This is a take home exam, there are 4 different questions that have to be researched and answered - Essay Example

Adorno has redefined enlightenment and extended its meaning to a universal principle that guided the development of human civilization. In so doing, he realized that enlightenment also led the people to dominate and use nature for themselves. In the process, enlightenment brought about transformation and suppression of other elements that existed in nature that consequently led to self-destruction as shown by the totalitarianism examples during the madness of Nazism and Stalin. Totalitarian here is taken as an abstract word that I define as restriction, and imposed power that is critical of the system of the form of government of a totalitarian power.

I believe that what Adorno exemplifies in his theory as “a process of categorical thought in modern society, by which everything becomes an example of an abstract, and thus nothing individual in its actual uniqueness is allowed to exist”. Adorno believes that reason has been entangled with domination and suffering. I take this to mean that it is likened to a totalitarian system wherein, people although living in modern society have no control of its environment and everything has to conform to the outside world.

Under this context, let me describe totalitarianism as a form of society largely responsible for influencing its citizens with a self-centered ideology. Man, according to Adorno has been liberated from myth, and enlightenment and understanding today comes from scientific reasoning which he thinks is the same as from myth. I believe this should not be the case because myth has no foundations of truth, and belief has only been passed by traditions so much so that it is accepted as near truth; but scientific researches are based on truth that is more reliable than myths.

On this basis, Adorno created a view point that morality is being stuck within its powerless objective, in a world that values only recognizable facts, and morality becomes a mere prejudice of individual subjectivity. It is hard to discern what morality signifies to Adorno and why it has become powerless. But my understanding of morality is the codes of conduct put forward by a society or by a religion. In a sense, there is some truth to his assumptions because codes of conduct, particularly in a religion is based on tradition and culture that limits free expression of people and does really free the people.

Talking about culture of the people, Adorno has been known for being critique of the entertainment industry of modern society because to him “it is just a mechanical, formulaic, and dominating as the workplace. His arguments show that the humans in modern society have been programmed between work and leisure, and they are merely changing to another piece of the machine – from producer to consumer. His rationalization is under this mantle of ideology, man is not free to create his own desires and they cannot really become free individuals that can create its own society. 2. Does God Matter in the present world, especially since God has been associated with oppressive ideas such as sexual repression, racism, and androcentrism/anthropocentrism?

This question is taken in the context of sociological perspectives that encourages us to examine aspects of social environment