectic offered, the end point of human social development which resolves the fundamental contradiction between the individual and society. This undermines objective reason and the German idealist tradition he looks favorably on and creates a new kind of reasoning: critical theory. There is no teleology to history as consciousness is developed under historical conditions for certain needs. There isn't an end point for philosophy; what philosophers and intellectuals should do is to highlight those who struggled against formalization and push history forward. History and the positive data of science is a record of domination to be criticized. Ideology is always aimed at some kind of control, an overcoming of difference by denying to consciousness certain aspects of reality.

Recent scholarship, such as Paul Gottfried’s, however challenges the narrative of the Frankfurt School as the origin of “cultural Marxism,” a term often applied to contemporary cultural shifts. Critical theory focused on cultural and psychological barriers to emancipation, usually from the left but not on identitarian grounds. Moreover, the “woke left” owes more to post-structuralist thinkers like Foucault and Derrida, who emphasize interpersonal power and narrative deconstruction, than to neo-Marxism’s focus on class and material conditions. Neo-Marxists like Fredric Jameson, Noam Chomsky, and Jürgen Habermas have critiqued postmodernism’s relativism, advocating reasoned critiques of capitalism grounded in universal principles or communicative ethics.

Francis Fukuyama’s critiques of identity politics, as articulated in works like Identity (2018), highlight how both left- and right-wing identity movements fragment civic life by prioritizing group recognition over shared humanity. Fukuyama argues that identity politics often stems from a demand for dignity, rooted in what Hegel called thymos (the desire for recognition), but can devolve into divisive tribalism. Alexandre Kojève’s optimistic Hegelianism, which envisions history culminating in a universal, homogeneous state, underestimates these tensions, assuming recognition can be fully resolved. In contrast, Jürgen Habermas, a later Frankfurt School figure, offers a more promising framework through communicative rationality, emphasizing dialogue to achieve mutual understanding and consensus without erasing differences.
Habermas’s approach aligns with Horkheimer’s critique of instrumental reason but moves beyond critical theory’s pessimism by proposing a deliberative process rooted in universal principles of communication. This resonates with Fukuyama’s call for a civic identity that transcends group-based demands, suggesting a path to integrate subjective experiences with objective ethical goals.

Horkheimer’s framework, enriched by Habermas and Fukuyama, inspires public reason, a civic, deliberative rationality that integrates subjective and objective reason while engaging instrumental reason’s strengths and flaws. Public reason is a dialogic process that combines:
1 Subjective rationality’s focus on individual agency and perspectives, ensuring personal and group experiences (including demands for recognition) shape decisions.
2 Objective rationality’s emphasis on ethical ends, aligning actions with shared values like justice and dignity, as Fukuyama advocates.
3 A critical engagement with instrumental reason, valuing its capacity for order and innovation while countering its dehumanizing tendencies.
Public reason operates through dialogue, creating a civic space where subjective perspectives inform objective goals allowing space for political antagonism. It builds on Habermas’s communicative rationality, emphasizing mutual understanding, but is explicitly civic, addressing Fukuyama’s concerns about identity politics by fostering a shared identity through deliberation.

Despite the excesses of critical theory Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason remains a vital text for understanding rationality’s evolution and its societal implications. By moving beyond politicization about the Frankfurt School and engaging Fukuyama and Kauffman insights on identity politics and Habermas’s communicative rationality, hopefully we can develop a public reason as a civic framework that synthesizes subjective and objective rationality. This approach offers a hopeful path for addressing modernity’s challenges, fostering dialogue that balances individual dignity with collective well-being. Further exploration of these ideas can refine reason’s potential to navigate our polarized world.

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro no es una simple reacción ante el holocausto, sino que una reflexión profunda sobre la razón que nos está llevando, sobre todo en los días de hoy, a la barbarie nuevamente. No niega la razón para rescatar viejas supersticiones, sino que busca rescatar la razón para los humanos y un mejor porvenir.

[Francisco Loureiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Agora que a ciência nos ajudou a ultrapassar o medo do desconhecido na natureza, somos escravos de pressões sociais da nossa própria lavra."

Apesar de achar um pouco denso, gostei bastante dos assuntos e da maneira como o autor os aborda.
Recomendo.

[Jonathan Auer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ich kann nicht von mir behaupten, mehr als die Hälfte verstanden zu haben, aber die klang klug!

[[edit nach dem zweiten lesegang: langsam erschließt sich die tiefe; nach dem dritten Überflugs-lesegang fügen sich die puzzle-teile zusammen]]

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

how will instrumental reason recover from this?

[Ethan]

Really brilliant understated text. Adorno gets most of the traction but Horkheimer is incredibly erudite!

The book is essentially formed of five interconnected essays covering the formalisation of reason, as well as the opposition between the subjective and objective forms of reason. He distinguishes the two: the former relates to the faculties of mind that are used to achieve some end, it is means-concerned, and the latter is more totalising/systemic i.e. seeks to justify itself in the world, create hierarchy, essentially absorb all within reason. Reason in the latter is a structure of the world, while in the former it is a kind of tool. Despite their opposition, they are not distinctly opposed in the sense that objective reason subsumes subjective.

