The Frankfurt School was an institute founded in Germany in the 1920s that included thinkers like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and others. They critiqued concepts from the Enlightenment like rationality, progress, and domination of nature. They argued that the Enlightenment created its own "myths" and that modern society lives in an era of unfreedom and violence due to "instrumental rationality." They also critiqued mass culture and the culture industry, arguing it led to increasing uniformity and standardization of products that created artificial needs and passivity in individuals in order to reinforce the capitalist system.

1. Theodor Adorno
HTH 1002 History of Thought II
Kara Heitz

2. The Frankfurt School
• Institute for Social Research
• Marxist changing Marxism
• Critique of economic determinism
• Critique of capitalism, fascism, and
Soviet communism
• Why did capitalism endure?
• Part of the answer: look at culture
Affiliated Thinkers:
Max Horkheimer
Theodor Adorno
Herbert Marcuse
Friedrich Pollock
Erich Fromm
Leo Löwenthal
Siegfried Kracauer
Walter Benjamin

3. Small Group Discussion
“Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as
the advance of thought, has always aimed at
liberating human beings from fear and installing
them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is
radiant with triumphant calamity. Enlightenment’s
program was the disenchantment of the world. It
wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with
knowledge.” (A&H, “The Concept of Enlightenment”)
“Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-
imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use
one's understanding without guidance from another.
This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies
not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve
and courage to use it without further guidance from
another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] "Have courage
to use your own understanding!" — that is the motto
of enlightenment.” (Kant, What is Enlightenment?)
1. How has industrialization, scientific knowledge,
and technological advances made out world a
better place in the past 1-2 centuries?
2. How did the Enlightenment attempt to
“disenchant the world” and “install human
being as masters”?
3. How is the enlightened world is “radiant with
triumphant calamity”? What are the ways in
which the world is NOT a better place in the
20th and 21st centuries?
4. What kinds of “myths” or stories do we tell
ourselves in an “Enlightened” world – such as
stories about reason & rationality, progress,
domination of nature, etc.? What authorities do
we unquestioningly obey?

4. Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) &
Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)
• Critiquing Enlightenment
• Why do we live in an era of unfreedom & violence?
• Instrumental rationality
• Enlightenment created its own “myths”
• Critiquing Mass Culture
• Ideology
• Freud and desire/pleasure
• Culture Industry

6. Highest Grossing Films of 2017
1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Disney,
$1,331,699,278
2. Beauty and the Beast, Disney,
$1,263,521,126
3. The Fate of the Furious,
Universal, $1,236,005,118
4. Despicable Me 3, Universal,
$1,034,799,409
5. Jumanji: Welcome to the
Jungle, Sony Pictures,
$936,677,719
6. Spider-Man: Homecoming,
Sony Pictures, $880,166,924
7. Wolf Warrior 2, United
Entertainment, $874,325,439
8. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,
Disney, $863,756,051
9. Thor: Ragnarok, Disney,
$854,229,371
10. Wonder Woman, Warner Bros.,
$821,847,012

7. The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception
• What happens to cultural products produced
by the Culture Industry?
• Increasing uniformity and standardization
of mass culture
• Only an appearance of diversity

8. The Culture Industry
• What happens to individuals under the Culture Industry?
• Passivity
• “Conformity has replaced consciousness”
• Creates fake psychological needs that can only be satisfied
by more CI products
• Illusion of individuality
• Role of advertising

9. The Culture Industry
• What role does pleasure play in the reinforcing
of the capitalist system?
• Pleasure makes us forget reality
• Misery & violence seen as individual not
structural
• Desire for political change stifled

10. The Culture Industry
• Some “departures from the norm”
allowed
• Resistance co-opted by CI
• Pleasures stronger than desire
for resistance
• Are we cultural dupes or are we
complicit in our own manipulation?