Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Odysseus and Enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung

  • Published:
International Journal of the Classical Tradition Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Dialektik der Aufklärung a seminal text in twentieth-century intellectual history, at the heart of which lies a mournful reading of the Odyssey. Odysseus and the adventures of his voyage home provide Horkheimer and Adorno with critical material for exploring the history and nature of barbarous enlightenment and their – seemingly paradoxical – thesis: namely, that myth is already enlightenment; and that enlightenment reverts to mythology. This article argues that closer attention ought to be paid to the authors' choice and interpretation of the Odyssey. Dialektik der Aufklärung is, this article shall suggest, a confrontation with the German philhellenic tradition itself, from Hegel to Wilamowitz, out of which arises a powerful, ethical statement about the nature of that tradition, and the politics and cultural identity in which it plays a central part.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See the ‘Note de l’Éditeur’ in Weil [96].

  2. Holoka [42] 45.

  3. See, e.g., Macleod [59], Griffin [33], Taplin [88], Holoka [42].

  4. Holoka [42] 68.

  5. See Porter [74].

  6. Auerbach [4] Ch. 1.

  7. See, e.g., Cartledge [19], Porter [73].

  8. Despite its subject matter, DdA has not been widely discussed within classical studies. See Pucci [77] 72, 77 & [78] 127; Porter [73] and especially (2010) for the most sustained engagements by classicists. Bibliographical allusions are more common. See, e.g., Giesecke [26]. See also Rocco [80].

  9. See, e.g., Rabinbach [79]. Considered by Adorno to be representative of his and Horkheimer’s shared concerns and philosophy, this founding text of Critical Theory is seminal for any study of the development of modern intellectual histories. See, e.g., Held [39], Wiggerhaus [99], Jay [49]. Yet the work had little immediate international impact. First produced in 1944 in a mimeographic edition, and then officially published in 1947 by Querido of Amsterdam, its availability was initially limited. See, e.g., Wiggerhaus [99] 325-6. (Its accessibility to an Anglophone audience was also restricted, since an English translation of the text was not published until 1972 as Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. J. Cumming [New York, 1972]). Gradually, the work gained an important underground reputation, particularly in Germany during the 1960s, and consequently in 1969, although with apparent reluctance, Horkheimer and Adorno allowed the work to be republished. See Horkheimer & Adorno [43] ix.

  10. See Horkheimer [45] and ([46] [1941]).

  11. I shall, throughout, following the example of the authors of DdA, refer to the idea of fascism as incorporating Nazism, Italian Fascism, and totalitarianism in general.

  12. Horkheimer & Adorno [43] 1.

  13. Horkheimer & Adorno [43] 9-10.

  14. See also Marcuse [61].

  15. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] xviii.

  16. Horkheimer & Adorno [43] xviii.

  17. The seminal statement of this theme is Butler [14]. See also Marchand [60] and Williamson [102].

  18. This latter issue is, in part, the result of the text’s history. Adorno’s preliminary version was not widely available until 1998, and so more detailed assertions about his sources were difficult to confirm. However, it is my impression that despite the sometimes elusive nature of the allusions in ‘Exkurs I’, it was and is possible to identify the influences marked upon it. These can now be corroborated by comparison with Adorno’s previous ‘draft’. See Adorno [3].

  19. Buck-Morss [13] 61.

  20. Hullot-Kentor [47] 106.

  21. Specifically Klages’ Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele (1929-1939). Generally left unspoken by most scholars of DdA, is the fact that Klages, despite later hostility from the chief Nazi ideologue Rosenberg, was beloved of many leading National Socialists, and had himself since the early 1900s expressed anti-Semitic and anti-democratic views. See Schneider [82]. That the authors should choose to demolish his particular form of spiritual psychology is thus unsurprising. This implicit anticipation of the later chapter on anti-Semitism is a consistent feature of the early sections of their work.

