1.

Enlightenment’s Promise and Irony

• Advance of thought: Enlightenment aims to liberate humans from fear and install them as
masters.

• Paradox: Despite full “enlightenment,” the world is “radiant with triumphant calamity.”

2. Disenchantment of the World

• Core program:

◦ Dispel myths and overthrow fantasy with knowledge.

◦ Remove “enchantment”—no hidden powers, only rational laws.

• Bacon’s synthesis (“father of experimental philosophy”):

◦ Critique of tradition: Traditionalists prefer belief over doubt and knowledge.

◦ Blocks the “happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things.”

◦ Early inventions (printing, artillery, compass) arose by chance, not systematic

enquiry.

• Goal of systematic knowledge:

◦ Free from “wealth and power.”

◦ Establish human mastery over nature.

3. Knowledge as Sovereign Power

• Bacon’s declaration:
“The sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge;… kings… cannot buy… we govern nature
in opinions, but… are thrall unto her in necessity… if led by her in invention, we should
command her by action.”

• Patriarchal “happy match”:

◦ Mind conquers superstition, rules a disenchanted nature.

◦ Knowledge = unrestricted power for factories, battle elds, entrepreneurs.

◦ “Democratic” technology: Equally available to merchants and kings.

• Technology’s essence:

◦ Not for concepts, images, or joy, but for method, exploitation of labor (“capital”),
and utility.
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 ◦ Inventions simply become more ef cient instruments:

▪ Radio as “sublimated printing press”

▪ Dive bomber as improved artillery

▪ Remote control as advanced compass

• Self-violence of Enlightenment:

◦ Destroys its own deeper self-awareness.

◦ Only ruthlessly self-critical thought can shatter myths.

◦ Power and knowledge converge—“knowledge that tendeth but to satisfaction… is

but as a courtesan.”

4. Knowledge for Operation, Not Satisfaction

• Baconian purpose:

◦ True end of knowledge is “operation” (effective procedures), not “truth” or

“satisfaction.”

◦ Emphasis on discovering “particulars not revealed before” to improve human life.

• No mystery allowed:

◦ Enlightenment rejects any “desire to reveal mystery.”

5. Extirpation of Animism and Metaphysics

• Attack on animism:

◦ Xenophanes mocks gods as human projections.

◦ Modern logic treats language’s impressions as “counterfeit coin,” replaced with

“neutral counters.”

• Chaos vs. synthesis:

◦ World reduced to chaotic matter; only rational synthesis offers “salvation.”

◦ Totemic animal = spirit-seer dreams = absolute Idea—no meaningful difference.

• Conceptual shift:

◦ Concept → Formula

◦ Cause → Rules & Probability

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 • Causality’s last stand:

◦ Tested and discarded as an “old idea” blocking scienti c criticism.

• Science vs. metaphysical categories:

◦ Categories of substance, quality, activity, suffering, being left as “idola theatri”

(theatre idols).

◦ Pre-Socratic myths (water, earth, air, re) rationalized into early scienti c elements.

◦ Platonic Forms and Olympian gods absorbed, then suppressed as superstitious

universals.

6. Totalitarian Logic of Enlightenment

• Universal concepts as fear:

◦ Enlightenment sees metaphysical universals as remnants of “fear of demons” once

appeased in magic.

• Calculability & utility:

◦ Anything not serving pure calculation or utility is suspect.

• Self-reinforcement:

◦ Every resistance—myth or moral—must internalize rational critique, strengthening

Enlightenment.

• Conclusion:

◦ Enlightenment’s corrosive rationality renders it inherently totalitarian.

1. Anthropomorphism as Basis of Myth

• Projection onto nature

◦ Enlightenment sees anthropomorphism (attributing human traits to nature) as the

root of myth.

• Supernatural = human re ection

◦ Spirits and demons are “re ections of human beings” scared by natural events.

