Adorno and Horkheimer: The Identity of Intelligence and Idiocy 

THANK YOU, Professor Moeller!

This is the most comprehensive account I have found of Adorno, on RU-vid. Thank you.

I don't understand how you can have art without some degree of standardisation because it seems to me that nothing could be communicated without some shared language between the artist and audience. When these structures are rejected (for example in free jazz, abstract art e.t.c) isn't what is a significant the rejection of the structure and through that the structure still exists.

Adorno shared Nietzsche’s epistemological aim to demonstrate that the apparent fixity of the world or values arises from the systematic debasement of dynamic aspects of reality in our thinking and philosophy. 4:45

This is an excellent series and i look forward to each new entry! Thank you Prof Moeller!

Excellent video, thanks for sharing. I'm looking forward to the next episode.

I think you do a great job of explaining the culture industry analysis in clear terms without dumbing it down too much. The clarification of dialectics at the beginning really helps. Look forward to the rest of the series. You are a great teacher, I really enjoy this kind of content from you the most

This is a great series. I even love the qualifier at the end. These are some of the thinkers I use in my Advertising as Art and Ideology course. You keep at it and I won't need to teach the course. I could simply point students to the series. Onward.

Thank you for making these videos. They’re really interesting and you break ideas down to where someone like me can understand it. I appreciate your efforts and time.

I enjoy all your videos. Looking forward to part 3.

Thank you for this video! I'm really looking forward to the upcoming Media Theory Series

This is super well done and you certainly deserve more recognition. I think the world desperately needs to gain a better understanding of media overall. Will be super interesting to hear what you have to say about Mcluhan and co. Thanks!

Thankyou for a no nonsense clear explanation - like others have said I feel less crazy in reading things the way I did - That horrible feeling that lecturers and books are not teaching this right or that they are only giving a small piece of the story - - Huge thankyou- it makes more sense now

These authors are a bit idealistic and maximalist? Aren't they? I think a CG Jung quote is in palace: "Modern man can't see God because he doesn't look low enough"

Thank you so much for this upload!!

I am really enjoying this series. I read a bunch of this in art school, but it was all broken up into isolated bits and pieces, and some of the instructor's interpretations did not match what I found in the text. Thank you for providing some 'connective tissue' for these ideas, and making me feel like I'm not crazy for interpreting it the way I did.

Your videos help me so much with my philosophy courses at uni, so thank you for this

Much enjoyed. You show the best way to think about the dialectic is dialectically! ...linking the abstract with the concrete historical examples that make this process real.

Thanks for this, excellent stuff.

I enjoy your videos greatly.

What a great video, thanks for your explanation professor

These analysis seem to point to a past where authenticity and individuality were actually authentic and that it only became inauthentic and pseudo-individualistic precisely because of the prescribed autonomy of the rational individual coupled with technology. But was there really an age where (unintentional?) authenticity was authentic? Or is it simply the case that industries and mass media has made a pre-existing tendency toward uniformity more effective and extensive?

This was great but I am far too excited for a video on Marshall McLuhan!

Fantastic! Thanks a lot. It rhymes perfectly with the book that I just finished: The Idea of Decline in the Western History. Apparently these two guys were quite influential when it comes to historical and cultural pessimism.

3 months ago? This is right up at the end of my road!

I had a great time watching this

I enjoyed this. Well done.

I so enjoy your videos bringing me as they do out from the anaesthetic of my ordinary and disorganised life. An antidote to all the nonsense around me giving me opportunities to think about how things are. Though this video has little to do with him I enjoy your references to Peterson. A man whose large ego always precedes some of the interesting things he has on occasion to say. Probably it is that such a thing is a prerequisite for an equally large bank balance. I'd rather listen to your informative lectures any day. Thanks

Good analysis again Prof Moller

Thank you for this, the outline *and* the concluding critical remarks are very helpful. It speaks to our collective problem just how much of Adorno and Horkheimer's work is painfully relevant - and I must admit theorists from that era are about the only ones I read (Günther Anders, Karl Polanyi, Schmitt, etc. too. Mostly Germanic come to think about it). But I'll continue to watch this series, and no doubt you'll introduce me to more contemporary theorists worthy of my time.

Woop, more Adorno on RU-vid! :P

Good work

Great stuff.

media theory good stuff

Very cool. I like to hear how art is involved in all of this. It's a funny human thing.

Thank you.

