/lit/ - Literature

basically everything's shit and you can pick their critiques of things you don't like and ignore the rest :)

>>15580742
I got the general impression that they didn't despise the enlightenment as such, but that it took a wrong turn along the way and failed because of it.

>>15580742
Read Gramsci

>>15580760
Horkheimer and adorno had different similar conceptions of it but different programs for the FS. H wanted to rescue the enlightment with reason wheter A went beyond.

>>15580742
>Let me get one thing straight. One of the main theses, at least according to Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse (the leading figures), is that the cause of the Holocaust, Nazism, Nationalism, capitalism, and ALSO the failure of communism in Soviet Russia, is all rooted in rationality, "science", positivism, and the rejection of religion and "feelings".
So they agreed with Guenon?

Marxism is a religion

>>15580742
Yes, until Habermas comes around and all the bad stuff comes from the rejection of liberal-democratic communicative reason.

It's not rationality as such, but the misguided ideology that surrounds it that views it as infallible. The Enlightenment project effectively distilled the human experience into pure rationality, leading to systems that no longer, in effect, viewed humans as anything other than automations. It's precisely that sort of thinking that allows one to "rationalize" irrational processes, such as life and death itself. In other words, the cult of rationality in turn lowered human dignity, rather than raised it, and caused human suffering, rather than alleviate it.

The Frankfurts are most certainly NOT arguing that rationality itself is the problem. This is a willed misreading by right wingers. They are not arguing that science and rationality are inherently evil or should be done away with, they're arguing that the tradition that the west came to appreciate and implement rationality has turned out to be deeply flawed.

>>15580908
and their solution is an even more "rational", soulless, materialist ideology?

>>15580932
No? Where are you getting that from?

>>15580932
That seems like an absurd leap to make based on anon's post.

>>15580742
No. The main argument Adorno and Horkheimer state in their book The Dialectic of the Enlightenment is that the Enlightenment has become myth itself.

A myth explains the world with reference to the myth, myth becomes the absolute truth. If you place science in the place of myth, you get the same effect, it is just totalitarianism with a different myth which justifies it.

In the example of Enlightenment it is rationality that is used to explain the whole world, organizing and systematizing everything there is in categories to be used. This leaves no room for a different perspective or critique, making the system of rationality totalitarian to be used for the ends the ruling class thinks best.

Instead rationality should be used to criticise these structures of power, not just accepting the rationality it is based on as the ultimate truth.

In their book they base their argument around the culture industry. In their view, culture is produced and organized in the same way as material products are made in capitalist society. Through this the culture of capitalist society perfectly resembles the underlying capitalist structure, instead of being critical of it.

Now no one uses their rationality anymore to be critical, it is only used to reproduce the societal structures that are in place (i.e. the capitalist society or communist society). The Enlightenment has failed, it has not made us free, it has chained us to the power structures that are in place.

>>15580742
>[the cause of our problems] is all rooted in rationality, "science", positivism, and the rejection of religion and "feelings".

Okay, so NO! Not at all...

Critical theory does not fault science or rationality per se, but the stories derived from applying that rationality to irrational spaces.

It was the first foray into a Humian line of philosophy that says that if induction and deduction only works on stories that are complete from a particular viewpoint CREATED by the story's structure, then if the story is structured wrong, rationality can't find a way out.
It is not rationality that is at fault; it is the use of rationality on non-conservative spaces or spaces where the conservation law changes. Lemme explain.
The Market assumes that when Buyers and Sellers in the Money Space trade, that there is a conservation law somewhere, but what we find is that since selling money for more money later (a loan) or selling the company as if it were a product (stocks) or paying a wage instead of dividing profit equally (labor) that the Money Space is no longer conserved in mass (the money supply always sources) conserved in rate of exchange (the macro money distribution between all Buyers and Sellers doesn't balance) or conserved in identity (everyone is supposed to be both a Buyer and a Seller but then what is the Society?)