2. Reduction of Multiplicity to the Subject

• Oedipus’s answer
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 ◦ “That being is man” becomes the stereotyped message of Enlightenment for:

▪ Objective meaning

▪ Schematic order

▪ Fear of evil powers

▪ Hope of salvation

• Unity requirement

◦ Only what can be held under a single system counts as real or event.

◦ Both rationalist and empiricist Enlightenment share this ideal.

3. Unitary Science and Hostility to Discontinuity

• Bacon’s una scientia universalis

◦ One universal science links highest principles to observed propositions by degrees of

generality.

• Leibniz’s mathesis universalis

◦ Opposes any discontinuity in knowledge.

• De Maistre’s mockery

◦ Bacon’s “idolized ladder” of logical steps.

• Formal logic’s role

◦ School of uni cation; makes the world calculable.

4. Number as Canon of Demythologizing

• Plato’s nal equation of Forms with numbers

◦ Expresses Enlightenment’s longing to replace myths with number.

• Equivalence in bourgeois society

◦ Justice and commodity exchange both follow the axiom:

“If you add like to unlike you will always end up with unlike.”

◦ Dissimilar things made comparable by reducing to abstract quantities.

• Positivism’s verdict

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 ◦ Anything not resolvable into numbers (ultimately into one) is illusion, relegated to
poetry.

5. Myths as Products of Rationalization

• Myths recorded and taught

◦ From oral record → teaching → ritual representation of processes to be in uenced

magically.

• Autonomy in popular epics

◦ Ritual’s theoretical element becomes independent narrative.

• Tragic drama

◦ Local spirits → universal heaven/hierarchy; magic → graded sacri ce and slaves’

labor.

6. Allegory and the Detachment of Gods

• Olympian deities as allegory

◦ Zeus → daytime sky; Apollo → sun; Elelios, Eos → personi ed elements.

• From substance to quintessence

◦ Gods no longer identical with things but their pure form.

7. Split Between Logos and the External World

• Logos contracts to monad

◦ Philosophy’s logos becomes a mere reference point.

• Mass of things

◦ Everything outside logos is the undifferentiated external world.

• Single human distinction

◦ Man’s existence vs. reality overrides all other differences.

8. Dominion and Sovereignty

• Jewish creation & Olympian dominion

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 ◦ “Let them have dominion… over all the earth…”

◦ “O Zeus… you oversee… works of men… and unruly animals… and uphold
righteousness.”

• Condition of divine favor

◦ Complete submission to divine power guarantees acceptance.

• Subject’s awakening

◦ Tied to recognizing power as the basis of all relationships.

9. Unity of Reason and God-Man Likeness

• God–man distinction irrelevant

◦ Reason’s unity has long shown them identical (since critiques of Homer).

• Shared sovereignty

◦ Creative God and ordering human mind both maintain mastery over existence,
commanding and surveying creation.

1. Myth as Enlightenment & Nature as Objectivity

• Myth → Enlightenment

◦ Mythologies become part of Enlightenment’s language and critique.

• Nature → Mere Objectivity

◦ Natural world stripped to data and manipulable facts.

2. Estrangement through Power

• Power’s cost

◦ Human mastery over nature causes alienation from what is dominated.

3. Science as Dictator to Things

• Analogy

◦ Enlightenment’s relation to nature = Dictator’s relation to people.

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 ◦ Knowledge = ability to manipulate (“He knows them to the extent that he can
manipulate them”).

4. Transformation Revealing Essence as Domination

• “In-itself” → “For him”

◦ Things lose autonomy; become instruments of human will.

• Unity of nature

◦ Under domination, all things share the same substrate.

5. Magic vs. Enlightenment

5.1 Shamanic Rites

• Target speci c phenomena (wind, rain, snake, sickness)—not inert materials.

• Spirit’s identity shifts with cult masks—re ects multiplicity of powers.

5.2 Magician’s Impersonation

• Mimics demons through gestures to fear or appease them.

• Does not claim human-made-in-divine-image status.

6. Civilized Man’s Impenetrable Mask

• Self identity

◦ Man as image-bearer of power attains an indestructible, uni ed self.

• Consequences

◦ Abundant qualities of nature are reduced; nature becomes chaotic “stuff” for
classi cation.

◦ The self becomes abstract possession, detached from lived richness.

7. Sacri ce, Representation, and the Rise of Discursive Logic

• Magic’s substitution

◦ Spear/hair/name of the enemy stand for the person.

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 ◦ Sacri cial animal represents the god or victim.

• Step toward logic

◦ The victim exempli es a genus—early move from unique ritual to general category.

8. Science’s Universal Fungibility

• End of speci c representation

◦ A sacri cial animal can no longer stand for a god.

• Specimen vs. exemplar

◦ Atoms and lab animals treated as mere specimens of matter, not unique beings.

• Fluid differences

◦ In science, all things collapse into one homogenous matter; objects become
“petri ed.”

9. Loss of Af nities & Rise of Subject–Object Divide

• Magic’s kinship

◦ Dream, image, and thing were linked by resemblance or name.

• Enlightenment’s split

◦ Subject confers meaning; objects are meaningless carriers.

10. Magic’s Mimesis vs. Science’s Distance

• Magic

◦ Achieves ends by imitation (mimesis).

◦ No radical split between thought and reality; no “omnipotence of thought.”

• Science

◦ Achieves world control through objecti cation and technical astuteness.

◦ Requires Ego’s autonomy and reality adequacy.

11. Solar Patriarchal Myth as Early Enlightenment

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 • Myth in language

◦ Solar, patriarchal myth claims universal truth, suppresses older faiths.

• Self undermining

◦ Mythology initiates Enlightenment critique, eventually subjecting itself to the same

annihilation.

12. Mutual Entanglement of Myth and Enlightenment

• Myth → Enlightenment → Myth

◦ Enlightenment uses myths as subject matter to destroy them, yet remains bound by
mythic logic.

• Retribution cycle

◦ Both myth and Enlightenment enact atonement and negate the signi cance of
established facts.

13. Repetition, Regularity & Imprisonment

• Mythic fate

◦ Events must atone for their occurrence.

• Enlightenment’s regularity

◦ Laws of nature objectify repetition, imprisoning humans in cycles they mistake for
freedom.

14. Universal Mediation & Incommensurability Amputation

• Abstraction’s rule

◦ Dissimilar qualities dissolved; everything made commensurable.

• Market conformity

◦ Individual selves created only to be standardized for commodity exchange.

• Coercive equality

◦ Liberal sympathy for social coercion; enforced uniformity masks as freedom.

15. Abstraction’s Fate: The Enlightened “Herd”

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 • Abstraction = Fate

◦ Just as fate erased mythic forces, abstraction liquidates concrete differences.

• Outcome (Hegel’s “Trupp”)

◦ The liberated become a uniform herd—the ultimate product of Enlightenment’s

logic.

1. Subject–Object Distance & Abstraction

• Foundation in domination

◦ The ruler’s abstract “distance” from objects mirrors the social distance achieved by
ruling people.

2. Origins in Territorial Dominion

• Homer & Rig Veda

◦ Epic songs date to the rise of warlike overlords who imposed xed property on
defeated peoples.

• Civil world formation

◦ King leads armed nobility; subjugated tied to land; specialists (doctors, artisans,
traders) maintain circulation.

• End of nomadism

◦ Social order based on permanent property; power separates from labor.

3. Odysseus as Prototype of Distant Rule

• Control at a remove

◦ From his castle, Odysseus oversees herds and servants: “he can go to his rest in
peace… loyal servants… keep away wild animals… drive away thieves.”

• Discursive logic built on real power

◦ Conceptual generality (logical classi cation) rests on actual hierarchical command.

4. Conceptual Unity Replaces Magical Notions

• Uni cation through classi cation
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 ◦ Diffuse magical ideas give way to xed conceptual distinctions.

• Tabooing real apprehension

◦ True, concrete knowledge of objects is shunned; the buried world of primeval

happiness is demonized under Olympian and Vedic light-centric religions.

