Quotes from Horkheimer and Adorno's Prefaces

"The conflicts in the third world and the renewed growth of totalitarianism are not mere historical interludes any more than, according to the Dialectic, fascism was at that time. Critical thought, which does not call a halt before progress, requires us to take up the cause of the remnants of freedom, of tendencies toward real humanity, even though they seem powerless in the face of great historical trend." (xi)

"Our prognosis regarding the associated lapse from enlightenment into positivism, into myth of that which is the case, and finally of the identity of intelligence and hostility to mind, has been overwhelmingly confirmed." (xii)

"What we had set out to do was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism." (xiv)

"If public life has reached a state in which thought is being turned inescapably into a commodity and language into celebration of the commodity, the attempt to trace the sources of this degradation must refuse obedience to the current linguistic and intellectual demands before it is rendered entirely futile by the consequence of those demands for world history." (xiv-xv)

"Today, however, motorized history is rushing ahead of such intellectual developments, and the official spokesmen, who have other concerns, are liquidating the theory to which they owe their place in the sun before it has time to prostitute itself completely." (xv)

"freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking" (xvi)

"False clarity is only another name for myth. Myth was always obscure and luminous at once. It has always been distinguished by its familiarity and its exemption from the work of concepts." (xvii)

"The individual is entirely nullified in face of the economic powers." (xvii)

"While individuals as such are vanishing before the apparatus they serve, they are provided for by that apparatus and better than ever before. In the unjust state of society the powerlessness and pliability of the masses increase with the quantity of goods allocated to them." (xvii)

"The flood of precise information and brand-new amusements make people smarter and more stupid at once." (xvii)

"That the hygienic factory and everything pertaining to it, Volkswagen and the sports palace, are obtusely liquidating metaphysics does not matter in itself, but that these things are themselves becoming metaphysics, an ideological curtain, within the social whole, behind which real doom is gathering, does matter." (xviii)

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).

Quotes from Horkheimer and Adorno's Preface

"The conflicts in the third world and the renewed growth of totalitarianism are not mere historical interludes any more than, according to the Dialectic, fascism was at that time. Critical thought, which does not call a halt before progress, requires us to take up the cause of the remnants of freedom, of tendencies toward real humanity, even though they seem powerless in the face of great historical trend."

"Our prognosis regarding the associated lapse from enlightenment into positivism, into myth of that which is the case, and finally of the identity of intelligence and hostility to mind, has been overwhelmingly confirmed."

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, "Preface to the 1969 Edition" in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), xi-xii.

Merleau-Ponty’s Praise of Praxis

“What Marx calls praxis is the meaning which appears spontaneously at the intersection of the actions by which man organizes his relationship with nature and with others.” 

Eloge de la philosophie (Gallimard, 1953), p. 69. In Praise of Philosophy, trans. James E. Edie and John Wild (Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 1963).

Simone de Beauvoir on Narcissism

 “In fact, narcissism is a well-defined process of alienation: the self is posited as an absolute end, and the subject escapes itself in it… What is true is that circumstances invite women more than men to turn toward self and to dedicate her love to herself. All love demands the duality of a subject and an object. Woman is led to narcissism by two convergent paths… in her functions as wife, mother, and housewife, she is not recognized in her singularity. Man’s truth is in the houses he builds, the forests he clears, the patients he cures: not being able to accomplish herself in projects and aims, woman attempts to grasp herself in the immanence of her person… she gives herself sovereign importance because no important object is accessible to her.” (667)

“If she can put herself forward in her own desires, it is because since childhood she has seen herself as an object. Her education has encouraged her to alienate herself wholly in her body.” (667-668)

“In truth, it is not possible to be for self positively Other and grasp oneself as object in the light of consciousness. Doubling is only dreamed… It is above all in woman that the reflection allows itself to be assimilated to the self. Male beauty is a sign of transcendence, that of woman has the passivity of immanence…” (668-669)

“We know, for example, how attached women are to their childhood memories; women’s literature make its clear… They are nostalgic for this period when they felt their father’s beneficent and imposing hand on their head while tasting the joys of independence; protected and justified by adults, they were autonomous individuals with a free future opening before them: now, however, they are poorly protected by marriage and love and have become servants or objects, to be imprisoned in the present… She returns emotionally to this younger sister whose freedom, demands, and sovereignty she abdicated and whom she more or less betrayed.” (671)

“The character she portrays is more of less coherent and original according to her intelligence, obstinacy, and depth of alienation. Some women just randomly put together a few sparse and mismatched traits; others systematically create a figure whose role they consistently play…” (672)

“But above all she has not realized herself in her life, the heroine cherished by the narcissist is merely an imaginary character; her unity does not come from the concrete world: it is a hidden principle, a kind of ‘strength,’ ‘virtue’ as obscure as phlogistonism… woman, in her own eyes, adopts the tragic hero’s need to be governed by destiny. Her whole life is transfigured into a sacred drama.” (674)

“The woman in love quickly forgets herself; but many women are incapable of real love, precisely because they never forget themselves.” (675)

“the caricature of action… if she cannot take action, the woman invents substitutes for action; the theater represents a privileged substitute for some women.” (676)

“The stubborn narcissist will be as limited in art as in love because she does not know how to give herself.” (677)

“Many women imbued with a feeling of superiority, however, are not able to show it to the world; their ambition will thus be to us a man whom they convince of their worth as their means to intervention; they do not aim for specific values through free projects; they want to attach readymade values to their egos; they will thus turn – by becoming muses, inspiration, and stimulation – to those who hold influence and glory in the hope of being identified with them.” (677)

“Her misfortune is that, in spite of all her bad faith, she is aware of this nothingness. There cannot be a real relationship between an individual and his double, because this double does not exist. The woman narcissist suffers a radical failure. She cannot grasp herself as a totality, as plentitude; she cannot maintain the illusion of being in itself – for itself. Her solitude, like that of every human being, is felt as contingence and abandonment. And this is why – unless there is a conversion – she is condemned to hide relentlessly from herself in crowds, noise, and others. It would be a grave error to believe that in choosing herself as the supreme end, she escapes dependence: on the contrary, she dooms herself to the most severe slavery; she does not make the most of her freedom, she makes herself an endangered object in the world an in foreign consciousnesses.” (681)

“if she sought recognition by others’ freedom while also recognizing that freedom as an end through activity, she would cease to be narcissistic. The paradox of her attitude is that she demands to be valued by a world to which she denies all value, since she alone counts in her own eyes.“ (682)

Beauvoir and History

"We have already posited that when two human categories find themselves face-to-face, each one wants to impose its sovereignty on the other; if both hold to this claim equally, a reciprocal relationship is created, either hostile or friendly, but always tense. if one of the two has an advantage over the other, that one prevails and works to maintain the relationship by oppression." (71)

"it was man who controlled the balance between reproduction and production... There are female animals that derive total autonomy from motherhood; so why has woman not been able to make a pedestal for herself from it?... The reason for this is that humanity is not a simple natural species: it does not seek to survive as a species; its project is not stagnation: it seek to surpass itself." (72-73)

"to give birth and to breast-feed are not activities but natural functions; they do not involve a project, which is why the woman finds no motive there to claim a higher meaning for her existence; she passively submits to her biological destiny... Man's case is radically different. He does not provide for the group in the way worker bees do, by a simple vital process, but rather by acts that transcend his animal condition." (73)

"to appropriate the world's treasurers, he annexes the world itself. Through such actions he tests his own power; he posits ends and projects paths to them: he realizes himself as existent. To maintain himself, he creates; he spills over the present and opens up the future... This pride is still apparent today when he builds a dam, a skyscraper, or an atomic reactor. he has not only worked to preserve the given world: he has burst through its borders; he has laid the ground for a new future." (73)

"This is how he brilliantly proves that life is not the supreme value for man but that it must serve ends far greater than itself. The worst curse on woman is her exclusion from warrior expeditions; it is not in giving life but in risking his life that man raises himself above the animal; this is why throughout humanity, superiority has been granted not to the sex that gives birth but to the one that kills." (74)

"By transcending Life through Existence, man guarantees the repetition of Life: by this surpassing, he creates values that deny any value to pure repetition... in serving the species, the human male shapes the face of the earth, creates new instruments, invents and forges the future." (74)

"Certain passages where Hegel's dialectic describes the relationship of master to slave would apply far better to the relationship of man to woman." (74)

"Hegel's definition applies singularly to her. 'The other [consciousness] is the dependent consciousness for which essential reality is animal life, that is, life given by another entity.'" (74)

"The female, more than the male, is prey to the species; humanity has always tried to escape from its species' destiny; with the invention of the tool, maintenance of life became activity and project for man, while motherhood left woman riveted to her body like the animal. it is because humanity puts itself into question in its being - that is, values reasons for living over life - that man has set himself as master over woman; man's project is not to repeat himself in time: it is to reign over the instant and to forge the future." (75)

"in the alienation process mentioned before, the clan grasps itself in this territory in the guise of an objective and concrete figure; through the permanence of the land, the clan thus realizes itself as a unity whose identity persists throughout the passage of time." (77)

"The community conceives of its unity and wills its existence beyond the present: it sees itself in its children, it recognizes them as its own, and it accomplishes and surpasses itself through them." (77)

"It is in women that the whole of foreign Nature is concentrated... When the woman's role grows, she comes to occupy nearly the whole region of the Other." (79)

"But in reality this golden age of Woman is only a myth. To say that woman was the Other is to say that a relationship of reciprocity between the sexes did not exist... she was never a peer for man; her power asserted itself beyond human rule: she was thus outside of this rule." (80)