The thrust of the book is that, following the enlightenment (which is explored in more depth in The Dialectic of Enlightenment) subjective reason has come to dominate, has been formalised. It is on this line that Horkheimer comes to criticise pragmatism, neo-Thomism, positivism, formal logic, and so on. This domination of subjective reason means the advancement of reason in society at the expense of the advancement of stupidity: to put it somewhat reductively, critique of aims, of objectives recedes until only "self-preservation" remains, and subjective reason takes the place of aiming toward, and as he charges pragmatism, reifying such an objective.

The instrumentalization of reason which Horkheimer speaks of is essentially just this, the deployment of this formalised reason, subjective reason, in all facets of life in a strictly ideological manner. It leads to barbarity in its inability to critique itself, in its destruction of individuality, of culture, in its enforcement of "stupidity".

It's a very interesting book, though its criticism of pragmatism seems particularly problematic. Charges against Dewey stem, probably, from a very one-sided reading of him, and as has been shown by other Frankfurt schoolers themselves, pragmatism is not necessarily foreign to the spirit of critical theory.

Overall, pretty good, pretty readable, and quite short. Read it.

[Sarah Cupitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow this was... a LOT. Will need a re-read later on
this was funny explaining a bit to Anastasia esp the individuality part lol
like did you wake up one day, the world is shit, lets leave Germany and teach it at a school in America, where they are totally going to give a shit

quotes:
- Although most people never overcome the habit of berating the world for their difficulties, those who are too weak to make a stand against reality have no choice but to obliterate themselves by identifying with it.
- we are the slaves of social pressures of our own making
- If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate--in short, the emancipation from fear--then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render
- Well-informed cynicism is only another mode of conformity
- Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.
- The very idea of truth has been reduced to the purpose of a useful tool in the control of nature, and the realization of the infinite potentialities inherent in man has been relegated to the status of a luxury.

fanciest quote:
- “An intelligent man is not one who can merely reason correctly, but one whose mind is open to perceiving objective contents, who is able to receive the impact of their essential structures and to render it in human language; this holds also for the nature of thinking as such, and for its truth content. The neutralization of reason that deprives it of any relation to objective content and of its power of judging the latter, and that degrades it to an executive agency concerned with the how rather than with the what, transforms it to an ever-increasing extent into a mere dull apparatus for registering facts.”

notes:
- 1940s -Horkheimer had been a professor of philosophy at Frankfurt University and the director of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. But with the rise of the Nazi party, the Frankfurt School was forced to relocate to New York City.
- chpt 1 - gets into how our relationship to reason has evolved over the years.
- subjective reason focuses on efficiency and practicality – essentially, figuring out the best way to achieve a goal, without questioning whether the goal itself is worthwhile. It’s all about means and ends.
- this development as a "formalization" of reason, and it’s had serious consequences. Ideas like justice, equality, or human rights lose their grounding because reason is no longer used to evaluate the worth of these ideals. Instead, it’s reduced to serving the dominant social and economic forces.
- When we make reason subjective, we remove the framework that Plato advocated for, and without it reason becomes vulnerable to manipulation.
- the idea of “human dignity" becomes an empty slogan unless it is tied to a framework that puts forth a deeper, shared understanding of morality. Without it, subjective reason can then be used to justify oppression or dictatorship if it aligns with someone's interests. Democracy becomes undermined, leaving societies susceptible to tyranny
- a panacea is a solution to a big social problem, or perhaps a pressing existential issue. (in this context, also different chapter)
- You could contrast positivism with the revival of older philosophical systems, like neo-Thomism – so named after Thomas Aquinas – which tries to reconcile science with religious dogma. But the result isn’t much different. So long as you’re tying your principles to a modern institution, which includes organized religion, you run the risk of those principles becoming a tool for justifying political and social control.
- Horkheimer warns against the illusion that science can provide an absolute solution to social problems. He points out the dangers of turning science into a new dogma, likening its glorification to the mysticism it once sought to replace. The better solution is a philosophy that embraces contradictions and remains open to change, rather than one that rigidly serves power or clings to outdated absolutes.
- When reason no longer seeks higher truths or values, it reduces everything – including people and nature – to mere instruments. The human being, or the “subject,” once celebrated as autonomous, becomes hollow, its existence reduced to functioning within a system that demands total domination – both of the external world and of oneself.
- Self-preservation now hinges on adapting to the relentless demands of rationalized systems, like a twisted version of Darwinism
- economic and social systems have evolved into blind forces, demanding compliance rather than fostering individuality.
- individuality thrives only when society supports it
- During the era of free enterprise, however, individuality became tied to material gain. But today’s corporate-driven society erodes the economic and social basis of individuality. Instead of planning for the future, people focus on surviving the present.
- The path forward, Horkheimer insists, is one of negation. We must reject anything that diminishes human potential. True progress means challenging the misuse of reason and reclaiming its role in emancipating humanity from fear, superstition, and oppression.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein Buch, das heute, wie damals nicht aktueller sein könnte. ich werde es wahrscheinlich noch einige Male lesen und immer wieder etwas mitnehmen. ist es zu früh zu sagen, dass es wohl eines der Bücher ist, die mich am meisten prägen (werden)?!