  22. Horkheimer and Adorno were concerned to tackle the Odyssey from a psychological-anthropological perspective. It is tempting to imagine that, cast adrift in a strange new world, the authors were particularly susceptible to the allure of cultural anthropology. Glancing at the footnotes of the first chapters of DdA, one can immediately see that, apart from the occasional citations of Hegel, Nietzsche, Bacon, and other philosophers, the majority of explicit references are to the work of anthropologists. See Bodei [12] and Wulf [104].

  23. See Finsler [24], Simonsuuri [85].

  24. Most [62] 55. See also Stanford [86] and Nicosia (ed.) [66].

  25. See Trevelyan [92]. Lohse [58] and Harth [34].

  26. The notion of ‘the Original Genius of Homer’ was an English export, originally described by Robert Wood in his Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (London, 1769). This was translated by C. F. Michaelis as Robert Woods Versuch des Originalgenie des Homers (Frankfurt, 1773).

  27. Wohlleben [103].

  28. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 13. Again, while maintaining its links with the magical way of thinking, the ‘art’ described by the authors here seems to be the ‘false’ art of the concert hall.

  29. See Hohendahl [41].

  30. See Novalis [70] 135.

  31. Nietzsche [68] 679.

  32. On Nietzsche and antiquity see also Cancik [18], Nehamas [65] 128-156, Zuckert [107] 10-32, Silk & Stern [84], Porter [71] & [72], Lane [52] passim, Bishop (ed.) [11].

  33. Goldhill [29] 6.

  34. See the preface to Phänomenologie des Geistes.

  35. Kain [50] 34.

  36. For the importance of the Greeks to Hegel, see, e.g., Shklar [83], Nauen [64], Barcella [5], Cambiano [16], Kain [50], Schmidt [81], Leonard [55].

  37. Nietzsche [67] 80.

  38. Hegel [37] 223.

  39. Hegel [38] 9-10.

  40. See Bernal [9], Gossman [31], Leoussi [57], Yovel [105], Prickett [76] and Leonard [55] and [56].

  41. Glucksmann [27] and Leonard [55]. See also Derrida [22].

  42. See Hegel (1961).

  43. White [98] 37.

  44. Hegel (1961) 320.

  45. See Hegel (1961) 603-5.

  46. See Cancik & Cancik-Lindemaier [17].

  47. See Lecznar [53] for Nietzsche's Prometheus.

  48. Nietzsche (1999) 49.

  49. Nietzsche (1999) 49-50

  50. Nietzsche (1999) 50.

  51. See, e.g., Nauen [64].

  52. See, e.g., Cancik & Cancik-Lindemaier [17].

  53. Benhabib [7] 169.

  54. For Nietzsche and Nazism see, e.g., Golomb & Wistrich (eds.) [30]. See also Behler [6].

  55. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 36.

  56. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 60.

  57. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 61. See Adorno [2] for a Schillerian theory of art as Versöhnungsphilosophie.

  58. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 60.

  59. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 4.

  60. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 35.

  61. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 37.

  62. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 35.

  63. See Wedner [95]. For DdA and the Sirens see Wellmer (2000) & Comay [22].

  64. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 24-5.

  65. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 25.

  66. On the Sirens and death see also Gresseth [32], Vermeule [93], and Vernant [94].

  67. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 26-7.

  68. Hegel [36] 16.

  69. Adorno [1] 55.

  70. See Hegel [36] 146.

  71. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 27. Here ‘Art’ would seem to be false, enlightened art. See Wellmer (2000) for the ambiguous discussion in DdA of art and ‘false’ art.

  72. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 28.

  73. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 38.

  74. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 43.

  75. Horkheimer & Adorno [43] 47-8.

  76. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 45-6.

  77. Here the authors refer to Thomson [91] 153. Turning to this text we find he writes ‘Kirke, […] and the like, […] belong to a primitive nature-religion older than Homer’s Olympianism and plainly irreconcilable with it.’ Some evidence of the tacit influence of ‘Ritualism’ on DdA.

  78. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 55.

  79. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 55.

  80. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 57.

  81. See, e.g., Butler [15], Cohen (ed.) [20], Doherty [23], Bennett [8].

  82. See, e.g., Kulke [51].

  83. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 26.