Professor, thank you very much! I believe this series is really important and I'm looking forward to watching it to the end. I would suggest a video about Dialectics though since the concept is completely misunderstood and that is being propagated in several videos here on RU-vid. I understood the concept when I read the Ecclesiastes - the first part being probably the most beautiful text in the Bible. Watching your video I managed to understand a bit more: that it's not an "argumentation" (a debate) but an internal dialog - just kile Cohelet does in the Ecclesiastes. Thank you, Professor!

thank you!!

great, extremely enlightening video! re:Adorno's criticism of jazz, which he attacks as being inauthentic compared to artists like Picasso, do you think he was being fair?

Critical thinkhing most necessary ever. Thanks Profesor.

I would love to see you cover Sloterdijk professor.

As a latino from a poor country, people here LOVE progress, they still believe in roads and concrete, First world problems seem far away. Yet, some voices are still echoing, people in Peru defend water and agriculture as a valid mode of life, including moral values. Western values are not readily accepted as they show flaws, yet people (the colonizied) cannot avoid them nor fight them. The only form of resistance is the irony, the cynic view of the flaneur that enjoys the "luxuries" of modern life, yet seems unattached to it.

I look forward to a little dialectical fun in the next video: both McLuhan and Peterson hail from the University of Toronto

This identity of intelligence and idiocy also reminds me of these two sentences (that are often mashed together) from Kracauer's essay on photography: "Never before has an age been so informed about itself, if being informed means having an image of objects that resembles them in a photographic sense." and "Never before has a period known so little about itself". Later in his life he wrote about the redeeming potential of the film medium though. Interesting figure and also a teacher and friend to Adorno.

Dear professor Moeller, Do you have any reflection to share related to the practice of tattooing? I mean, to the practice of having ones body tattooed from the perspective of your ideas on identity and social and psychological effects of that practice? Thank you very much. Best wishes.

Hi, professor Moeller, I really like the subject and quality of your videos. I watch them with great interest. I come from Poland, and the latest media subject here are cases of child abuse in Catholic church, which were intentionally hidden by cardinal Karol Wojtyla, later better known as pope John Paul II. It interesting to watch the Catholic "defender's" response from the perspective of profilicity. In the discourse they focus on harm done to pope's post-mortem image, not on the truthfulness of the described cases. Some of them frame the allegations as "the second assassination attempt" on the pope, and call to stop the destruction of "common good" of pope's legacy. A subject for another video, perhaps?

I want to see how Moeller views Frankurt's _On Bullshit_ in relation to Profilicity and media theory.

Great presentation! Please keep it up. I really find huge value in these lectures.

Not that I put any hope in the video game "industry" but I do think there is some radical potential for reversibility within games tabletop/video as a medium. The agency some games give the player allows for people to not be idle consumers and express themselves. Again though I'm skeptical because, the rules framing games often push people to repeat stories they have consumed rather than creating anything for themselves. Looking forward to your thoughts on McLuhan and Baudrillard in the future.

Like the song mad about the boy!

Hello Professor, big fan of your media. I watched 2 films recently which raised what I found to be an interesting trend in film that i would love to hear you explore in a video. Triangle of Sadness and The Menu. Both are relatively acclaimed and mainstream and both attempt to serve a critique of the hyper rich class, both also happened to have come out in 2022. I thought some analysis of the portrayal of wealth criticism through high budgeted mainstream media made for an amusing irony. One could almost call it the Commodification of Anti-capitalism. I feel like treads similar waters to the ideas that woke culture - while having a beneficial message can be corrupted by capital interests. I'd like to hear how you think the critique compares in these 2 films and then more broadly what the dangers are of capitalist critique from within wealthy media sources.

Moreover, it was Charles Darwin who established the ground for Originality: which is descent with modification, aka Copying with Tweaks. We respect some of the Tweakers more highly than others, because they seem to capture a Truth for our times. But most of the time we are all just regurgitators.

Do you think it is possible to have a conversation between Adorno and Horkheimer with Debord? Cheers.

Looking forward to the next video in this series. It seems to me like marshal mcluhans major contribution was to state what Benjamin said about language, and Marx about technology, in a way that fits into the typical liberal perspective of history. I don't think he was familiar with these thinkers, but I do think he arrived at similar conclusions.

