Abstract
Points of departure: we are immersed in a historical dead end. Wholesale warfare, ecological disasters, and human catastrophes everywhere. The main social and political trends of postmodern totalitarianism amount to an overall system of propaganda and total surveillance. And still we are made to believe that our modern Western civilization is the highest expression of progress, prosperity, and freedom.
Three main directions of the intellectual project of Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction: the analysis of spectacle, the criticism of providential enlightenment, and positive dialectics. The spectacle is the apotheosis of the culture industries, a total inversion of reality and of our existences. Providential enlightenment is a critique not only of the failure of enlightenment but of the mutilation of historical enlightenments. Positive dialectics signals a new era of intellectual engagement in the construction of our historical future.
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Notes
- 1.
“Die Worte ‘Geist,’ ‘Seele,’ ‘oder’ ‘Körper’… die abstrakte Worte… zerfielen mir im Munde wie mödrige Pilze.”
- 2.
“The great self” or “anima mundi.”
- 3.
Verse from Jean Giraudoux’s poem “Sodom and Gomorrah.”
- 4.
Reference to “Erfahrung und Armut.” Benjamin 1972, vol. II-1, p. 213.
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Subirats, E. (2018). Redefining Enlightenment. In: Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70784-6_1
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