Post Theme 2

At first I percieved this theme as easier for me to work with compared to last week's. If that can be linked to the fact that the texts were lighter read than Kant or that I spent more time studying I don't know, probably a combination of the two. While I felt like I had a better grasp, there were still some things I did not fully understand, or missunderstood a bit. And most of all, it felt like my “understanding” only scratched the surface of the topics.

However like someone commented on my first reflection, I don't think we are supposed to know everything when we write our first post. I think I managed to get enough of an understanding to be able to follow the teachers reasoning during the lectures and the seminar.

What eluded me the most was a full understanding of nominalism, but the example given in our seminar group of the cave was a really good illustration that helped me a lot. Comparing it with Plato's view on realism that state something along the lines of “we only see reflections/shadows of the unique object (concept)” gave me in 2 minutes what reading multiple Wikipedia articles could not. Nominalism discard the idea of this abstract object that we can not see, and tell us that what we see is real. This is very linked to enlightenment since it tells us to go out into the world to observe it and perform experiments to understand it.

I also think the teacher managed to connect this very well with the question about revolutionary potential and the two texts different view on it. It's important to keep in mind the texts were written in different times and the fact that Benjamin never got to America to experience culture from another point of view like Adomo and Hokheimer did, but the comparison is still very interesting.

Adomo and Hokheimer believe culture, or more specifically mass media could potentially be a dangerous tool for mass deception. Having a nominalistic view of the world where we accept what we see as the truth is a road to where history repeats itself. The example given where secretaries depicted in movies subordinate to a male boss only leads to cementing current social structures. If you control media, you can control the people. Benjamin on the other hand do believe culture have revolutionary potential because now your average Joe can be depicted in media, which gives dignity to the working class when it's no longer reserved for royalty and other people of power. An example was also given from DDR where the people started to get a different view of what life could be like if they lived like their cousins in the west, and that this over time lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Overall I think the seminar this week was really interesting, discussing our different opinions and maybe getting some ideas shot down. Something I would have liked to discuss that was mentioned in the theme but not really covered much is Hegel's or Marx version of dialectics. I got a good explanation of the principle of how it works with the thesis and anti thesis forming a synthesis, but it would be interesting to discuss possible outcomes. However, this might not really be relevant for this class and I guess I will have to look at it in my spare time.