![]() ![]() ![]() In the Communist Manifesto, economic crisis, more specifically, the crisis of overproduction is taken to be the model for this paradox: in such a crisis, barbarism is the result of the excess of civilization (MECW 6, pp. The paradox between civilization and barbarism was of great concern to Karl Marx in his critical reflections. In the preface to the work, published in 1944, the authors wondered, “why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism?” ( ADORNO & HORKHEIMER, 2002 ADORNO, T.W. They argued that modern rationality exists within a dialectic between myth and enlightenment, manifest in history in the form of the antithesis between civilization and barbarism. Some years later, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer undertook an original critique of the paradoxical nature of modernity in the The Dialectic of Enlightenment, just as Benjamin had done previously. The reign of freedom and reason did not become manifest as expected and announced. If this was indeed the case, how could Benjamin interpret capitalism - the mode of production inherent to modernity - as something essentially religious? One possible answer is that while the dissolution of feudal society permitted human beings to cast off their old chains, they produced, in embarking upon the path of the development of reason, new illusions and enchantments, submitting themselves to new forms of slavery, and, in doing so, defied the expectations of the Enlightenment. Modernity is usually understood as the moment at which life became both more prosaic and profane, science and technology provided human beings with unprecedented dominance over nature, and theology was eliminated from the domain of knowledge. Rather, he has been incorporated into human destiny. In capitalism, the transcendence of God has collapsed, but God himself is not dead. However, there is for him a fundamental difference between capitalism and conventional religion: capitalism does not possess any theology or dogma, but is instead the permanent celebration of a cult. New York and London: Routledge, 2005., p. In an enigmatic posthumously published manuscript Walter Benjamin writes that capitalism should be seen as a religion, in the sense that it “essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religion” ( BENJAMIN, 2005 BENJAMIN, W. ![]()
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