Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno wrote *Dialektik der Aufklärung* during their exile in Los Angeles from Nazi Germany, between 1941 and 1944. The first mimeographed edition appeared in 1944 and the printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947; wide circulation in Germany was only possible after 1969.

The book's central paradox is a question: why did the Enlightenment — reason, science, autonomy — issue, in the twentieth century, in Auschwitz and totalitarian regimes? Should we retreat and return to myth? Or is there a darkness inside the Enlightenment itself, present from the beginning?

Horkheimer and Adorno choose the second route. The basic move of the Enlightenment — bringing nature under human control — also turns the human into an object by its own logic. Reason becomes 'instrumental': what it is used for ceases to matter; how effectively it is used comes to the fore. This instrumental reason also makes the cold bureaucracy of Auschwitz possible. The Enlightenment carries within it a 'totalitarian' tendency: to quantify, measure, and control everything.

The book develops this thesis in four sections. The 'Odysseus and the Sirens' section reads Homer's epic as the birth story of the capitalist subject: Odysseus has himself bound to the mast in order to suppress his natural desires, and so becomes the rational 'man of affairs'. Another section, 'The Culture Industry', argues that Hollywood, radio, popular music, and advertising are not spontaneous 'culture' but industrial products; they pacify the audience, cut off critical thought, and manufacture false needs. This analysis became a founding text of media studies.

The Frankfurt School's pessimistic turn influenced the student movements of the 1960s; Habermas, Honneth, and other thinkers who studied with Adorno developed critical theory in different directions.