Dialectic of enlightenment

Adomo and Horkheimer is already in the first scentence saying that the goal of enlightenment is to “liberate human beings from fear and installing them as masters”. As I understand it, enlightenment is to see things for what they truly are, without letting our view of it be tainted by preconceptions caused by e.g. myths. Myths have and still fill an important role for humanity. We feel powerless before a question we can not answer or truly understand. Giving the unknown an explanation, be it that thunder is caused by Thor riding his wagon or that the reason we are suffering in life is to test our character before the better after life. Accepting these myths brings us comfort, a false sense of controlling the unknown. I see an enlightened person as someone who with the help of reason can understand and explain nature as it is, without having to rely on myth.

Dialectic is an argumentation form where the participants are searching for the truth rather than convincing others that their point of view is correct like in debates and similar. One form of dialectic is demonstrated in Plato's text for theme 1, where Socrates and Teaeteus engage in an argument to find out if Theaeteus answer to the question “What is knowledge?” is true. They keep presenting their points of view to see under which conditions the theory might or might not work. In the end however, it ends up being falsified.

Nominalism as I understand it tells us that abstract man-made words, cathegories and concepts does not exist in reality, but only in language and thought. An example was brought up during the theme 1 lecture where the teacher said that according to Kant, the table has the attribute grey according to the way we percieve the world. Nominalism would say that “grey” is just an empty word , since it lacks a specific definition and can be understood in different ways. With this in mind, nominalism is a very important concept in the text since I think it connects to enlightenment by the fact that you want to stay away from abstraction or myths, and look at the world as it is.

“The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity”

According to Karl Marx, the substructure is the actual economy with the workers, equipment and production, while the superstructure can be seen as society in a larger scale, that defines how we view art, politics, laws and similar. He also say that the superstructure is much slower to adapt than the substructure, which I understand as it being hard to predict how a change in the economy will will impact society. With this in mind, I think it's valid to analyze cultural production through Marx's perspective since culture sets trends and ideal, be it political or the concept of beauty.

In my opinion Benjamin does believe that culture have revolutionary potential. He states that film will lack any real revolutionary merit as long as money controls the industry. He does however see the potential in film to show “revolutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution of property”. A way to transport information to the public in an available format. Adomo and Horkheimer however have a more sceptical view on the matter where they believe that anyone stepping out of the circle of what I like to call “accepted culture” will fade away and never get a chance to make his or her message heard.

From my understanding of Benjamin, I agree that our sense perception is determined both naturally and historically. A naturally determined perception would be putting your hand on a hot stove. I percieve the stove as hot because warmer than my body temperature. Historically determined perception however is to me described very well by the quote “History is written by the victors”. Our view of the world is changed by a historical event. An extreme example of this would be Nazi Germany. While they advanced they found many followers all over Europe, including Sweden. I believe our perception of other humans would be vastly different today should Hitler have succeeded. At the same token, Germans of today knows as much as anyone else that what the nazis did was wrong, from our historically determined perception.

The aura of an art object is the uniqueness or authenticity of it. You can feel the aura of a painting in the strokes of the painter, how his result could have been affected by his mood while painting and similar. To reproduce the painting would  be to wither the aura by allowing multiple copies of the same work of art exist, which denies it its uniqueness. I understand Benjamin's description of aura for natural objects as the feeling you get when you behold it. Imagine standing at the base of Mt Everest, gazing at it's massive size and you feel like you are shrinking in relation. This is feeling the aura of a natural object.