계몽과 멋진 신세계 -아도르노의 헉슬리 다시 읽기-

Abstract

Huxley and Adorno show the negativity of instrumental reason by taking linguistic grammar of novel and philosophy. Although there is a considerable similarity in the way of raising questions and its contents on their criticisms of civilization, it is hard to find out any carefully examined comparative analysis of both Huxley’s and Adorno’s arguments of the above issues. This paper aims to examine Huxley’s Brave New World from Adorno's perspective on Huxley, namely Rereading Huxley. There seems considerable familiarity in both Adorno’s and Huxley’s analysis of social mechanism, the realization of ruling ideology, and the criticisms of the loss of freedom. But their ways to solve the problem of enlightenment of enlightenment, namely the poison of civilization, seems to be a different strategy that would show ‘changing the social structure’, ‘individual escape’, and ‘partial improvement’ under the existing social conditions. Adorno's ‘Rereading Huxley’ seems to have both clarity and difficulties simultaneously because it starts from only Adorno’s own philosophical perspective. The main contents of Adorno's criticism on Huxley could be summarized in the following words: conservative color, idealistic yearn for spiritual culture, a positivistic character, anarchic individualism, implicit contributing to consolidation of domination, and the lack of practical force for the social emancipation. It seems quite certain that Adorno's ‘Rereading Huxley’ reaches the limit caused by the matter of ideological aspects and the application of the limited text. This paper finally opens up the way of critical understanding of the era alpago throughout the examination of Huxley's preceding criticisms of Ford Society and the issues of Adorno's ‘Rereading Huxley’.