critical theory
Once upon a time…
Though he [Nietzsche] discerned both the universal movement of sovereign Spirit (whose executor he felt himself to be) and a “nihilistic” anti-life forece of the enlightenement, his pre-Fascist followers retained only the second aspect and perverted it into an ideology”
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (44)
As a grandfather sits down to begin to read a story to his grandson, the air is filled with excited anticipation, and as he starts reading, “Once upon a time…”, there is a clear break with reality, as in a dissolve sequence in a film, and with it the space for an alternate reality has been cleared. As Horkheimer and Adorno (H&A) understand the enlightenment there is a similar break at play, and one that transitions from a powerful, sovereign nature to a rational, autonomous, self-directing individual with the confidence to use their reason to control, manipulate, and ultimately dominate nature itself. As H&A read Nietzsche, and as the leading quote shows, Nietzsche was painfully aware of both the power of nature, the power of our instinctual, natural spirit to foster the conditions that will lead to a flourishing life, and he was aware of the sense of power one gains from subjecting this very nature and spirit to the yoke of one’s subjective will. The displays of this very power over nature, through vows to celibacy, etc. was one of the reasons why, as Nietzsche pointed out, the powerful nobles and aristocrats would be in awe of priests and the power and strength they must muster to control and dominate the nature they allowed themselves to get caught up with. The concern Nietzsche had, and one that H&A were able to see come to fruition, was that the second sense of power would win out over the first. This is the power of controlling nature, of controlling society and peoples as objects for mathematical, scientific, and industrial control. Unfortunately for society, as H&A read events in 1947, the “universal movement of sovereign Spirit” had been left behind in the march of enlightenment progress.
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