5. Heaven and Hell’s Interdependence

• Dual cults

◦ Zeus worshiped both as underworld and sky god; good and evil deities commerce
together.

• Ancient mana

◦ Early, undifferentiated “principle of mana” persists in Greek religion as the

transcendent unknown.

• Fear-as-explanation

◦ The name for unfamiliar terror xes transcendence; myth’s appearance–essence split
arises from human fear.

6. Preanimism & the Birth of Language

• Mana not projection

◦ Echo of nature’s dominance in primitive psyches, not mere psychologism.

• Subject–object split pre gured

◦ Addressing a tree as a locus of mana makes it “itself and something other”—the rst
linguistic tautology.

• Dialectical de nition

◦ Concept emerges by contrasting each thing with its opposite; Homeric epics already
contain this objectifying move.

7. Demythologization as Radicalized Fear

• Equating living/nonliving

◦ Enlightenment’s drive to eliminate the unknown mirrors myth’s binary of animate–

inanimate.

• Positivism’s immanence

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 ◦ Complete taboo on anything “outside”; outside equals fear.

• Mythical fate vs. scienti c law

◦ Both enact repetition: myth through atonement, Enlightenment through xed natural
laws, trapping humans in cycles.

8. Equivalence & Justice

• Mythic and enlightened justice

◦ Guilt–atonement, happiness–misfortune framed as equivalent sides of an equation.

• From shamanic substitution to civil law

◦ Magic’s equivalence (image for enemy) evolves into universal fungibility under
science.

• Astrological symbols → natural cycles

◦ Gemini, Libra, egg symbol re ect nature’s duality and the invariant principle of
equivalence.

9. Civilization’s Fetishization of Equivalence

• Chaos → civilization

◦ Human consciousness mediates nature’s power but retains equivalence as its core
principle.

• Equivalence becomes fetish

◦ Abstract sameness (e.g., market equality of rights) masks underlying coercion.

◦ Justitia’s blindfold symbolizes justice’s impersonal, non-voluntary origin.

I. Symbolic Origins & Nature’s Repetition

• Priestly teachings as symbols

◦ Sign (word) and image coincide; hieroglyphs show early words were pictorial.

• Myths & magic rites

◦ Both reenact nature’s repetitive cycles.

◦ Symbolic core: self-repetition, inexhaustibility, endless renewal, permanence.

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 • Creation imagery

◦ World born from primal mother (cow, egg) → symbolic, not literal.

◦ Contrasts with linear Genesis narrative.

II. Persistence of Mana in Enlightenment

• Essence beyond individuality

◦ Ancient gods retained mana—nature as universal power.

• Pre-animistic traits

◦ Doctrine of colliding elements evolved into early science; myth became fantasy.

III. Sign vs. Image: Science and Art Divide

• Separation of word-functions

◦ As sign, language → calculation; renounces resemblance to nature.

◦ As image, language → likeness; renounces claim to know nature.

• Division of labor extended to culture

◦ Science claims the sign; arts inherit image and sound.

• Convergence through opposition

◦ Neopositivist science → aestheticism (system of isolated signs).

◦ Art → compliant reproduction (ideological doubling of the world).

IV. Philosophy’s Unclosed Chasm & Plato’s Banishment

• Intuition vs. concept

◦ Philosophy de ned by its attempt (always failing) to reunite them.

• Plato vs. poetry

◦ Poetry outlawed for lack of usefulness (no public reforms or inventions).

◦ Mirrors Jews’ proscription of images.

• Magic’s legacy in art

◦ Art’s self-contained sphere mirrors the magician’s sacred circle.

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 ◦ Aesthetic illusion reenacts primitive mana—the appearance of totality in the
particular (aura).

V. Faith’s Contradictions & Protestant Word-Symbol

• Faith’s duality

◦ Must oppose or agree with knowledge; its limits are those set by knowledge.