I really loved how the movement to pause the camera is repeated - was that a homage to Win Wenders? Was it proposital or is it there just because pausing quickly makes editin the video easier? I have a feeling it's the second one - unintentional and to make editing easier.

"dialectic is making sense of all sides" this seems doubtful. While I would agree that this might be a goal of dialectic, the process itself is one of paradox and contradiction. This is inherent in the analysis of part/whole relations: dialectic. The Frankfurt school disparages the whole as the status quo. The capitalist status quo imposes itself on the part: the individual. Yet it would seem that the entertainment industry as a hedge against boredom cannot be entirely repetitive. So there must be non-capitalist individuals that escape the status quo -which would seem impossible.

Hi prof. Moeller. I’ve been following your work for a few years now and I really appreciate it. Thanks! I’ve been thinking lately about what I observe to be a somewhat common phenomenon in internet communities: to identify oneself as “undiagnosed autistic” as a way of pathologizing one’s efforts to “mask” in order to fulfill social expectations. Without going more into my own thoughts than I already have just through my wording, I am very curious about what thoughts you might have about this. When thinking about this, I was reminded of Foucault and of you.

Hello, Prof. Moeller! I wonder If you can do a Horst Holzer. Some studies claimed that he was the forgotten Marxist Communication Theorist.

Very well presented, especially the dimension of dialectics! Looking forward to the rest of this series, and particularly Luhmann. This also made me think of another one of your topics, namely how the private sphere in our age is hosting a dialectic turn of individuality to political conformity, as a result of prior individualization (authentification), including our individualization as political entities.

hey what would u recommend to start with a reading from philosophy? I have seen quite a lot of videos but i find my self very hard to start reading a book i did had some philosophical works audiobooks years before (The republic by Plato and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius )

Yes

I really liked this video, would be so good if we could have another one which was almost exactly the same but with some minor cosmetic changes

I'm not sure what is meant by "original." I think imitation and originality always exist.

Thanks. But how is your theory on "profilicity" anything different from Debord's theory of the spectacle?

19:50 I should note that the "standardized jazz improvisation" they talk about is the German Jazz of the time as, I believe, Eric Hobsbawn observed in his book about the genre.

I would not necessarily claim that Adorno and Horkheimer are wrong, but sorry they are wrong. Of course every artist or every artwork is a preview of the next one. That's the nature of art. On the other hand, we have the question of what is art? Was DaVinci an artist? His real achievements in art were basically of technical nature. Is a technical progress art? Then we have Warhol on the other side, his art was completely conceptual and the artist was not needed to produce an artwork. Then we have someone like Pollock who is admired as one of the greatest modern artists, but is a Pollock possible without the foundation laid out by Bauhaus? What about Lichtenstein? Is a blowup of a comic book even art? To solve this puzzle, I can only see two different paths, either we have an art police who decides what art is "true art" and what art is "entartet", we tried that already in Germany and it didn't turned out great. Or we go down the other path and say that "if you like it then it is art", in this case these dudes are totally wrong since it doesn't matter anymore if art is commercially mass-produced or not and we end up calling a "Hallo Kitty" t-shirt art. None of these paths make any sense, therefore just IMO their work lacks a definition what they are talking about and is more of a 100 year old equivalent of a twitter rant that all artists are bad these days...

Please do a video on hanke's movies

Hi prof, what's your favourite MCU movie? Mine is The Winter Soldier

The book "Save The Cat" is literally a template that all movies in Hollywood follow now. This is even seen in the structure of the internet. Even up to 2012, websites were distinct in the way they were laid out. But nowaday, almost all websites are the same design: 3 bars at the top corner for the menu, everything is a rectangle. While this has happened to fit both mobile and desktop, it has created a uniformity in their looks. I don't think people should call themselves "web designers" anymore and more "web template appliers"

the always-already ungrounded illusion is that anything is the way it somehow oughtn't be.

ok greatestgenerationer

‘The key to the age is this thing, & that thing, and that other, as the young orators describe. I will tell you the key to all ages, imbecility: imbecility in the vast majority of men at all times & in every man, even heroes, in all but certain eminent moments victims of gravitation, custom, fear, & sense. this gives force to the strong, that others have no habit of self reliance or original action.’- Emerson

Fromm is my favorite from the Frankfurt School

Could you do a video on the history and the evolution of culture industry?