  84. Hewitt [40] 147.

  85. See, e.g., Heberle (ed.) [35], Leeb [54] for Adorno and feminism.

  86. See Irigaray [48] and Starrett [87] for feminist critiques of this dialectic.

  87. See Hewitt [40].

  88. It is telling that Horkheimer and Adorno felt obliged to circumvent German Philologie and refer instead to - by then rather quaintly obsolete - British classical scholarship.

  89. Horkheimer to Pollock, 20 March 1943, cited in Wiggerhaus [99] 323.

  90. See Silk & Stern [84] and Bierl, Calder, & Fowler (eds.) [10].

  91. See Fowler [25].

  92. See Horkheimer & Adorno [43] 78-9, 84.

  93. Wilamowitz [100] 89-90.

  94. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 261.

  95. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 61.

  96. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 61.

  97. See Wilamowitz [100] 67.

  98. See Wilamowitz [100] 76.

  99. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 265.

  100. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 265.

  101. For example, with regard to the passage discussed above they rather revealingly misquote Wilamowitz. Instead of the past participle of ‘ausmalen’ – to imagine, they have him write the past participle of ‘ausführen’ – to carry out, perform, execute.

  102. As Glucksmann has written of philosophical literature: ‘Texts do not simply serve the exercise of power, they are that very exercise, they subject people.’ Glucksmann [27] 47.

  103. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 62.

  104. This observation seems, in part at least, to be indebted to Gilbert Murray: the authors remark that Murray comments on the ‘consoling’ effect of XXII 473. See Murray [63] 127.

  105. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 61.

  106. Horkheimer & Adorno [44] 62.

  107. Surprisingly, I have found no commentary on, or attempted explanation of, this remark in scholarship on DdA.

  108. A newspaper he had founded in Berlin – as the Nazi Party leader there - in 1927.

  109. Goebbels [28] 87. See Thomas [89] for Goebbels’ interest in Roman literature. See also Ziolkowski [106], Thomas [90].

References

  1. Adorno, T.W. 1951. Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (Frankfurt)

  2. Adorno, T.W. 1970. Ästhetische Theorie (Frankfurt)

  3. Adorno, T.W. 1998. Geschichtsphilosophischer Exkurs zur Odyssee. Frühe Fassung von Odysseus oder Mythos und Aufklärung. Frankfurter Adorno Blätter 5: 37–88.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Auerbach, E. 1946. Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländische Literatur (Berne).

  5. Barcella, F. 1975. L'Antike in Hegel e altri scritti marxisti (Urbino).

  6. Behler, E. 1996. Nietzsche in the twentieth century. In The Cambridge companion to Nietzsche, eds. 281–322. (Cambridge).

  7. Benhabib, S. 1986. Critique, Norm, and Utopia: a study of the foundations of critical theory. (New York).

  8. Bennett, M.J. 1997. Belted heroes and bound women: the myth of the Homeric warrior-king. (Lanham).

  9. Bernal, M. 1987. Black Athena: the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization. Vol. I, The fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985. (London).

  10. Bierl, A., Calder, W.M., & Fowler, R.L., eds. 1992. The Prussian and the poet: the letters of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Gilbert Murray (1894–1930). (Hildesheim).

  11. Bishop, P. ed. 2004. Nietzsche and Antiquity. His reaction and response to the classical tradition. (Woodbridge).

  12. Bodei, R. 1998. Le ombre della ragione. L’emancipazione come mito. Nuova Corrente 45: 9–18.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Buck-Morss, S. 1977. The origin of negative dialectics. (New York).

  14. Butler, E.M. 1935. The tyranny of Greece over Germany; a study of the influence exercised by Greek art and poetry over the great German writers of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (Cambridge).

  15. Butler, S. 1897. The authoress of the Odyssey. (London).

  16. Cambiano, G. 1988. Il ritorno degli antichi. (Roma-Bari).

  17. Cancik, H., & Cancik-Lindemaier, H. 1991. Philhellénisme et antisémitisme en Allemagne: Le cas Nietzsche. In De Sils-Maria à Jérusalem: Nietzsche et le judaïsme. Les intellectuels juifs et Nietzsche, eds. D. Bourel, & J. Le Rider, 21–46. (Paris).