• Protestant attempt

◦ Restore symbolic power of the word in scripture; paid in strict obedience to the
word’s letter.

• Irrationality → organized barbarism

◦ Faith’s inherent aw (bad conscience, fanaticism) culminates in twentieth-century

myth and barbarism under “utterly enlightened” rulers.

VI. Language, Sorcerers & the Solidi cation of Mana

• Early linguistic power

◦ Priests and sorcerers controlled symbols; offending them risked earthly punishment.

• Mana’s materialization

◦ Sorcerers coordinated sacred realms, monopolized esoteric knowledge and power.

VII. From Magic to Division of Labor

• Nomadic origins

◦ Tribe members once shared rituals; later, magic (spirits) and obedience (labor
discipline) separated into classes.

• Rhythms of nature → rhythms of work

◦ Drums and clubs enforce social compulsion; symbols become fetishes representing
privilege.

VIII. Intellectual Forms as Social Power

• Deductive logic mirrors hierarchy

◦ Chains of inference re ect chains of command; concepts re ect division of labor.

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 • Durkheim’s misread

◦ Intellectual forms show unity of society and power—not solidarity.

• Concepts as domination

◦ Plato’s and Aristotle’s universals arose in the marketplace; they legitimize free-
citizen equality and slave subjugation alike.

• Language’s neutrality

◦ Scienti c language’s “impersonal sign” conceals and enforces domination more

effectively than metaphysical apologias.

IX. Enlightenment’s Consumption of Symbols & Concepts

• Devouring its sources

◦ Enlightenment eradicates myths, symbols, and even its own universal concepts,
leaving only an abstract fear of the collective.

• Positivism’s taboo

◦ Nothing may remain “outside”; the idea of the outside is the ultimate source of fear.

• Probability’s eclipse

◦ Once a remnant of magical essence, chance is now equated with necessity in

ethnological positivism.

I. Nominalism’s Limit & the Proper Name

• Nominalist limit: Enlightenment reduces general concepts but stops before the nomen
(proper name) and non-extensive ideas.

• Proper names’ resilience: Unlike generic terms, proper names retain link to essence.

• Jewish prohibition: Forbidding utterance of God’s name acknowledges name–essence

connection.

II. Judaism’s Negative Magic

• Disenchantment via negation: Judaism negates magic by denying false names for God.

• Salvation through prohibition: Rejects any depiction of the in nite as nite or lie as truth.

• Determinate negation vs. Buddhism & skepticism:

◦ Determinate negation (Hegel): dialectically reads each image’s admissions of

falsity to reveal truth.
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 ◦ Buddhist nothingness and skepticism indiscriminately deny but lack this dialectical
“script-reading.”

III. Hegel’s Dialectic & Its Mythic Fall

• Hegel’s insight: Elevates determinate negation above positivist decay.

• Mythic violation: By proclaiming a nal absolute (totality of negation), Hegel slips into the
very mythology he critiques.

• Enlightenment’s totalitarianism: As a closed system, it prejudges its own trial.

IV. Mathematics as Enlightenment Ritual

• Unknown → Unknown quantity: Pre-assigns objectivity before actual value is known.

• Mathematization of nature (Galileo): Nature becomes a mathematical manifold,

idealized on the model of math.

• Rei cation of thought: Mathematics turns thought into a tool/machine, ready to be replaced
by the machine itself.

• Positivist taboo: Speculating beyond manipulable phenomena (e.g., God) is senseless;

denial is criminal.

V. Kant’s Oracular Wisdom & Its Price

• Two-fold doctrine:

◦ Knowledge can penetrate all phenomena.

◦ Yet “what can be penetrated is not Being.”

• I think: The only residue of subject after world-domination; both subject and object are
nulli ed.

• Math formalism’s failure: Arrests thought in immediacy; abandons negation of the

immediately given; thought becomes tautology.

VI. Mythology’s Return in Scienti c Form

• Mythic and scienti c parallels:

◦ Mythic event (Persephone’s rape) and its autumnal repetition mirror scienti c law’s
cyclical regularity.

