The Dialectic of Enlightenment Reconsidered

In the darkest days of the Second World War Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno overturned the wisdom of modern times by suggesting that the idea of a constant struggle between Enlightenment and myth overlooked an unacknowledged identity between these alleged eternal combatants. This paper will briefly explain this claim and examine it in its historical context, consider the responses of the subsequent generation to the first iteration of Dialectic of Enlightenment with its radical negation of this tradition, before concluding with a contemporary evaluation of its remaining relevance.