  18. Cancik, H. 1995. Der Einfluss Friedrich Nietzsche auf klassische Philologen in Deutschland bis 1945. In Altertumwissenschaft in den 20er Jahren: Neue Fragen und Impulse, ed. H. Flashar, 381–402. (Stuttgart).

  19. Cartledge, P. 2001. Odysseus in Auschwitz, foreword to F. Hartog Memories of Odysseus: frontier tales from ancient Greece, vii–xi. (Edinburgh).

  20. Cohen, B. ed. 1995. The distaff side: representing the female in Homer's Odyssey. (Oxford).

  21. Comay, R. 2000. Adorno’s Siren Song. NGC 81: 21–48.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Derrida, J. 1974. Glas. (Paris).

  23. Doherty, L. 1995. Siren songs: gender, audiences, and narrators in the Odyssey. (Ann Arbor).

  24. Finsler, G. 1979. Homer in der Neuzeit von Dante bis Goethe. (Hildesheim).

  25. Fowler, R. 1990. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. 22 December 1848 – 25 September 1931. In Classical scholarship: a biographical encyclopedia, eds. Briggs, W., & Calder, W.M. (1990), (New York).

  26. Giesecke, A.L. 2007. Mapping utopia: homer's politics and the birth of the polis. College Literature, 34:2, Reading Homer in the 21st Century, 194–214.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Glucksmann, A. 1980. The master thinkers. (Brighton).

  28. Goebbels, J. 1939. Wetterleuchten: Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit vol.2. (Munich).

  29. Goldhill, S. 2000. Whose antiquity? Whose modernity? The “rainbow bridges” of exile. Antike und Abendland: 1–20.

  30. Golomb, J., & Wistrich, R.S. eds. 2002. Nietzsche, godfather of fascism: On the uses and abuses of a philosophy. (Princeton).

  31. Gossman, L. 1994. Philhellenism and Antisemitism: Matthew arnold and his German models. Comparative Literature 46: 1–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Gresseth, G. 1970. The homeric sirens. TAPA 101: 203–18.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Griffin, J. 1980. Homer on life and death. (Oxford).

  34. Harth, D. 1994. Über die Geburt der Antike aus dem Geist der Moderne. IJCT 1: 89–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Heberle, R. ed. 2006. Feminist interpretations of Theodor Adorno. (Pennsylvania).

  36. Hegel, G.W.F. 1832. Phänomenologie des Geistes: Werke, Vol. 2. ed. J. Schultze. (Berlin).

  37. Hegel, G.W.F. 2007. The philosophy of history. (New York).

  38. Hegel, G.W.F. 2006. Lectures on the history of philosophy, 1825–6. Volume II: Greek Philosophy. ed. R.F. Brown. (Oxford).

  39. Held, D. 1980. Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. (London).

  40. Hewitt, A. 1992. A feminine dialectic of enlightenment? Horkheimer and Adorno revisited. NGC 56: 143–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Hohendahl, P.U. 1992. The displaced intellectual? Adorno’s American years revisited. NGC 56: 76–100.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Holoka, J.P. ed. & trans. 2003. Simone Weil’s the Iliad or the poem of force. (New York).

  43. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T.W. 2001. Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente. (Frankfurt).

  44. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T.W. 2002. Dialectic of enlightenment. Philosophical fragments. ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, E. Jephcott (trans). (Stanford).

  45. Horkheimer, M. 1947. The eclipse of reason. (New York).

  46. Horkheimer (1982 [1941]). --- 1982. The end of reason. In The essential Frankfurt school reader, eds. A. Arato, & E. Gebhardt, 26–48. (New York).

  47. Hullot-Kentor (1992) --- 1992. Notes on dialectic of enlightenment: translating the Odysseus essay. NGC 56: 101–8.

  48. Irigaray, L. 1974. Spéculum de l’autre femme. (Paris).

  49. Jay, M. 1996. The dialectical imagination: a history of the Frankfurt school and the institute of social research 1923–1950. (Berkeley).