Therefore, the application of Rationality to a non-conservative space is nonsense, and the creation of fake conservations (supply and demand, competition, free market) reduces to nothing but exploitation, as envisioned by our MORAL stories of right and wrong, or our INSTINCTUAL stories of letting people exploit us.

Since the money space is Scalar Diverged and Curled, there can be no conservation law, and hence no rationality that isn't just bullshit made up to deceive.

Get it?

Of course they were totally wrong about Marxism because they didn't realize that adversarial realtionships that frame stories in contradiction to something institutionalize that something in both sides of the adversarial relationship.

So don't waste your time on either the Austrian or the Frankfurt school because both are bullshit.

>>15580970
>Okay, so NO! Not at all...
Go back.

>>15580949
>Instead rationality should be used to criticise these structures of power, not just accepting the rationality it is based on as the ultimate truth.
Ironically these critiques of the power structure become a power structure in their own right.

>>15580976
Yeah, which is why you read Walter Benjamin instead of Adorno.

>>15580970
Listening to 20th century Marxists talk about economics is like listening to pop stars talk about classical music.

>>15580993
Or really any Marxist, for that matter. And no, Marx's reading of classical economists was not good.

>>15580976
Which is why theorists as Marcuse have explicitly argued that you should always keep making new critical theories. And yes, read Benjamin.

>>15581022
Struggle sessions

>>15580742
Adorno & Horkheimer hit the nail on the head about the culture industry I will say that much

>>15580941
I'm no making it based on his post, retard.

>>15581091
No, you're clearly not basing it on anything.

>>15580742
They've used reactionary framework to promote communism. Part of the reason for it was the fact that they've had enough integrity to recognise that what 1800's communists thought was obvious - that is that communism is the natural endgame of humanity wasn't true and a lot of ideas communists believed it(equality of mankind being a good example of that) was just a pipedream that was completely destroyed by the positivist science that they thought would "side" with them. As such they're not communists philosophically, they don't exactly believe in much of what marxists said, but they do like the idea of the communist project in general. You can see that from the fact that communists at the start of 20th century slowly started dropping the old utilitarian-like rhetoric and started creating mythologies.

>>15581104
Materialist fags like you often like to claim they are not one.

>>15581136
I don't think that word means what you think it means

>>15580993

If we only listened to classical musicians we wouldn't have rock music.

That is the right wing in a nutshell: "Shut up and listen to the 'experts' that know what is good for you," while they fleece us out of everything we have.

>>15580760
>failed because of it
how did the enlightenment fail?

>>15581167
I don't give a shit what you think nigger, try getting more educated.

>>15581173
>If we only listened to classical musicians we wouldn't have rock music.
You say it like it's a bad thing.

>>15581213
>mad for being called out

>>15581300
is that how you cope when you hear me fuck your wife every night?

>>15581192
The quick/simplified Marxist answer to this is that the project of the enlightenment as found in Rousseau, Kant, etc. was the universal freedom promised by bourgeois society. The promise of bourgeois society, i.e. the ability for every individual to participate in society on the basis of their labor, came into contradiction with industrial forms of production & capital. Under capitalism (the contradiction of bourgeois society and industrial modes of production, or the contradiction of labor and capital), the freedom promised by the enlightenment and bourgeois society can no longer be achieved, therefore it becomes the task of the proletariat to step in and transform society qualitatively where the bourgeoisie have become necessarily unable to do so. Socialism as the fulfillment of the promises of enlightenment

>>15580908
>viewed humans as anything other than automations
Liberalism was anything but this. But even if you disagree, the idea that it led to the holocaust is ridiculous, especially considering that similar things happened under communism.

The entire criticism of the Enlightenment is backward rationalised because the post-Enlightenment failures clearly showed humans to not be the angels that Marx and other leftists philosophers believed us to be.