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 ◦ Both subsume the new under the old, rendering each new occurrence pre-
determined.

• Symbolic or mathematical subsumption: Transforms the present into a replay of the past
or formula.

• Knowledge’s false security: Treats existence itself as schema, mistaking the map (symbol)
for the territory.

VII. Profane Myth & Objecti ed Mind

• Domination as sacrosanct fact: Brutal social facts, “cleansed” of demons, gain numinous
authority.

• Objecti cation of the self:

◦ Individuals become nodes of prescribed reactions—things rather than selves.

◦ Souls turned into commodities; people de ne themselves by market-assigned

“values.”

• Collective deception: Apparent collective power conceals the true, manipulative forces
behind the scenes.

VIII. Industrial Fetishism & Mass Coercion

• Commodity fetishism: Commodities, stripped of use-value, assert fetish power over
society.

• Standardized behavior: Mass production and culture impose uniformity as “natural” and
“rational.”

• Collective policing: From classrooms to unions, diversity is suppressed by collective force

—yet that collective itself is a façade.

IX. From Animistic Fate to Modern Panic

• Mana → modern value: The distortions of primeval spirits reappear in industrial and social
power structures.

• Noonday panic ↔ universal fear:

◦ Ancient terror of nature’s overwhelming power.

◦ Contemporary dread of self-produced universal forces (e.g., total war, ecological

collapse).

I. Mythic Terror & Rational Self-Preservation

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 • Enlightenment’s fear of myth

◦ Sees any speech outside self-preserving function as mythical terror.

• Spinoza’s maxim
“The endeavor of preserving oneself is the rst and only basis of virtue.”

◦ Becomes foundational for bourgeois religion and philosophy.

• Transcendental subject

◦ After ridding self of body, blood, soul, natural ego → subject becomes pure logical
point of reference.

• Denunciation of impulse and faith

◦ Direct self-immersion in life (impulse) or worship of any non-self-originated deity is

branded “prehistoric” superstition.

II. Division of Labor & Self-Alienation

• Bourgeois economy

◦ Social work mediated by self-interest: capital accumulation or stamina for more

work.

• Self-preservation’s paradox

◦ Greater reliance on specialized labor deepens alienation—individuals must conform

mind and body to technical systems.

• Subject’s disappearance

◦ Transcendental subject seems abolished, replaced by smooth-running automatic

mechanisms of social order.

III. Positivism & the Taboo of Thought

• Positivist takeover

◦ Even fanciful thought is subsumed by scienti c norms—no intermediary between

individual action and social norm.

• Reason as tool

◦ Pure instrument of an all-encompassing economic apparatus, directed solely at

production.

• Logic’s origin in self-preservation

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 ◦ Formal logic, including the law of non-contradiction, arises from societal struggles
to maintain forms that coincidentally preserve individuals.

• Rei cation of humans

◦ Expelling thought from logic mirrors turning people into cogs in factories and
of ces.

IV. Civilization’s Auto-Destructive Loop

• Unfettered world history

◦ With theory limited to unitary knowledge, practical action is left to inevitable

historical forces—self dissolves into inhuman civilization.

• Fear of losing the name

◦ The oldest dread—returning to undifferentiated nature—realized as self is swallowed

by civilization.

• Moderate hedonism

◦ Enlightenment’s “middle way” scorns both excess and deprivation; eludes extremes
of promiscuity or asceticism.

• Ruling spirit’s vigilance

◦ Steering between unproductive reproduction and unchecked ful llment—trusting the

“lesser evil.”

V. Myth, Power & Labor Intertwined

• Sirens’ allegory (Odyssey XII)

◦ Sirens tempt with all-knowing song (the past’s endless allure).

◦ Odysseus’ hardened identity (unity of self) resists:

▪ Crew: wax-plugged ears, row unheeding—practical sublimation of

distraction into labor.

▪ Odysseus: bound to mast—contemplative but harmless listening, powerless

to act.