  50. Kain, P.J. 1982. Schiller, Hegel, and Marx: state, security, and the synthetic ideal of ancient Greece. (Montreal).

  51. Kulke, C. 1989. Die Kritik der instrumentellen Rationalität – ein männlicher Mythos. In Die Aktualität der 'Dialektik der Aufklärung: Zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne, eds. H. Kunneman, & H. de Vries, 128–49. (Frankfurt).

  52. Lane, M. 2001. Plato’s progeny: how Plato and Socrates still capture the modern mind. (London).

  53. Lecznar, A. 2012. Aryan, German, or Greek? Nietzsche’s Prometheus between antiquity and modernity. Classical Receptions Journal, first published online May 31, 2012.

  54. Leeb, C. 2008. Toward a theoretical outline of the subject: the centrality of Adorno and Lacan for feminist political. Political Theory 36(3): 351–376.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. Leonard, M. 2005. Athens in Paris: ancient Greece and the political in post-war French thought. (Oxford).

  56. Leonard, M. 2012. Socrates and the Jews: Hellenism and Hebraism from Moses Mendelssohn to Sigmund Freud. (Chicago).

  57. Leoussi, A.S. 1998. Nationalism and classicism. (London).

  58. Lohse, G. 1998. Die Homerrezeption im “Sturm und Drang” und deutscher Nationalismus im 18. Jahrhundert. IJCT 4: 195–231.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Macleod, C.W. ed. 1982. Homer: Iliad, Book XXIV. (Cambridge).

  60. Marchand, S. 1996. Down from Olympus: archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970. (Princeton).

  61. Marcuse, H. 1964. One-dimensional man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. (London).

  62. Most, G. 1989. The second homeric renaissance: Allegoresis and genius in early modern poetics. In Genius. The history of an idea, ed. P. Murray, 54–75 (Oxford).

  63. Murray, G. 1924. The rise of the Greek epic: being a course of lectures delivered at Harvard University. (Oxford).

  64. Nauen, F.G. 1971. Revolution, idealism, and human freedom: Schelling, Hölderlin, and Hegel and the crisis of early German Idealism. (The Hague).

  65. Nehamas, A. 1998. The art of living: Socratic reflections from Plato to foucault. (Berkeley).

  66. Nicosia, S. ed. 2003. Ulisse nel tempo: la metafora infinita. (Venice).

  67. Nietzsche, F. 1999a. Nachlaß 1869–1874. Kritische Studienausgabe 7. eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari. (Berlin).

  68. Nietzsche, F. 1999b. Nachgelassene Fragmente 1884–1885. Kritische Studienausgabe 11. eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari. (Berlin).

  69. Nietzsche, F. 1999c. The birth of tragedy and other writings, R. Geuss (ed.) and R. Speirs (trans.) (Cambridge).

  70. Novalis 1997. Novalis, philosophical writings trans. and ed. M.M. Stoljar. (Albany).

  71. Porter, J.I. 2000a. The invention of Dionysus: an essay on the birth of tragedy. (Stanford).

  72. Porter, J.I. 2000b. Nietzsche and the philology of the Future. (Stanford, 2000).

  73. Porter, J.I. 2004. Homer: The history of an idea. In The Cambridge companion to Homer, ed. R. Fowler, 324–43. (Cambridge).

  74. Porter, J.I. 2008. Erich Auerbach and the Judaizing of Philology. Critical Inquiry 35(1): 115–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. Porter, J.I. 2010. Odysseus and the Wandering Jew: The Dialectic of Jewish Enlightenment in Adorno and Horkheimer. Cultural Critique 74: 200–213.

    Google Scholar 

  76. Prickett, S. 1989. “Hebrew” versus “Hellene” as a principle of literary criticism. In Rediscovering Hellenism: the Hellenic inheritance and the English imagination, ed. 137–59 G. Clarke (Cambridge).

  77. Pucci, P. 1987. Odysseus Polutropos: intertextual readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad. (Ithaca).