>>15580949
>The Enlightenment has failed, it has not made us free, it has chained us to the power structures that are in place.
Yet we're better off than the rest of the world who is living under different paradigms. How are you intellectual Marxists so out of touch with reality?

>>15581173
Ironic the Marxist above you literally said
>So don't waste your time on either the Austrian or the Frankfurt school because both are bullshit.

>>15581399
>System has serious failures = nothing good came from it
Read, Jesus Christ

>>15581386
>the idea that it led to the holocaust is ridiculous, especially considering that similar things happened under communism.
The Frankfurts literally say the USSR has the same problems. Fucking read books before you talk about them.
>angels that Marx and other leftists philosophers believed us to be.
This is just embarrassing. Read the books before you post bullshit

>>15580742
I believe that is the conclusion of any thinking man. Rationality and logic isn’t real, it’s mechanical. With that being said, religion and “feelings” can be easily directed by rationality and logic, which is the issue. How can you be genuine and free of ideology? Once you adopt ideology you are doomed to fail because reality is always changing.

Adorno never really cared about the Enlightenment and thought it was all bullshit, unlike Horkheimer like another poster said here. Adorno was always more Nietzschean than the others, so he came up with idea of negative dialectics as a variation of Hegelian dialectics that privileges difference and the negative over dialectical unity, the particular over the holistic whole.

>>15581561
There's no exterior to ideology, nor is it merely just a belief system: it's an automatic orientation to the world, a base frame of interpreting and relating to the world. This is the whole problem with rationalism: it presents itself as being objective and free from ideology.

>>15580742
OP is completely unable to properly a philosophy book without strawmanning the shit out of it like a 17 year old philosophy undergrad edgelord

>>15581616
properly read*

I went Marx - Lenin - Fanon - Mao - Gramsci - Althusser - Poulantzas.


who should I read next?

>>15581664
Lukacs and Adorno seem like pretty natural steps, then you can read Benjamin and DeBord, then Baudrillard, Jameson, Negri

>>15581664

Moishe Postone's analysis of Marxs Kapital if you actually want to understand Marxist theory of value instead any of the above mentioned pseuds.

>>15581690
sounds like Moishe is a lot like burawoy and braverman. i'll check him out


>>15581682
those fellas are pretty good i'll check them out again

>>15581173
We should always meet uncrystallized originality with open hostility.

>>15580742
>Finally reading the "Frankfurt School"
is this even possible

>>15580742
They were all pretty much the hipsters of their time. Benjamin too, once you get to reading him more. You can see this in their criticisms on modern art developments. Their writing is closer to cacophony than proper literature.

>>15580908
It is amazing to the extent that Jews and left wingers will go to find any reason except Jews being the cause of the holocaust.
The Warburgs and Jews drafting the treaty of Versailles is what caused the holocaust, not the fucking enlightment.
Humans are animals, and if you keep poking an animal with a stick it will eventually bite. End of.

>>15582046
>>15582046
>Germans starving while Jews circulate money between themselves and investing in their own industries completely cut off from industries like agriculture development because its not as profitable
>Get killed

This must be the work of Immanuel Kant

>>15582066
>circulate money between themselves and investing in their own industries completely cut off from industries like agriculture development because its not as profitable
You just described America in 2020.

>>15581509
You lack basic critical thinking. If a country suffers from, say, high levels of crime, and you claim that problem is the result of an attribute particular to that country, e.g. that the inhabitants are highly religious, then the fact that some religious countries don't have high levels of crime shows that your theory is wrong.

>>15581526
Seething little brainlet, I'm virtually copy pasting my ideas from the books I'm reading.

>>15581561
So you believe rationality caused the holocaust? How do you explain holocaust-type events throughout history?

>>15580742
so basically proto-postmodernism? i mean they weren't trads, they didn't want to go back to before the french revolution.

>>15582440
it's just the authoritarian personality at work, goy. you know, that thing that makes people hate jews for no reason whatsoever other than pure hatred

post a single sentence from "jargon of authenticity" where adorno says that.