• Two strategies for survival

◦ Ignorance + action: eliminate temptation entirely.

◦ Restraint + contemplation: neutralize temptation by being powerless to follow.

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VI. Art vs. Praxis & the Present’s Liberation
• Fixed temporal order

◦ Past relegated beyond irrecoverable boundary; present freed for action.

• Art’s unique role

◦ Art alone can “rescue the past as something living” without converting it into praxis.

• Divergence of art and work

◦ The one bound by the mast experiences art as suspended labor; the crew experiences
pure labor as escape from myth.

1. Allegory of Odysseus’s Ship & Dialectic of Enlightenment

• Representation = power

◦ One’s strength measured by how widely one can be represented in functions.

◦ Representation yields both progress (expanded control) and regression

(estrangement).

• Exclusion from work

◦ Mutilating for both unemployed and masters:

▪ Master: becomes an ossi ed self, tied only to command.

▪ Bondman: works up close but cannot enjoy the thing itself.

• Primitive vs. lordly experience

◦ Primitive desires the fugitive object directly.

◦ Lord enjoys only the object’s dependent aspect, leaving its independence to the
bondsman.

2. Division of Labor & Anthropological Regression

• Differentiation → primitive relapse

◦ As skills and knowledge specialize, domination requires repressing instincts more

severely.

◦ Fantasy withers, sensuous connection degrades.

• Inevitable price of domination

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 ◦ Successful progress carries within it its own antithesis: irresistible regression.

3. Standardization of Intellect & Impoverishment

• Intellectual autocracy

◦ Detachment from sensory experience in service of subjugating it.

• Stupidity of the powerful

◦ Those adept at manipulation of small details grow incompetent at broader tasks.

• Mass regression

◦ Workers lose capacity to perceive or touch anything unmediated—new blindness

replaces that of myth.

• Collective control

◦ Uniform work rhythms enforce conformity; true diversity and spontaneity collapse.

4. Autonomy of Thought as Critique

• Logical necessity ≠ nality

◦ Domination’s internal logic is both tool and re ection of power—hence

questionable truth.

• Thought’s resistance

◦ Although an instrument of domination, thought cannot be fully controlled; it can

re ect on and critique its own means.

• Universal availability

◦ Means of domination (language, machines) must be graspable by all, planting seeds

of autonomy.

5. Rulers’ Bad Conscience & Mythic Lies

• Economic necessity personi ed

◦ Rulers no longer cloak actions in “objective necessity”—they stage “missions” and

“fate” myths.

• Subjects’ credulity

◦ Workers believe prescribed development inviolable, even as it deepens their

powerlessness.
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 • Surplus population

◦ The unemployed become de facto guards of the system, maintained in a state of

illusory necessity.

6. Illusion of Reason & Freedom

• System’s absurdity

◦ Power over humans increases with every step away from nature—revealing reason’s
obsolescence.

• Either/or logic

◦ Thought’s binary mechanism (consequence & antinomy) freed it from nature but
now traps it in domination.

• Concept as tool

◦ Concepts separate and objectify the world; they become illusory when they deny this
function.

7. Enlightenment’s Self-Overcoming
• Enslavement to nature persists

◦ In mastering nature, mind remains enslaved by the same force it sought to escape.

• Modest confession

◦ Mind regains freedom by acknowledging itself as “nature divided from itself”—

dropping the false claim of mastery.

• Hope through concept

◦ Only the concept (science & self-re ection) can measure and expose domination,
preserving the kernel of freedom.

8. Bacon’s Promise & Its Ful llment

• Hidden sovereignty

◦ Bacon’s “many things which kings… cannot buy” are now every person’s through
bourgeois power.

• Market violence & knowledge

◦ In mediating violence via commodities, the bourgeois multiply both forces and
things—ultimately requiring all humans to administer them.
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• Final self-abolition

◦ When closest practical aims coincide with goals already achieved, and unknown
nature becomes the remembered origin, enlightenment completes and dissolves
itself.

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