Theme 2: Reflection

In the lecture by Leif Dahlberg he partly talked about, or clarified, what is really meant by (the) enlightenment, which was really helpful to me as I thought that the definition in Adorno and Horkheimer was a bit unclear. In my blog post that connects to this reflection I mainly wrote about how the enlightenments mission or cause is demythologization and putting man in charge of his own life. Dahlberg concluded that this was in fact true but he had some other good points, like a quote from Kant: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self- imposed tutelage.Tutelage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. [...] ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.” This implies that enlightenment is the liberating force from fear and submission.

Reading through other students blog posts about what enlightenment is, or the effects of it, I noticed that some did not differentiate on enlightenment and the enlightenment which I think is a pretty big deal. I mean that the enlightenment is the era when enlightenment came to be (and many agree with me according to their blog posts). Although in my opinion most of the students got it right and wrote very good summaries about (the) enlightenment. 

Then there is the problem of the culture industry, mass media and mass deception. The enlightenment is of course a big part of what caused of the culture industry, as we read about and heard in the lecture. It is interesting to think about how we personally contribute to the culture industry by for example consuming the new blockbuster movies from Hollywood (that leave us with close to no reflective thoughts afterwards) and how we passively consume televised or web based commercials on a daily basis. It can be very frightening to think about how Facebook and/or Google tracks peoples moves on the Internet and uses it for direct advertising. The phrase “If you are not paying, you are the product” comes to mind in these circumstances. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Prior to the blog post seminar I did a lot of searching on the Internet for interesting sources to use. The hard part was to decide which sources that were credible enough to use as a source of solid information. I found many blogs and forum posts where people from all over the world posted their personal opinions on what enlightenment is, for example, but I did not think that this was good enough to use. It would be very helpful to get some tips on how and where you can find extensive sources to read facing the next lectures and seminars. What constitute a good enough source?