>>15580932
I don't recall le sad chubby germand writing that

>>15580850
You don't know what a religion is then.

>>15580742
Who is the greatest scholar or critic who writes about the Frankfurt School?

>>15586381
Yeah. Religions are good. Marxism is an expression of phenotypical inferiority and a lack of culture.

And he's absolutely right. When you realize that all "reals" are just the things that a certain privileged and dogmatic church-like dialectic takes to feel the strongest about, you can be sure that feels > reals.

>>15587543
Dumb reactionary who can't imagine that poor people have conscious subjectivity too, and just shuts down any thought about it with a childish diagnosis: "you're just jealous!" What are my other deep-seated issues I didn't know about Dr Freud?

Marxism is about how toiling endlessly in a system of purposeless and indefinite expansion of production is dreadful and nauseating

>>15580742
Good posts ITT, but I think that it's worth pointing out that after Germany's defeat in WW2 people blamed the Holocaust on the German philosophical traditition be it for their extreme rationality (like some anons have already explained here) or their complete irrationality (Nietzsche, romanticism, the Heidegger/Hölderlin/Hitler triad, etc.)

>>15587485
Literally every single book I read about history, sociology, or political history gives the same account: "Frankfurt School thinkers believed capitalism and positivism were bad because so and so. While some of these criticisms were justified, in general, their theory doesn't have any legs to stand on because so and so." The whole thing is pretty simple to dismiss so that's probably why nobody has bothered with a long analysis.

>>15587660
>thing happens
>find thing to blame, no matter what
The amount of backward rationalising is astonishing.

>>15581022
But Marcuse himself, with his repressive tolerance and the notion of an elite (definitely not class, no no) of intellectuals will be the most susceptible to becoming a non-critical self-serving power structure.

>>15580932
No they don't really have a solution

>>15587839
Name 3 of those books with reference to page numbers

>>15580742
marxism and the left as whole really has had to resort to simply critiquing with no alternative to what they are critiquing, simply because their actual alternatives are such abysmal failures, the far/radical right has taken advantage of this and absorbed their analysis of capitalist and liberal society into their own alternatives because if you actually look for an it in what the left critiques you'll only fascist/reactionary beliefs that are practical counters

>>15588013
you literally cannot have a solution to something which has never been solved. Critique of Marxism as "it's not good enough!" are always brainlet tier because they suppose that if only Marxist philosophy could satisfy their unexplained, unspecified and imprecise desire for a "better" solution they would be on board with it, as if they were in a store shopping for an ideology.

You would understand this if you understood in any way how knowledge is constructed. There is no apriori knowledge of how to overcome capitalism within capitalism, because overcoming capitalism means acting outside of it, and apriori knowledge can only be analytical; contained within the system. You can only take overcoming capitalism as an apriori synthetic judgement and then try to invent something on your feet.

we have threads about jung, we have threads about heidegger, adorno, about orienal gibberish, about nick land and even taleb.
the absolute state.

>>15580908
>durrr liberal rationalism bad
>we need TRUE rationalism that will only exist in a anarcho-communist commune!

>>15580908
>durrr liberal rationalism bad
>we need TRUE rationalism that will only exist in a anarcho-communist commune!

actually hilarious they think fascism was a result of enlightenment rationalism and not a complete rebellion against it

>>15588331
>actually hilarious they think fascism was a result of enlightenment rationalism and not a complete rebellion against it
no, the Frankfurt school thinkers did not think that "fascism was a result of enlightenment" as if Hitler was some kind of logical-rational conclusion to Hegel or something. Go read The Dialectic of Enlightenment. It is about how enlightenment is a myth-destroying process, but it itself is a myth, which has a whiplash effect, creating a vacuum of mythlessness to a myth-craving people, which fascism stepped in to fill.

