Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes
Horkheimer & Adorno on The Odyssey (Part One)
May 20, 20261h · 9,144 words
Show notes
We read part of The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), specifically the parts about Homer's epic as an allegory for the merely apparent triumph of modernism (capitalism, instrumental reason) over myth (savagery, magical thinking). Homer is odd for H&A because even stylistically, the epics present a mixture of cultures: They glorify violence, but their form is very ordered, and their very popularity makes them the first mass-culture products of the West.
Highlighted moments
The other possibility Odysseus chooses for himself, the landowner, who has others to work for him. He listens, but does so while bound helplessly to the mast.
“The fettered man listens to a concert, as immobilized as audiences later, and his enthusiastic call for liberation goes unheard as applause.”
“The curse of irresistible progress is irresistible regression.”
Transcript
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