[Göker Makaskıran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orhan Koçak'ın kitaba önsöz olarak yazdığı "Horkheimer ve Frankfurt Okulu" başlıklı bölüm için bile okunabilir; hatta sunuş yazısının kitabın kendisinden daha önemli olduğunu söyleyebilirim.

[Mehmet B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felsefenin en güzel tanımlarından birini bu kitapta buldum:
"Felsefe, bütün bilgi ve sezgilerimizi, her şeyin doğru ve uygun adıyla anıldığı dilsel bir sistem içinde bütünleştirmeye yönelik bilinçli bir çabadır. Ne var ki, bu adları, birbirinden kopuk, tek tek sözcük ve cümlelerde değil (bu Doğu tarikatlarının izlediği yöntemdir ve bugün de insanların ve nesnelerin vaftiz edilmesiyle ilgili İncil'den alınmış birtakım öykülerde izleri görülmektedir), felsefi doğruluğu geliştirmek için yapılan sürekli teorik çalışmada bulmayı amaçlar."

[William Bies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The term ‘instrumental reason’ is often bandied about but seldom precisely defined. The present work represents Max Horkheimer’s effort to explain the meaning and significance of instrumental reason, which plays such a central part in the Frankfurt School’s critique of modernity. The author impresses this reviewer as urbane and sophisticated, a pleasant surprise. Unlike so many blinkered scholars these days, especially frequent among those who subscribe to the Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy, Horkheimer is eruditely conversant with the past of Western civilization and able intelligently to discuss the views of distant thinkers with whom, one presumes, he shares little commonality or ideological commitment.

What is Horkheimer’s thesis? Sometime during the modern age, the very concept of reason itself underwent a sea-change. From a force of reason (‘logos’) existing objectively in the world and determining a hierarchy of beings into which man was to be harmoniously integrated, it turned into its diametrical opposite, a mere faculty of classification, inference and deduction, an abstract thinking mechanism whose function is to find out what is useful or good for the realization of entirely subjective aims. From a principle inherent in reality, reason in going from objective to subjective ‘proves to be the ability to calculate probabilities and thereby to coordinate the right means with a given end.’ In his first chapter, Horkheimer traces the history of reason from Plato and the Pythagoreans to Locke and his successors and highlights the relativistic consequences in the era of Deweyian pragmatism. Not only is the old religion weakened, even the rationalist metaphysics (assuming a universal human nature) of the founders of modern political thought is undermined. Reason can now be only a matter of probabilistic prediction and cannot establish the truth of anything, even the values on which our civilization is based. The arts are affected, too: ‘A work of art once aspired to tell the world what it is, to formulate an ultimate verdict. Today it is completely neutralized. Take, for example, Beethoven’s Eroica symphony….The composition has been reified, made a museum piece, and its performance a leisure-time occupation, an event, an opportunity for star performances, or a social gathering that must be attended if one belongs to a certain group. But no living relation to the work in question, no direct, spontaneous understanding of its function as an expression, no experience of its totality as an image of what once was called truth, is left. This reification is typical of the subjectivization and formalization of reason. It transforms works of art into cultural commodities, and their consumption into a series of haphazard emotions divorced from our real intentions and aspirations.’

Next, Horkheimer examines two would-be panaceas current in his day, neo-positivism and neo-Thomism. The positivist adulation of scientific method is uncritical, as it cannot justify its own principle of empirical observation, what Horkheimer sees as a blatant petitio principii: ‘How is it possible to determine what may be called science and truth, if the determination itself presupposes the methods of achieving scientific truth?’ As for the neo-Thomists, he grants their concern for the absolute and religious doctrine, but faults them for playing into the hands of their enemies by justifying religious belief on the grounds of its usefulness to society. Yet, for him, the defect goes deeper, back to Thomas and Aristotle themselves, viz., to make truth and goodness identical with reality. Hence, both positivism and neo-Thomism are limited to an aspect of truth, which seemingly for Horkheimer consists in both cases in wishful thinking, which modernity embraces irrationally and to its detriment.

Continuing with his critique, Horkheimer isolates two trends that are accelerating as modern industrial society takes shape and which he sees as problematical for humanity. The first is the so-called revolt of nature. Echoing Freud, he comments on how industrial society requires, for its smooth functioning, the suppression of many impulses natural to early man. In order to be most effective, this suppression has to be internalized by the subject himself, and indeed, the educational system has been set up in order to inculcate it. But this entails a residue of internal conflict, and the masses are ever ready to revolt against the strictures of civilized society in order to reclaim nature. The fascist movement slyly takes advantage of such latent restive feelings. Second, Horkheimer chronicles the rise and decline of the individual, starting in ancient Greece and not neglecting the inflections introduced by Christianity, the rise of trade and manufactures during the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the advent of capitalism in early modernity. Under the conditions of mass culture now being promoted by modern industrial society, however, the individual is in terminal decline, unless some factor intervene to save it.

