Fall Samhain Moon
It was wet and chill, but the red and gold fruit warmed me as it slid off. The raspberry canes grabbed at me as I moved among them as if wanting me to stay awhile longer, to chat or linger. Once in a while I threw an over ripe berry over the fence to Rigel who watched my progress with head moving up and down, patient, waiting.
Before the berry picking I spent a couple of hours reading 34 pages, the introductory chapter to Adorno and Horkheimer’s, Dialectic of Enlightenment. As this MOOC moves toward the end, we come closer to the current time and to thinkers with whom I’m familiar not through academics but through the politics of the 1960’s. Adorno and Horkheimer are part of the Frankfurt School philosophers, most of whom emigrated to the US during WW II. I was most familiar with the work of their colleague Herbert Marcuse, but I have come to know the work of Jurgen Habermas, too.
This is dense material and the argument is provocative, far from obvious. In essence Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the enlightenment has become an instrument of oppression. Some characterize the enlightenment as a movement designed to make the earth a home for humanity. Instead of moving toward freedom and liberation the focus on repeatable natural laws and the tools of technology enabled control and domination, both of the planet and citizens of nation-states. I’ll do better with this at another time, but this is heart of it.