>>15588375
its almost like fascism was the only viable solution to reunite human authenticity with industrialization and mass society while the left stumbles around in the dark trying to find an actual solution to the problems they critique

leftists fail to realize that their deology is a myth like no other it just does away with the ones that actually have any kind of bearing to people, same as liberalism

>>15588375
(not him) adorno, like berlin, thought fascism to be a DIRECT outcome of rationalism, for the sole reason it distinguish between true and false things. he deems this attitude to be illegitimately dimissive towards false things, not because the are overlooked, but because they are considered false, which to him is anti-liberal and fascist. the basis of all this "reasoning" of adorno's is that there is no actual truth and falsehood. and in any case it's not up to rationality to find them.

>>15580742
How do Gramsci's ideas fit into all this?

>arbitrary moral highground for me, not for thee

>>15588375
>USSR and PRC are global superpowers
I thought Marxism and communism were about improving life and remove alienation, not become superpowers with starving, depressed populations.

>>15588415
It's almost like you don't know what Fascism actually is and bought into their own propaganda.

>>15588267
>their actual alternatives are such abysmal failures,
>you'll only fascist/reactionary beliefs that are practical counters
Yes, that´s why we historically saw fascist and reactionary superpowers lasting for decades and communistic states barely surviving death of their first leaders.

>>15588986
You need strenght to achieve goals, pure moralizing will get you nowhere. Also people, according to their own opinions, lived better, less alienated under Soviets than they do under oligarchs.

>>15588375
>USSR became global superpower

You mean ex-USSR?

Russian Empire and China were superpowers before Marxist experimentation on people. We can't say that about other commie states that are/were complete shitholes or even failed states.

>>15589139
Both Russian Empire and China got humiliated by the fucking Japs before communist seized power. Fucking ingorant redditors...

>>15589096
>Also people, according to their own opinions, lived better, less alienated under Soviets
Sources?

As a citizen of post-Soviet country, I see this statement as a pure cherry-picking. Even for dumb people Soviet Union was a shithole with deficit of needful goods like toilet paper. For intellectuals, it was an intellectual prison.

Only people engaged in government benefited from Sovok.

>>15589166
Russian-Japanese war took place a decade before Red Arses seized power. You should check your privileges.

>>15589176
>Sources?
It´s common knowledge amongst people. Here are some numbers from pro-western/liberal opinion-analysis company.

>>15589202
I mean real sources, not Russian. Russians are so imperialist that they would love Sovok even if they never saw toilet paper there, but they got all those "landses" and "greatness".

Give me numbers from Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, where people are not such retarded imperialists as Russians.

>>15589227
>I mean real sources, not from anti-communist company doing research in the most numerous nation that lived under (Russian slang word for Soviet union)
Would this calm your aching anus?

>>15589263
Also here´s another one debunking that it was the "people engaged in government" who benefited from socialism, because politicians were those who benefited the most.

>>15589263
So, how does your picture should prove that plebs loved communist rule?

It just shows failed capitalist reforms in a bunch of ex-Sovok countries. When you destroy economics and free market spirit for almost 100 years, it's not so easy to start off making money.

Also, give me real stats, not what plebs think of their Soviet "wealth".

>>15588375
Isn't communism a money-less, stateless society, where private property is abolished? Is this the case in China? What about North Korea? Lol ridiculous.

Why was Adorno so butthurt by jazz?

>>15588415
>its almost like fascism was the only viable solution to reunite human authenticity with industrialization and mass society

no such thing, which is why fascism remains a uniquely modern phenomenon, and doomed to fail.

>>15589382
>When you destroy economics and free market spirit for almost 100 years, it's not so easy to start off making money.
Stop coping, redditor. Capitalism alienates people, it made people distrust each other; it engages in constant process of atomization. It also makes people economically insecure, stressed out and afraid of starting families.
>Also, give me real stats, not what plebs think
What "plebs" think are the "realest stats" there are.

