The Aging of the New Music Dialectic of Enlightenment Theodor W. Adorno The Aging of the New Music Dialectic of Enlightenment

"Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters.  Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates with calamity triumphant . Enlightenment’s program was the disenchantment of the world.” Adorno and Max Horkheimer – first sentence of Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

Their thesis: The path to liberation promised by the Enlightenment leads (also) to domination Freedom vs. Equality Freetime on the back of labor Robots  not greater freedom, lesser. The poor are eradicated Dialectic as intensification (opposite of Aristotle’s golden mean)

Knowledge as power (cp. Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis, 1624) Self-preservation reason liberates precisely through domination (of nature, of other people, of the self) "Technology is the essence of this knowledge…What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly both it and human beings. Nothing else counts.” Instrumental & Intrinsic Value

Odysseus and the Sirens Enlightenment becomes myth | Myth has always contained the seeds of Enlightenment "Humans believe themselves free of fear when there is no longer anything unknown. This has determined the path of demythologization, of enlightenment, which equates the living with the nonliving as myth had equated the nonliving with the living. Enlightenment is mythical fear radicalized.” Scientism Music Language Odysseus and the Sirens To know is to control, to dominate, to master. So we need to explore other possible relationships to the world (see Emmanuel Levinas)   when art becomes autonomous it becomes useless — Hegel’s end of art | Art is flourishing, but it is now outside society   this delimits its consequences / makes it closer to spiritual concerns Scientism 1) the cosmetic application of science in unwarranted situations not covered by the scientific method. 2) a belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most valuable part of human learning—to the exclusion of other viewpoints.

“Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings. He knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them.”

“Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings. He knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them.” If enlightenment follows the logic of self-preservation through knowledge and if our path to self-preservation is in manipulation of and power over the objects of knowledge (e.g., nature, the human mind) then we are in big trouble. 

“Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings. He knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them.” If enlightenment follows the logic of self-preservation through knowledge and if our path to self-preservation is in manipulation of and power over the objects of knowledge (e.g., nature, the human mind) then we are in big trouble.  Rationality is linked to tyranny.

Art and Memory (DE 25) art treats the past as something living (rather than as dead material which can be manipulated for further rational/technological progress).

Perhaps art can show us a way out of this. Art and Memory Perhaps art can show us a way out of this. (DE 25) art treats the past as something living (rather than as dead material which can be manipulated for further rational/technological progress).

Perhaps art can show us a way out of this. Art and Memory Perhaps art can show us a way out of this. “The urge to rescue the past as something living, instead of using it as the dead material of progress, has been satisfied only in art, in which even history, as a representation of past life, is included.” 
old art vs. old scientific theories old technology as obsolete old technology as vintage (i.e., aesthetic) (DE 25) art treats the past as something living (rather than as dead material which can be manipulated for further rational/technological progress).

Perhaps art can show us a way out of this. Art and Memory Perhaps art can show us a way out of this. BUT : Art has also been colonized by Rationality Art can be used as a tool of domination

AD copy: “You are an individual, and individuals like product X” Identity as a function of consumption patterns Identity as a function of consumption patterns

From Autonomy to The Total System of Art

Potentially worrisome elements in the concept of autonomous art Autonomous from what? Social function? External meaning / structure? Human ears / minds?

Autonomy -> Unity -> Systematization -> loss of authorial autonomy, subjectivity in a totally unified, systematized serial piece the composer loses the ability to insert bursts of intuition that are outside of the system.  [e.g. Webern can’t arbitrarily decide to throw in a dramatic cymbal crash in the Symphonie and still have the piece be totally unified, systematized]

Unity -> Purity To say that everything in a piece is unified is to say that it is purified of anything that does not fit in the system / that resists unification.

System absorbs composer's subjective choice / responsibility In a systematic composition the composer creates a system that ‘spits out’ the actual musical events of the piece Once the system is set up, the composer and performers do not have to make musical or expressive choices, the system does it for them.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil