Abstract

ROMAO, Davi Mamblona Marques. A violência do esclarecimento. TransForm. Psicol. (Online) [online]. 2010, vol.3, n.2, pp. 08-29. ISSN 2176-106X.

This article intends to investigate in which way the criticism made in the book Dialectic of Enlightenment allows us to identify a series of violence that the development of the Western Reason has historically inflicted upon the individuals. To this end, we will initially examine how the birth of enlightening thought itself is understood as an occasion of certain violence against the subject, once this birth supposes a restriction on his possibilities of being. Then we will expose how the presence of enlightened thought in the mechanisms of social domination ultimately generates an organization of the society in which this organization identifies itself with the Capital’s form, thus forcing its members to assume certain social functions and in this way also restricting their capacity to live in an autonomous way. Finally, in the last part of this text, we will present how these forms of restriction of life eventually revert themselves into more violence, originating socials phenomena such as anti-Semitism.

Keywords : Violence; Enlightenment; Critical Theory; Paranoia; Anti-Semitism.

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