>>15580976
hmm maybe if there was a word for this, hmmm maybe it starts with a d?

>>15580949
>In the example of Enlightenment it is rationality that is used to explain the whole world, organizing and systematizing everything there is in categories to be used. This leaves no room for a different perspective or critique
your feels, your "african witches can control lightning" has no value.
>This leaves no room for a different perspective or critique
oh noes I have to base my arguments in facts and reason the Hoorrror I'm being oppressed!
>making the system of rationality totalitarian to be used for the ends the ruling class thinks best
this doesn't follow.
all these people should be snuffed out. if you reject rationality you reject any basis on which dialogue can be based. the only thing left is violence. lets see who stands again, the science is oppressive crowd or those who insist on the most accurate, rational, honest thinking possible.

>>15580976
an even more vicious one, no doubt where you can't even resort to facts and evidence and reason.
>science is oppressive which is why you should just take my word for it instead this is liberation!
disgusting subhumans.

>>15590424
>Stop coping, redditor. Capitalism alienates people, it made people distrust each other; it engages in constant process of atomization. It also makes people economically insecure, stressed out and afraid of starting families.
this screams 20 year old redditor

>>15589176
Why take polls seriously? Just look at contemporary America and think of how many of them would cheer at their house being burned down by rioting negros. Normies are just biomass that will believe anything.

>>15581109
insightful post. the left only turned against science after it disproved them.

>>15581173
>That is the right wing in a nutshell: "Shut up and listen to the 'experts' that know what is good for you,"
weird projection, totally backwards

>>15580742
how do they explain away the fact that the germans were explicitly anti-enlightenment? they were followers of nietzsche and hegel and heidegger, and believed in vague metaphysical ideas of racial essentialism. they chased away the vienna circlers who btfo them and their irrational philosophers. The germans were beat by america and britain, followers of enlightenment principles.

>>15591457
They just ignore facts.

>>15580742
>Let me get one thing straight. One of the main theses, at least according to Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse (the leading figures), is that the cause of the Holocaust, Nazism, Nationalism, capitalism, and ALSO the failure of communism in Soviet Russia, is all rooted in rationality, "science", positivism, and the rejection of religion and "feelings".
So they agree with Heidegger?

>>15591230
>pro-communist post
>20 year old
That implication smells like amerifat.

>>15591632
it doesn't. you believing it certainly smells of not only 20 year old commie, but also american.

>>15588295
Sure beats threads lusting after Megan Boyle/Rupi Kaur/J. K. Rowling/flavor of the week contemporary female author and forced memes like "The Big Book of Reddit"

why did Adorno hate jazz?

>>15591654
You aren´t fooling anyone, debil. Everyone knows that communism is boomer thing here.

>>15590334
Knockoff jazz, distracting from the classics, partitions are more interresting anyway.

>>15581664
Lukács ontology of social being

>>15581561
>How can you be genuine and free of ideology? Once you adopt ideology you are doomed to fail because reality is always changing.

damn, thankfully i´m apolitical

>>15581940
not from a socialist

did they at least blame Hegel for causing all this madness?

>>15588415
If it's the only viable solution, then why did it crash and burn so hard? Why does the left keep winning if they are wrong?

>>15593029
yeah was he just listening to bad euro-jazz? they've still only produced a handful of true greats

>>15580932
They were already at the solution. Frankfurts did not have good intentions. They weren't whining about modernity so much as reveling in how to exploit it. They were consumed with contempt.

>>15590334
Like all Marxists, he was butthurt about all developments that came after industrialism. Movies as well. He thought movies made people stupider because, according to his retarded ass, they overwhelmed the senses and deprived the audience of their imagination.

Marxists are, just as Nietzsche described them, the dumbest people in society pretending to be the most intelligent.

>>15580834
YES. This is what I've been trying to communicate to you neo-nazis.

Your """"enemy"""", da joos, neo-marxists are literally just fascists. For the love of god read a book.