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In Dialectic of Enlightenment, the task Horkheimer and Adorno set themselves was nothing less than to discover why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism. Dialectic of enlightenment is crucially important for the development of the Frankfurt school. For the text addresses one of the school’s most fundamental concerns – the rise and domination of instrumental reason. The notion of enlightenment does not refer to a definite period or to a particular set of intellectual currents, but, as will be shown below, to more encompassing principles. Contradictions are revealed between the philosophy of the Enlightenment and ‘enlightenment’. In examining the importance of instrumental reason in this context, Horkheimer and Adorno hoped to prepare the way for a positive, emancipatory notion of enlightenment ‘released from entanglement in blind domination. They did not define the concept of domination. However, as a minimal condition for its application, they suppose a situation in which the thoughts, wants and purposes of those affected by it would have been radically different, if it had not been for the effects created by domination. In the Dialectic, the history of d