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Quotes from Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment — Max Horkheimer

1895–1973 Germany

← All quotes by Max Horkheimer

3 quotes

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.

Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.

Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Max Horkheimer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.