23 quotes
Enlightenment does nothing more than eavesdrop on likely wolves in their dressing rooms, where they put on and take off their sheep’s clothing.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
Every active deed is etched in the matrix of passivity.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
Bourgeois morality tries to maintain an illusion of altruism, whereas in all other areas bourgeois thinking has long since assumed a theoretical as well as an economic egocentrism.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
Our lethargic modernity certainly knows how to “think historically,” but it has long doubted that it lives in a meaningful history.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
Psychologically speaking, enlightenment always meant an advance in the training of mistrust — in the construction of an ego concerned about self-assertion and control of reality.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1983)
Socialization through schooling, as it takes place here, and in Western societies, in general, is a priori stupefaction
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
In the twilight of late enlightenment, the insight gains shape that our "praxis," which we always held to be the most legitimate child of reason, in fact, represents the central myth of modernity.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
Because knowledge is power, every hegemonic power challenged by “another knowledge” must try to stay in the center of knowledge. However, not every power is the right center for every knowledge. Reflective knowledge cannot be separated from its subject.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
… undermined by the need for seriousness ...
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
The question about “good origins” becomes the crux for enlightenment. It becomes more and more clear that this idea of origin has not a temporal but a Utopian reference. The Good is still nowhere to be found, except in the wishful human spirit.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
Crosswise to all political fronts, it is the “ego” in society that offers the most resolute resistance against the decisive enlightenment. Scarcely anyone will put up with radical self-reflection on this point, not even many of those who regard themselves as enlighteners.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1983)
The argumentum ad personam, is strongly disapproved of in the “academic community.” Respectable critique meets its opponent in its best form; critique honors itself when it overwhelms its rival in the full armor of its rationality.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
The subject of a radical ego enlightenment cannot be socially identified with certainty — even though the procedures of this enlightenment are anchored in reality.
In this point, the majority of societies seem to strive for a conscious nonenlightenment.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1983)
An ideology critique that does not clearly accept its identity as satire can, however, easily be transformed from an instrument in the search for truth into one of dogmatism. All too often, it interferes with the capacity for dialogue instead of opening up new paths for it.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1983)
Diogenes of Sinope … was also the first to recognize the danger embodied in Plato, that the school will subjugate life, that the artificial psychosis of "absolute knowledge" wants to destroy the vital connection between perception, movement, and understanding.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
The only loyalty to enlightenment consists in disloyalty. This can be partly understood from the position of its heirs, who look back on the “heroic” times and are necessarily more skeptical of the results. To be an heir always carries a certain “status cynicism” with it, as is well known from stories about the inheritance of family capital.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
There probably has to be a worldview for practical men who must be strong enough to get their hands dirty in political practice without getting dirty themselves, and even if they do, who cares? And a second worldview for youths, simpletons, women, and sensitive souls, for whom “purity” is just the right thing. One could call it a division of labor among temperaments.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
“Philosophical” ideology critique is truly the heir of a great satirical tradition, in which the motif of unmasking, exposing, baring has served for aeons now as a weapon. But modern ideology critique—according to our thesis has ominously cut itself off from the powerful traditions of laughter in satirical knowledge.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
The dance around the golden calf of identity is the last and greatest orgy of counterenlightenment. Identity is the magic word of a partially hidden, partially open conservatism that has inscribed personal identity, occupational identity, national identity, political identity, female identity, male identity, class identity, party identity, etc., on its banner.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)
In the kynicism of Diogenes of Sinope, the laughter about philosophy itself became philosophical. … In the pantomimes and wordplays of the philosopher from the tub, the Gay Science was born, which saw the earnestness of the false life recur in the false earnestness of philosophy.
Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)