SOURCE: Simon-Ingram, Julia. “Alienation, Individuation, and Enlightenment in Rousseau's Social Theory.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 24, no. 3 (spring 1991): 315-35.

In the following essay, Simon-Ingram finds parallels between Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment and the philosophical thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In their landmark study Dialectic of Enlightenment¹ Horkheimer and Adorno put forth a strikingly pessimistic interpretation of reason and enlightenment. They maintain that despite the advantages gained through reason's capacity to explain and ultimately to control nature, there is a dark side to the process of enlightenment. The cost of this process, they argue, is in the growth of domination.

Knowledge, which is power, knows no obstacles: neither in the enslavement of men nor in compliance with the world's rulers. … Technology is the essence of this knowledge. It does not work by concepts and images, by the fortunate insight, but refers to method, the exploitation of others' work, and capital. … What...