System i pozór
The System and the Appearance

The Dialectics Motifs in Rousseau’s Works

Author(s): Paweł Pieniążek
Subject(s): Philosophy, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Enlightenment; dialectics of the Enlightenment; system; domination; ideology; appearance; science; art
Summary/Abstract: The article compares Rousseau’s thought to the philosophy of the authors of the Frankfurt school of critical theory in order to present Rousseau as a thinker who in his immanent criticism of the Enlightenment provided the principal, analytical premises for the conception of dialectics of the Enlightenment elaborated by Horkheimer and Adorno. The article shows and discusses the principal moments of the historiosophical scheme underlying it, which determine the logic of self-preservation and the dialectic of reification and domination. Then the ideological function of science and, most of all, of art is presented. The article addresses also the issue of the normative foundations of emancipatory, Enlightenment ideals in the thought of Rousseau and Horkheimer/Adorno.

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