Despite (or even more likely BECAUSE of) its dire social statistics (poverty, crime, violence) , the United States today remains the most advanced capitalist state, and also the most advanced along the path of this equation between intelligence and idiocy. I just now watched an extraordinary illustration of this equation on a popular politics channel called "Rising" appealing to a North American audience. In her recent commentary there, one of the hosts (Batya Ungar Sargon) argued against retiring the massive overhang of student debt that uniquely burdens new college graduates in the United States, on the grounds that they ha ve "no need" for such assistance, which should be extended instead exclusively to non college graduates. Meanwhile, those same college graduates enter a workforce where they are compelled (if they are lucky enough to get jobs in their chosen fields at all) to work for employers many of whom are presiding over policies that put humanity on the path of the near term collapse of human civilization (cf: the latest IPCC report). And needless to say, dissent from these policies is not taken kindly, and endangers one's career prospects.

Is that BLAME! The manga on the shelf?

I feel like a nod to Jean Baudrillard is warranted!

I think an important word here is "mass". If everything was regionally or locally made, from shoes to animation to smartphones etc, there'd be at least more connection between producers and consumers, as well as more variety and more unique cultures with their own quirks to counteract the homogenization of everything.

I didn't quite understand how the rise of capitalism was related to the enlightenment zeitgeist. Was capitalism a product of the enlightenment or was it a separate oppositionary force?

I take issue with the portrayal that "culture industries" use their market driven commercialization as an excuse for producing trash. It is often that they take the commercialization as an excuse for anything ambiguous in their work by saying that it is just commercial trash and people should not question them too much on it. The alternative to this is to become something like a recluse or mystic, refusing questions and when addressing analysis by fans and academics, only to say they are all wrong. This way their artistic expression is protected from the mob. But if a commercial artist comes forward and says their work is true art and a deep expression of their soul and values, and tells you exactly why, then indeed you should suspect they fear that people will too easily assume that they really are producing trash.

any interest in covering apparatus theory and rosemary jackson?

Grateful for your work as always! A have a question for you: It seems that Wokeism ostensibly traces its ideas back to at least the Frankfurt school, and perhaps to Hegel by extension, though the authors of "Cynical Theories" pointed out that Wokeism has "dealt with" or cast aside various figures in its origins. Regardless, I'd be curious to hear where you think your own philosophy most fundamentally departs from Woke philosophy, given that, at least ostensibly, there are common influences between the two.

Why did they specifically utter "sound film"? Didn't they suggest a dichotomy in art between the original (authentic) and the unoriginal (inauthentic)? Or did they believe it's a matter of degree? Let's say theatre is factory sewing together the ideology of individuality and the masses. Does this change when a movie has no sound? Will the stitch be exposed a bit? Throughout the history of movies, there has always been resistance to what can be considered real or lively, which can more easily stir people up, such as sound films compared to silent films, or color films compared to black & white. Traditional cinephiles and critics have not welcomed 3D movies for this reason, obscenity. However, there has always been a new goal pursued through new art forms. For instance, several acclaimed filmmakers, such as Godard and Herzog, have made 3D movies to achieve their respective artistic goals. It seems entirely possible to create a novel work in the media that is reproducible. Briefly recalling your previous video, what did mobilizing mass mean for Benjamin? It does not sound so different from what Fascism can do with art. Yes, The Battleship Potemkin and Triumph of the Will are different. But are they fundamentally different? Both are propaganda films telling people what is right and what is wrong. Is it different when it comes to Die Hard? It is a propaganda movie too with gunshots, blood, and the iconic curse. Of course, there are some art-house films made by Bresson and Tarkovsky that are not so popular with the masses. Are they different? Yes, but not fundamentally. They tend to restrain gratuitous expressions to secure space for the audience. On the contrary, there are other kinds of films that go over the top to subvert or at least threaten the safety of the conventional audience’s place, and to evoke active critical thinking. Noe and Von Trier are directors who make these types of films. Therefore, it is difficult to draw a clear dividing line among each movie. Movies are media of obscenity, and filmmakers tune it to affect how much a movie entertains people, how much people like it. Entertainment is about reducing risk. Therefore, entertainment is inseparable from mass in most cases. Personal entertainment, if one may call it that, moves you to awe and leaves you speechless, making you want to view everything again after watching a Bresson movie. However, this type of entertainment cannot be made into mass entertainment because it fundamentally risks being alone. What else did Benjamin say about sports? One of my personal topics(話頭) is the difference between sports and narrative arts such as movies. Thanks to Mr. Moeller's lectures, including the great Esposito’s, now I can sorta answer my own question. There is no fundamental difference between bloody pro-wrestling and Bresson's film. People tend to prefer simpler movies to complicated ones. The bigger the mass, the simpler the movies like sports. What does the cinephile society need in this circumstance? They need a list that contains Citizen Kane and Mouchette ranked high, another simplification; "This movie is the all-time best" "The only movie Jonathan Rosenbaum picked this year!" Benjamin was right that it's the time for any layman to comment about sports. That's what sports are all about - simplification; "The reason Argentina won the World Cup is that the team has Messi" "Mayweather beat Pacquiao because he's better." However, there is always an expert who says the opposite in a more complicated manner. These individuals are less likely to become aggressive since they have a mechanical understanding and find it less mystical. So it's not just about what movies/sports show. It's also about how much each audience can resist simplifying. That seems somewhat more like dialectic, I'm not sure if I understood half of what dialectic is though. Here's my final question as I conclude my gibberish: How can mass mobilization differ from the fascism movement? Do people unite without simplified expressions? I think that even the act of uniting itself is a simplified expression. "Free and creative" might not resonate well with the masses, at least not in the long run. Movies are media of obscenity simplifying what is right and what is wrong that ignites people to come together. I don't know what level of obscenity is optimum for liberation not for fascism. Thank you for reading my poor absurd English comment.

