Notes on Dialectic of Enlightenment, ch. 1

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944, published 1947) is an account of the endogenous failures of modernity as rooted in the core presuppositions of enlightenment rationality. “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to myth.” Not a romantic call for a return to myth then; rather an attempt to diagnose the pathologies of the whole complex arising from this abstract opposition and a dialectical progression rooted in fear and a correlative desire for mastery.

In fact what would need to change is the structure of society itself. This is a philosophical analysis of a series of problems that philosophy cannot solve. It calls for the abolition of the principle of exchange and the division of labor predicated on class antagonism.

Régis’ Refutation of Spinoza

Pierre-Sylvain Régis was a significant systematizer and proponent of Cartesian philosophy. In 1691 he published in three volumes the Cours entier de philosophie, ou Systeme general selon les principes de M. Descartes, contenant la logique, la metaphysique, la physique, et la morale. His work can be seen as a more faithfully Cartesian competitor to the occasionalist vector developed by Malebranche and Louis la Forge; the nature of ideas, the metaphysical status of causal relations, and the limits and possibility of knowledge of external things all remained matters of heated debate. But in the background of that whole debate, naturally, lay the specter of Spinoza. Eventually, of course—who hasn’t had this happen to them?—Régis was accused of Spinozism by his occasionalist rivals, and so deemed it worthwhile to clarify just how non-Spinozist he really was. That turns out to be: pretty non-Spinozist!