Philosophy is supposed to essay a constructive response to these dehumanizing trends, but, so far, has not done so. Horkheimer dismisses the French Counter-Enlightenment and German Romanticism as conservative ontological revivals that merely aggravate the disease. The path forward must be marked, not by anti-intellectualism, but by logic and a recognition of factual necessities. We are at an impasse because the two prevalent contradictory types of thinking, idealism and naturalism, have in common that they reduce everything to a monistic unity, either that of the spirit or that of nature. Either way tends to entrench man’s domination of nature, which as we have seen bears an ambivalent character (as man is himself a part of nature). Horkheimer: ‘The real difficulty in the problem of the relation between spirit and nature is that hypostatizing the polarity of these two entities is as impermissible as reducing one of them to the other. This difficulty expresses the predicament of all philosophical thinking.’ Therefore, he calls for a ‘self-critique of reason, the possibility [of which] presupposes, first, that the antagonism of reason and nature is at a catastrophic phase, and, second, that at this stage of complete alienation the idea of truth is still accessible.’

Thus, in the end, Horkheimer turns out to be optimistic in the face of the wrenching problems of his time, the post-war era when the cold war with the Soviets was just getting underway (in an apparent disagreement with his more pessimistic collaborator Theodor Adorno). How are we to evaluate this work as a whole? Strong on critique (especially when disposing of lightweights like William James and John Dewey), but weak on positive suggestions for resolving the crisis of the eclipse of reason. Yes, we can second his appeal to critical reason as the antidote (even if we would want a critique of a more radical and adequate kind than the Marxism of the Frankfurt School), but the author does nothing here to indicate how to proceed. This reviewer sees two looming difficulties that threaten to scuttle Horkheimer’s project. Absent a fundamental critique of modern empirical science and its mechanistic worldview, as we have known them since the seventeenth century, any such critique, no matter how well-meaning, is bound to find itself dead in the water. There cannot be space to enter into either here, but the late Husserl in his Crisis of the European Sciences and Heidegger with his concepts of technology and the forgetfulness of being constitute serious attempts in this direction. Horkheimer himself would be out of his depth were he to try anything of the sort. He is not by any means a speculative philosopher, much less a theologian. Moreover, it is doubtful that the idea of truth (in the full, objective philosophical sense) could be recovered—Horkheimer’s avowed desideratum—without a more sympathetic attitude towards the ancients than, one supposes, an atheist and a Marxist to be capable of. Here at this juncture, were Horkheimer to pursue his own thought to its last consequence, emerges the possibility of what the Jesuit historian and philosopher Michael Buckley, SJ, refers to as a prospective ‘negation of the negation’ at the close of his Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism. But this final reflection opens up a vast topic, impossible to review here. Suffice it to say that Buckley’s erudite and somewhat surprising and controversial scholarship on the origins of atheism in the early modern period is key.

[Kevin Merchant]

Eclipse of Reason is a philosophical critique of logical positivism, scientific absolutism, and the rapid rise in subjective reason over objective reason. Horkheimer discusses how the interpretation of reason from objective to subjective/bendable has exposed modern thought to be more susceptible to fascism. One of the major takeaways for me was how reason influences democracy, where what the majority believes to be true - becomes the truth and the norm owing to the subjective reasoning of the majority despite it being objectively unprovable/untrue. And because the immediate cultural setting shapes the thought processes of the society, it could pave way to democracy falling into fascism.
This book is difficult to read because of the language and the heavy philosophical references to different movements of that time and the past, which requires advanced philosophical context and knowledge (which I lacked to some extent).
It is very interesting though, coming from a scientific point of view, although its worries about science have largely resolved over the last decades.
(No ratings because I can't judge something that I didn't process completely. But if you have time and are ready to do lot of background reading, its pretty good! And even if you know the basics of these thoughts - like I did- then its a fruitful endeavor.)

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

All reviews - https://jdcloughblog.wordpress.com/20...

Horkheimer is my sort of thinker. He writes with the perfect combination of exceptional erudition and a burning passion that would make Nietzsche proud. The Eclipse of Reason is an unrelenting assault on the various disciplines that fall prey to what Horkheimer describes as subjective reason. That is, in brief, the reason by which the means for achieving predetermined or ‘self-evident’ ends, where objective reason is the testing of those ends. Horkheimer believes that virtually every element of society is suffering from the glorification of subjective reason as the only reason, which leads, he believes, to the inevitable descent into relativism, which in turn undermines the meanings of every action, and drags society kicking and screaming into a nihilistic abyss.

Indeed, there is not a lot of positivity to be found in Horkheimer’s writing; but this is to be expected from a work written by a German Jew in 1947. In Horkheimer’s view, expressed here and in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, WWII with it’s Holocaust and nuclear obliteration is the genuine culmination of the Enlightenment – the inevitable outcome of the rise and fall of reason. We placed our faith in science, and science repaid us in kind with the most ruthlessly effective means of wholesale destruction of human life ever imagined. This utterly destructive manifestation of our supposed “enlightenment” is the most stark, brutal, and painful testament to how lost we are as a species. It is in this context that Horkheimer writes; his continuing relevance suggests we are far from recovered from this nadir.

Horkheimer essentially believes that reason ate itself. In The Enlightenment it positioned itself – though not initially explicitly – as a challenger to the crown of religion as the leading source of cultural meaning-making. Calling on Weberian terminology, Horkheimer discusses how this lead to the world becoming increasingly demystified, the magic of the world was all being rationalised and explained away. As the philosophers and scientists who represent the clergy of the Church of Reason would have it, this demystification served to free humanity from irrational dogma and superstition – we have become Enlightened. Horkheimer suggests that, nice as this sounds, the rise of reason contained in its demystifying character the seed of its own downfall. By stripping the world of its magic – of its value-external-from-itself – reason accidentally denied the existence of any absolute values, truths, and meanings. Objective reason, in the hands of vastly influential sceptics such as Hume, sabotages itself by denying the existence of absolutes. Of course, Kant and so many who come after try to save this, but for Horkheimer, the damage has been done. In spite of Kant and others’ no doubt formidable input, meta-ethics – questions of what is good and bad – suffered throughout the 20th century and beyond with the blight of relativism, a startling inability to find fundamental justification for any view of the good without recourse either to the divine or to the ultimate replacement for ‘it is as God wills’: ‘it just is!’*

The result, for Horkheimer, is that as a society, we have given up on objective reason – it discredited religion and it discredited itself. To fill the void, reason itself falls prey to dogma: the belief that subjective reason, epitomised in the scientific method, somehow possesses universal truth. While most scientists today are more than aware of the profound limits of the scientific method (perhaps in part due to the awakening brought about by philosophical opposition to scientism), what’s key for Horkheimer is the way in which culture has made science its religion. This is science taken in a much broader meaning than simply the academic disciplines of the natural sciences. It’s perhaps better captured under the term positivism, which is the view that only that which is scientifically verifiable is worthy of consideration. This is an ideological perspective that remains relentlessly pervasive throughout academia and in society more broadly.

For me, Eclipse of Reason contained three key, interconnected elements of this positivistic outlook. The first is a discussion of positivism’s philosophical advocate – pragmatism. The second is an examination of this view and how it impacts our relationship to nature. Finally, Horkheimer views this outlook in terms of what it means for the individual. I would be writing for a long time if I were to go into detail regarding all of these elements. Needless to say, they add up to a quite merciless attack on dominant cultural values. For me personally, the most interesting element was the discussion around nature. Here he talks about how turning everything into means renders nature beyond its purpose to industry meaningless. This links to the subjugation of people’s own nature, which they must overcome in order to survive in society. I found this chapter profound and it links with a number of other important writings from the likes of Arendt and Heidegger to provide an important critique of our approach to nature. It’s perhaps more relevant in our time than ever.

Eclipse of Reason, then, is unfalteringly bleak in its outlook. Horkheimer masterfully and passionately diagnoses the sickness in our society, and his outlook is grim. This is perhaps a shortcoming – not only Horkheimer but many of those writing in the lose tradition of the Frankfurt School or critical theory – what use is diagnosis without a cure? It’s not an easy question to answer. Horkheimer and his like, however, exist as an absolutely essential foil to orthodox culture and theory. These are the kind of thinkers we need in order to know where we stand, to focus our minds in the right direction. For this, Horkheimer’s work is priceless.

*This isn’t to say there’s been no good ethics for the last 100 years or more. I found Løgstrup’s attempt at justifying kindness in phenomenological terms valiant. The issue is that reason throws into doubt any claim to the absolute.

[Murray Katkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic self-critical elucidation/reflection on reason in the mid twentieth century. I found Horkheimer’s asides on Neo-Thomism to be rather unexciting, but the work overall exhibits all Horkheimer’s (and the Frankfurt school’s) strengths as philosophers and social critics/theorists. Short but not at all lacking in content, it is a breeze to read, despite the inevitably dense and loaded language of the Frankfurt school writers. A pleasure and reminder of all the critical virtues Horkheimer has to offer us.

[Ömer Şentürk · Rating 2 out of 5]

kitapta tek bir fikir var. bu fikir, farklı olgular yardımıyla beş farklı başlık altında tekrar tekrar açıklanıyor. Metin, bir süre sonra kendisini tekrar etmeye ve okurunu yormaya başlıyor. Orhan Koçak'ın yazdığı önsöz de yaklaşık kitabın yarısı kadar. Bu kadar abartılı bir önsöz yazıp frankfurt okulu'na giriş dersi vermeye gerek var mıydı bilmiyorum.

[Trystan W · Rating 2 out of 5]

He presents a lot of arguments, all of which are wrong, and gives very little evidence for them. Well, he does give evidence, but this whole book is just one long non sequitur. Not very good.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

we were always where we are now.

[Alexander B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting text even to me as a non-philosopher. The main goal of the book is to defend metaphysics and push against "subjective reason", and more specifically positivism, which the approach to philosophy that recognizes only claims that can be verified through observation. Thus, this book comes on the heels of a longstanding fight between rationalism (which believes in the existence of certain "objective" truths that can be discovered by methods other than observation of nature) and empiricism. Of course, all of this should be read within the context of his membership in the Frankfurt School of the 1940s, which means that a lot of this philosophy was an attempt to explain the phenomenon of fascism and to criticize the philosophical trends that failed to properly anticipate it, all via a hybrid of pseudo-Marxist philosophy and contemporary psychoanalysis.

The first two chapters are devoted to a frontal attack on positivism and Dewey's Pragmatism. By abandoning any pretense to be able to answer questions of ethics, morality, and religion, (subjective) reason, it has in effect ceded the ground to the very archaic dogmatic forces that Enlightenment was a rebellion against. The pre-war period of liberal capitalism was a victory of the principle of self-interest, and Horkheimer sees a contradiction between that principle and the social conditions within industrialized nations. Once this contradiction is internalized by the masses, the cohesion of the nation can be maintained only through terror. The movement of the political constitution from principles founded in objective reason (justice, equality, happiness, democracy, property) to this single principle constitutes the contradiction between the principle of self-interest and the idea of reason that it is alleged to express.

Chapter 3 is concerned with the way that mass culture, as a consequence of the capitalist method of production, implies that the contradiction between high-sounding phrases and reality has become not abolished, but institutionalized. Civilization requires the ego to dominate both external nature and internal nature, but this "victory of civilization is too complete", which means that it necessarily leads to a contradiction: some humans don't surrender to authority with childlike trust, but with adult resentment at having to give up their individuality. And

The more loudly the idea of rationality is proclaimed and acknowledged, the stronger is the growth in the minds of people of conscious or unconscious resentment against civilization and its agency within the individual, the ego.

Every child's process of learning starts with mimesis — the repetition of the actions of others — but both individual education and cultural progress consists in the conversion of mimetic behavior into rational attitudes, which can only be done by critical examination of the inconsistencies between the ideals taught to them and the reality. If the mimetic impulse dominates, as it does in the capitalist conditions where all ideas come from the mass media, and not even the elite classes are given the opportunity to contemplate, then the dominated masses will inevitably express their rebellion through imitation. The response to laughter is laughter, to fury is fury, and to domination is domination; in in the language of psychoanalysis, the repressed mimetic impulse becomes "a destructive force exploited by the most radical systems of social domination".

Anyone who ever attended a National-Socialist meeting in Germany knows that speakers and audience got their chief thrill in acting out socially repressed mimetic drives, even if only in ridiculing and attacking racial enemies accused of impudently flaunting their own mimetic habits. The high spot of such a meeting was the moment when the speaker impersonated a Jew. He imitated those he would see destroyed.

Thus, in fascism, nature is not merely suppressed, but has its own rebellious potentialities incorporated into rationality.

The revolt of natural man—in the sense of the backward strata of the population—against the growth of rationality has actually furthered the formalization of reason, and has served to fetter rather than to free nature. In this light, we might describe fascism as a satanic synthesis of reason and nature—the very opposite of that reconciliation of the two poles that philosophy has always dreamed of. Such is the pattern of every so-called revolt of nature throughout history.

Finally, he points to Darwinism as one way to reconcile nature with man, due to its inherent humility towards nature. On the other hand, the positivist "popular Darwinism" subjugates nature to reason to such an extent that the concept of the survival of the fittest is merely the translation of the concepts of formalized reason into the vernacular of natural history", and reason becomes a mere biological organ. In order to facilitate the domination of nature, reason is demoted to being a part of nature. But now, by virtue of being part of nature, "reason is at the same time set against nature—the competitor and enemy of all life that is not its own". Thus, in popular Darwinism nature does not need the mind to speak for here; nature is ruler rather than ruled. In this way, "Instrumentalized subjective reason either eulogizes nature as pure vitality or disparages it as brute force, instead of treating it as a text to be interpreted by philosophy that, if rightly read, will unfold a tale of infinite suffering." The corrective task of philosophy is to reconcile nature and reason without committing the fallacy of equating them.

Chapter 4 walks through the history of individuality and how it gets suppressed by the ruling principle of self-interest and rationality.

The emancipation of the individual is not an emancipation from society, but the deliverance of society from atomization, an atomization that may reach its peak in periods of collectivization and mass culture.

Even political theory became infected with "the apologetic trend of total culture", so the workers' parties promoted "social organization and centralization as postulates of reason in the age of unreason". By being so tightly incorporation into the society, human has a suppressed individuality/particularity of reason. "A philosophy that makes labor an end in itself leads eventually to resentment of all labor." The next couple quotes relate this phenomenon to fascism:

The hypnotic spell that such counterfeit supermen as Hitler have exercised derives not so much from what they think or say or do as from their antics, which set a style of behavior for men who, stripped of their spontaneity by the industrial processing, need to be told how to make friends and influence people.

Industrial discipline, technological progress, and scientific enlightenment, the very economic and cultural processes that are bringing about the obliteration of individuality, promise—though the augury is faint enough at present—to usher in a new era in which individuality may re-emerge as an element in a less ideological and more humane form of existence.
Fascism used terroristic methods in the effort to reduce conscious human beings to social atoms, because it feared that ever-increasing disillusionment as regards all ideologies might pave the way for men to realize their own and society’s deepest potentialities; and indeed, in some cases, social pressure and political terror have tempered the profoundly human resistance to irrationality—a resistance that is always the core of true individuality.

Chapter 5 is quite separate from the rest of the book in that it explains the need for philosophy to rehabilitate objective reason. Just three representative quotes that suffice as a gist of the chapter:

The fundamental issue discussed in this book, the relation between the subjective and objective concepts of reason, must be treated in the light of the foregoing reflections on spirit and nature, subject and object. What has been referred to in Chapter 1 as subjective reason is that attitude of consciousness that adjusts itself without reservation to the alienation between subject and object, the social process of reification, out of fear that it may otherwise fall into irresponsibility, arbitrariness, and become a mere game of ideas. The present-day systems of objective reason, on the other hand, represent attempts to avoid the surrender of existence to contingency and blind hazard. But the proponents of objective reason are in danger of lagging behind industrial and scientific developments, of asserting meaning that proves to be an illusion, and of creating reactionary ideologies. Just as subjective reason tends to vulgar materialism, so objective reason displays an inclination to romanticism, and the greatest philosophical attempt to construe objective reason, Hegel’s, owes its incomparable force to its critical insight regarding this danger. As vulgar materialism, subjective reason can hardly avoid falling into cynical nihilism; the traditional affirmative doctrines of objective reason have an affinity with ideology and lies. The two concepts of reason do not represent two separate and independent ways of the mind, although their opposition expresses a real antinomy.

Philosophy is the conscious effort to knit all our knowledge and insight into a linguistic structure in which things are called by their right names. However, it expects to find these names not in isolated words and sentences—the method intended in the doctrines of oriental sects, and which can still be traced in the biblical stories of the baptizing of things and men—but in the continuous theoretical effort of developing philosophical truth.

Now that science has helped us to overcome the awe of the unknown in nature, we are the slaves of social pressures of our own making. When called upon to act independently, we cry for patterns, systems, and authorities. If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate—in short, the emancipation from fear—then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.

Overall, the attack on positivism is pretty familiar and is not ultimately convincing, but I was surprised by the accessibility of Horkheimer’s writing and the fascinating psychological aspects of his arguments. His analysis of the mimetic nature of mass culture, and the revolt of nature against reason as the foundation of fascism, is very interesting.

[Evrigon · Rating 4 out of 5]

İnsanın özgürleşmesiyle ilgili temel birkaç düşünceyi okura ezberletiyor. Felsefenin "katı yürekli" bu dünya için kaçınılmaz olduğunu her fırsatta hatırlatıyor. Gene de, bireyleşmeyi, özgürleşmeyi ele alırken Eric Fromm tarzı bir romantizme kayması, tartışmanın iki tarafına da razı olmayan benim için biraz uçucu geldi. Ancak entelektüel açıdan ritmi yüksek bir kitap. İkna olmasanız bile kayıtsız kalamayacağınız bir düşünce egzersizi söz konusu.

[Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "Eclipse of Reason" by Max Horkheimer is a profound critique of how modern society has transformed the concept of reason into a tool of domination, stripping it of its deeper moral and philosophical purpose. Horkheimer, writing during the turbulent 1940s as a philosopher and critical theorist, sought to understand how humanity had descended into the horrors of fascism and the dehumanization of modern industrial society. This exploration is both a historical analysis and a warning, with striking relevance to contemporary life. Through his work, Horkheimer delves into the evolution of reason, its division into subjective and objective forms, and its consequences on humanity's individuality, freedom, and relationship with nature. His ultimate plea is for a reclamation of reason as a force for human emancipation.

Horkheimer begins by dissecting reason into two forms: subjective and objective. Subjective reason, which has come to dominate modern thought, is primarily concerned with efficiency and practicality—it focuses on finding the best means to achieve specific ends, regardless of whether those ends are inherently good or just. This contrasts with objective reason, which historically sought universal truths and moral principles. For thinkers like Plato, reason was a guiding force that aligned human life with cosmic order and higher ideals such as justice and the greater good. Over time, however, reason was reduced to a tool for achieving arbitrary goals, devoid of its moral foundation. This shift, described as the "formalization of reason," has led to significant societal consequences. Justice, equality, and human rights have lost their grounding in universal truths, becoming subservient to dominant social and economic forces. This transformation has fostered a fractured society where self-interest prevails over collective well-being.

The focus on subjective reason has also prioritized utility and efficiency over the contemplative pursuit of truth. Pragmatism, a philosophy equating truth with practical success, has exacerbated this trend by reducing ideas to mere tools for action. In this framework, concepts like justice or goodness are valued only for their immediate utility, sidelining their intrinsic worth. As a result, society has commodified individuality and rebellion, turning them into predictable and hollow expressions. Even personal emotions have become superficial, contributing to a sense of alienation and despair. Industrialization has further entrenched this mechanistic view of reason, dividing intellectual and manual labor and justifying social hierarchies. This parallels the rise of totalitarian ideologies, which suppress critical thought and use reason to rationalize oppression.

In the second chapter, Horkheimer critiques modern society's reliance on science and technology as ultimate problem-solvers. The rise of positivism—a belief in science as inherently constructive—has led to a technocratic mindset that prioritizes efficiency and control over critical thinking and moral inquiry. Similarly, attempts to reconcile science with religion, as seen in neo-Thomism, often result in these institutions serving as tools of political and social control. Both positivism and neo-Thomism fail to foster genuine critical thought, instead perpetuating systems of domination. Horkheimer warns against the dogmatization of science, likening its uncritical glorification to the mysticism it once opposed. True progress requires a philosophy that embraces contradictions and remains open to change, rather than rigidly serving power or outdated absolutes.

The third chapter, "The Revolt of Nature," explores the consequences of humanity's domination over nature. Reason, when stripped of its deeper purpose, reduces people and the natural world to mere instruments of control. This pursuit of domination has led to a paradoxical situation: humanity's efforts to conquer nature have resulted in self-enslavement. Modern industrial society demands conformity and suppresses individuality, turning humans into reactive tools within a larger system. Economic and social forces, driven by blind mechanisms, erode personal freedom and creativity. Advertising and propaganda manipulate desires, creating an illusion of choice while reinforcing conformity. Fascist regimes, like Nazi Germany, exploited these dynamics by channeling repressed impulses into destructive ideologies. Horkheimer argues that true liberation lies in unshackling independent thought and reconciling humanity with the world, rather than perpetuating cycles of domination.

In the fourth chapter, "The Rise and Fall of the Individual," Horkheimer examines the decline of individuality in modern society. Individuality, historically tied to self-awareness and community, has been undermined by the industrial age's focus on material gain and short-term pleasures. Ancient Greece's harmonious social order and early Christianity's emphasis on the soul as central to human identity offered frameworks for individuality to thrive. However, the rise of capitalism and corporate-driven culture has eroded these foundations. Modern ideologies, shaped by mass culture, mold individuals into passive participants in a system that prioritizes efficiency over critical thought. This has led to catastrophic consequences, including the rise of fascism, which sought to obliterate individuality through terror. True individuality, Horkheimer asserts, resides in those who resist oppression and irrationality, often at great personal cost. Philosophy must amplify these silenced voices and challenge the systems that suppress individuality.

In the final chapter, "On the Concept of Philosophy," Horkheimer calls for a philosophy that transcends its modern limitations and reclaims its role as a guide for humanity. Modern philosophy, in its pursuit of abstract reasoning, has often ignored the contradictions and imbalances of society, leaving individuals vulnerable to manipulation and authoritarianism. Horkheimer argues that philosophy must critically engage with history and the present, embracing its role as humanity's conscience and memory. It should expose the tensions between ideals and reality, preventing blind conformity and oppressive systems. True progress requires a philosophy that challenges the misuse of reason and reclaims its potential to emancipate humanity from fear, superstition, and oppression.

In conclusion, Horkheimer's "Eclipse of Reason" is a profound critique of the modern world's descent into a utilitarian and oppressive form of rationality. The fragmentation of reason into subjective and objective forms has led to a cultural crisis, fostering nihilism and authoritarianism. Humanity's drive to dominate nature has resulted in self-alienation, while modern philosophy has failed to address these contradictions. Horkheimer's call for a self-critical philosophy that recognizes and confronts societal imbalances remains a powerful message for reclaiming reason as a force for human emancipation and fostering a more humane and liberated society.

[Philemon - · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, published in 1947, seems dated. It loudly laments the loss of a universally accepted "objective reason" that has been replaced by rationalization (aka, "subjective reason"). To Horkheimer, a world of firmly-held standards has yielded to one of relative moral chaos.

The author's warning cry seems exaggerated. There probably never was an objective reason. The task has always been to judge the sincerity and integrity behind anyone's views. There have always been liars and bullshitters to look out for. On the other hand, the rise of corporate power and its attendant sleezy culture over the past century has doubtless occasioned an overall decline in integrity and a concomitant increase in rationalization, or worse. The Trump phenomenon of the past six years hasn't helped.

The good news: we can probably expect that the battle to establish standards of reason that rise above self-interest will continue, and hope that, if we join the fight, truth may ultimately prevail.

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is as good an analysis of what came before it as it is a prophecy for what would come after. Horkheimer's central premise—that, after the Enlightenment, reason's divorce from any sort of objective, divine premise inevitably gave way to its instrumentalization—is something that should be apparent to anyone alive in 2018. Echo chambers and coherent-on-paper / absurd-or-amoral-in-practice justifications are everywhere. It's packed with insight and self-awareness (he knows writing a reasoned case against the misuse of reason is a precarious walk), and Horkheimer comes off more as a critic of all dogmatism than a proponent for any type of his own. In other words, for a critical theorist, he fulfills his role perfectly. Highly recommend it.