The Life of Brian: "YES! We are ALL Individials!" SCNR

8:30 Dialectical Materialism?!?

Well, it is short from expression, the words that might describe the excellency of this short introduction. Marx and the Frankfurt school are still very much relevant on all levels, and every day, I am reminded of how accurate they are in their analysis. Fantastic channel, and we would like to thank you.

Understanding dialectics not as arguments but processes is far more productive.

Yaaaay!

this is intellectual nectar for me.

Sehr interessantes Video. An welchem Punkt machen Sie denn fest, dass die Grünen die "militaristischste" Partei im aktuellen Deutschland sind?

The dialectic is an inherently difficult, if not impossible concept for Americans to embrace who are feed from birth a diet of mythic "exceptionalism" blended with Enlightenment "progressivism" and "Free Market" Positivism to produce someone infinitely more frightening than the "New Soviet Man" or any Chinese Red Guard. This American somebody not only believes like any past (historical) true believer, he is now the epitome of the modern self, given up his citizenship in exchange for patterned consumption against the background of illusory choices. No wonder few bother to vote. 🤔

One might say modern art and culture are no longer authentic, nore even artificial, but instead “superficial” 🤔

One may have to design, create or initiate something like a behavioral pattern to ensure true individuality into creativity. Some artists may have already. I think it's always wrong to play/argument on/about commonization of anything. Erm.... Means Some do so, some do something else. (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SBjQ9tuuTJQ.html&pp=ygUWZm9vIGZpZ2h0ZXJzIHByZXRlbmRlcg%3D%3D (scnr ;)))

: / I'm really struggling to understand what you mean by dialectics not being about what is the case. This feels as slippery as Taoism where the only way to not be wrong is to not pay attention to the concept.

They were mad that they got kicked out of Germany

The inability to create new unique art and other cultural products may be the result of a complete consumption and exhaustion of the conceptual space. If everything that could be produced has already been produced, then nothing new can be produced anymore, creating the illusion of uniformity.

Reading Adorno, my main takeaway has always been how little he seemed to care about readers being able to understand his writing. Then again, maybe that's fitting for a philosophical movement which is criticizing the idea of understanding itself.

Seems to me these two guys are blamed for starting 'cultural Marxism'. Are you able to provide a history of this concept from the ideas of the Russian Revolution through Marx to these guy's critique of culture? I can't find any good articles or videos that give a solid, unbiased history of how this concept came into existence. Seems to me that Marx was an economic Marxist because he wanted the people to rise up for economic change whereas these guys thought that people should rise up on cultural lines rather than economic. That doesn't seem too bad to me.

This telephone to radio comparison doesn't make much sense to me. They are different tools for different purposes. The idea of a flood of information making you dumber and smarter is something I'd like to see a deep dive into. Breadth vs depth. Attention span taken hostage. The days stay the same length but the expected activity per day seems to increase every year to keep up with everything.

Did you stop putting the warning note in the beginning of your videos because you realized that there is no richtiges Leben im Falschen?