  78. Pucci, P. 1998. The song of the sirens: essays on Homer. (Maryland).

  79. Rabinbach, A. 1997. In the shadow of catastrophe: German intellectuals between apocalypse and enlightenment. (Berkeley).

  80. Rocco, C. 1997. Tragedy and enlightenment: Athenian political thought, and the dilemmas of modernity. (Berkeley).

  81. Schmidt, D.J. 2001. On Germans and other Greeks: tragedy and the ethical life. (Bloomington).

  82. Schneider, T. 2001. Ideologische Grabenkämpfe. Der Philosoph Ludwig Klages und der Nationalsozialismus 1933–1938. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2: 275–294.

    Google Scholar 

  83. Shklar, J. 1971. ‘Hegel’s phenomenology:An elegy for Hellas. In Hegel’s political philosophy: problems and perspectives, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski, 73–89. (Cambridge).

  84. Silk, M.S., & Stern, J.P. 1995. Nietzsche on tragedy. (Cambridge).

  85. Simonsuuri, K. 1979. Homer’s original genius. Eighteenth-century notions of the early Greek epic (1688–1798). (Cambridge).

  86. Stanford, W.B. 1968. The Ulysses theme: a study in the adaptability of a traditional hero. (Oxford).

  87. Starrett, S.N. 1996. Critical relations in Hegel: Woman, family, and the divine. In Feminist Interpretations of G.W.F. Hegel, ed. P. Mills, 253–74. (Pennsylvania).

  88. Taplin, O. 1980. The shield of Achilles within the Iliad. Greece and Rome 27: 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  89. Thomas, R. 2000. Goebbels’ Georgics. CB 76: 157–68.

    Google Scholar 

  90. Thomas, R. 2001. Virgil and the Augustan reception. (Cambridge).

  91. Thomson, J.A.K. 1914. Studies in the Odyssey. (Oxford).

  92. Trevelyan, H. 1941. Goethe and the Greeks. (Cambridge).

  93. Vermeule, E. 1979. Aspects of death in early Greek art and poetry. (Berkeley).

  94. Vernant, J.-P. 1986. Feminine aspects of death in Ancient Greece. Diacritics 16: 55–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  95. Wedner, S. 1994. Tradition und Wandel im allegorischen Verständnis des Sirenenmythos: ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte Homers. (Frankfurt).

  96. Weil, S. 1953. La source grecque. (Paris).

  97. Wellmer, A. 2000. The Death of the Sirens and the Origin of the Work of Art. NGC 81: 5–20.

    Google Scholar 

  98. White, N. 2002. Individual and conflict in Greek ethics. (Oxford).

  99. Wiggerhaus, R. 1994. The Frankfurt school: its history, theories and political significance, M. Robertson trans. (Oxford).

  100. Wilamowitz- Moellendorff, U. von 1927. Die Heimkehr des Odysseus: neue homerische Untersuchungen. (Berlin).

  101. Wilamowitz- Moellendorff, U. von 1931. Der Glaube der Hellenen vol.1. (Berlin).

  102. Williamson, G.S. 2004. The longing myth: religion and aesthetic culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche. (Chicago).

  103. Wohlleben, J. 1990. Die Sonne Homers. Zehn Kapitel deutscher Homerbegeisterung. Von Winckelmann bis Schliemann. (Göttingen).

  104. Wulf, C. 1998. Il ritorno della mimesis. Nuova Corrente 45: 155–72.

    Google Scholar 

  105. Yovel, Y. 1998. Dark riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews. (Oxford).

  106. Ziolkowski, T. 1993. Virgil and the moderns. (Princeton).

  107. Zuckert, C.H. 1996. Postmodern platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida. (Chicago).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK

    Katie Fleming

Authors
  1. Katie Fleming
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katie Fleming.

Additional information

My thanks to the anonymous readers for their wise and helpful suggestions for improvement of this article. Any faults which remain are, of course, my own.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Fleming, K. Odysseus and Enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung . Int class trad 19, 107–128 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-012-0312-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-012-0312-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation