The Routledge Guidebook to Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment

by Espen Hammer, Fred Rush

Composed whilst in exile in the United States during the Second World War, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment is the most famous and influential text of the Frankfurt School. A theoretical exploration of history, modernity, and culture, its core warning of crisis and regression remains highly relevant today. However, it is also a notoriously complex work of philosophy.

The Routledge Guidebook to Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment is the first fully contextualized introduction to this foundational text in philosophy and social theory, addressing its central themes, reception, and influence. The Guidebook

The conceptual and intellectual background to Dialectic of Enlightenment The ideas, themes, and arguments of the text The reception and legacy of Dialectic of Enlightenment. A comprehensive and clearly written guide to this important text, The Routledge Guidebook to Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment will be invaluable to students coming to the work for the first time, as well as more advanced students and researchers in philosophy, politics, sociology, and the history of ideas.

252 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication October 27, 2025

About the author

Espen Hammer is a Norwegian philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at Temple University and has held visiting professorships at the New School for Social Research and the University of Pennsylvania. Between 1998 and 2007 he was a Lecturer and later Reader at the University of Essex. He currently lives in Philadelphia.

Hammer's main focus is on the post-Kantian European tradition of philosophy. Most of his work deals with questions of ethics, politics and subjectivity.