Cassirer connects myth with the notion of explaining death. He asserts that in mythical thought the mystery of death is turned into an …show more content…
The dilemma that they face is the “self-destruction of the Enlightenment.” The enlightenment cannot forget its own dialectic; that is, to enlighten Enlightenment about itself. Horkheimer and Adorno starts off by saying that “freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking (xvi) and also talks about the “reversion of enlightened civilization to barbarism in reality” (xix). They assert that society has not progressed toward freedom, but it is rather moving backwards and is submerging into barbarism. According to them, the cause of this dark turnabout is due to the indefatigable self-destructiveness of enlightenment. Their analysis results in a paradox which is the critical part of this writing: “myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology”