Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason

Kelsey Wood (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Domains

Philosophy (any)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1946

Places

Germany, Baden-Württemberg (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

In Eclipse of Reason (1946), Max Horkheimer shows how thinking has degenerated since the Enlightenment into what he characterizes as instrumental classification and calculation:

This type of reason may be called subjective reason. It is essentially concerned with means and ends, with the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted and supposedly self-explanatory. It attaches little importance to the question whether the purposes as such are reasonable.

Horkheimer evokes on the one hand the objectivity of the human situation as an individual’s relation to moral norms. On the other hand, he shows how this universality of rationality has gradually devolved into instrumental reason, as the subjective application of self-interest to all situations. This “eclipse of reason” occurs with the abasement of interpersonal ideals of rational coexistence to mere...

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2058 words

Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "Eclipse of Reason". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 March 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16370, accessed 05 December 2025.]