"Insofar as woman is considered the absolute Other, that is - whatever magic powers she has - as the inessential, it is precisely impossible to regard her as another subject. Women have thus never constituted a separate group that posited itself for-itself before a male group; they have never had a direct or autonomous relationship with men." (80)

"But as powerful as she may appear, she is defined through notions created by the male consciousness. All of the idols invented by man, however terrifying he may have made them, are in fact dependent upon him, and this is why he is able to destroy them." (82)

"And in fact, even when man grasps himself as given, passive, and subject to the vagaries of rain and sun, he still realizes himself as transcendence, as project; already, spirit and will assert themselves within him against life's confusion and contingencies." (82)

"man wishes to possess what he is not; he unites himself to what appears to him to be Other than himself." (83)

"he relegates them to their Olympian heaven and keeps the terrestrial domain for himself; the great Pan begins to fade at the first sound of his hammer, and man's reign begins... cause and effect" (84)

"alterity is the same as negation, thus Evil." (88)

Beauvoir's Criticism of Historical Materialism and Engels

"Humanity is not an animal species: it is a historical reality. Human society is an anti-physis: it does not passively submit to the presence of nature, but rather appropriates it." (62)

"The discovery of bronze enabled man, tested by hard and productive work, to find himself as creator, dominating nature; no longer afraid of nature, having overcome resistance, he dares to grasp himself as autonomous activity and to accomplish himself in his singularity. But this accomplishment would never have been realized if man had not originally wanted it; the lesson of labor is not inscribed in a passive subject: the subject forged and conquered himself in forging his tools and conquering the earth... there had to be another original tendency in man: in the preceding chapter we said that the existent can only succeed in grasping himself by alienating himself; he searches for himself through the world, in the guise of a foreign figure he makes his own." (65)

"In these riches of his, man finds himself because he lost himself in them: it is understandable then that he can attribute to them an importance as basic as that of his life itself. Thus man's interest in his property becomes an intelligible relationship. But clearly the tool alone is not enough to explain it; the whole attitude of the tool-armed man must be grasped, an attitude that implies an ontological infrastructure." (65)

"Because man is transcendence and ambition, he projects new demands with each new tool... Woman's powerlessness brought about her ruin because man apprehended her through a project of enrichment and expansion." (66)

"If the original relation between man and his peers had been exclusively one of friendship, one could not account for any kind of enslavement: this phenomenon is a consequence of the imperialism of human consciousness, which seeks to match its sovereignty objectively. Had there not been in human consciousness both the original category of the Other and an original claim to domination over the Other, the discovery of the bronze tool could not have brought about woman's oppression." (66)

"A truly socialist ethic - one that seeks justice without restraining liberty, one that imposes responsibilities on individuals but without abolishing individual freedom - will find itself most uncomfortable with problems posed by woman's condition." (67)

"To demand for woman all the rights, all the possibilities of the human being in general does not mean one must be blind to her singular situation. To know this situation, it is necessary to go beyond historical materialism which only sees man and woman as economic entities." (67-68)

"if they are not incorporated into the whole of human reality, sexuality and technology of themselves will fail to explain anything... the body, sexual life, and technology exist concretely for man only insofar as he grasps them from the overall perspective of his existence. The value of muscular strength, the phallus, and the tool can only be defined in a world of values: it is driven by the fundamental project of the existent transcending itself toward being." (68)

Beauvoir on Pyschoanalysis and Gender

"All psychoanalysts systematically refuse the idea of choice and its corollary, the notion of value; and herein lies the intrinsic weakness of the system." (55)

"The existent is a sexed body; in its relations with other existents that are also sexed bodies, sexuality is thus always involved; but as the body and sexuality are concrete expressions of existence, it is also from here that their significance can be ascertained: without this perspective, psyschoanalysis takes unexplained facts for granted... Sexuality must not be taken as an irreducible given; the existent possesses a more primary 'quest for being'; sexuality is only one of these aspects." (55)

"Work, war, play, and art define ways of being in the world that cannot be reduced to any others; they bring to light features that impinge on those that sexuality reveals; it is both through them and through these erotic experiences that the individual chooses himself." (56)

"It is impossible to account for this without starting from an existential fact: the subject's tendency toward alienation; the anxiety of his freedom leads the subject to search for himself in things, which is a way to flee from himself... Primitive people alienate themselves in their mana, their totem; civilized people in their individual souls, their egos, their names, their possessions, and their work: here is the first temptation of inauthenticity. (57)

"For us woman is defined as a human being in search of values within a world of values, a world where it is indispensable to understand the economic and social structure; we will study her from an existential point of view, taking into account her total situation." (61)

Simone de Beauvoir, "The Pyschoanalytical Point of View" in The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malvany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011).