Theme 2 - Reflections

These to texts was, for me, much easier to read and to interpret than the texts from the previously theme. I read the texts, participated in the lecture and also read some summaries of both texts to prepare for the seminar. But it turned out that I did not fully understand any of the texts. Håkan did a really good job at the seminar to get us to understand.

The most interesting thing we discussed at the seminar was Adorno and Horkheimer’s thoughts about the relation between nominalism and realism. They think it is very important to have both perspectives, otherwise it is easy to get a skewed view of the world. If one only live by nominalism, or empiricism, all abstract values disappears. For example the human value is something very important, but you cannot measure it and therefore it is forgotten by empiricism. To live in a just and fair world we need more than just facts, we need insights that are born from ideas and rational thinking.

Håkan said a wise thing during the seminar that I will probably carry with me for a long time; to fully understand a text, one have to be aware of the writer’s situation at the time he or she wrote the text. With that perspective both Benjamin’s and Adorno and Horkheimer's texts gave me new insights. Both texts are written during the late 1930s and the early 1940s. Capitalism, fascism and nazism was a reality during this period. But both texts differ in one significant way; Benjamin lived as a Jew in Nazi Germany and Adorno & Horkheimer lived in the USA. This is obviously two totally different situations that both generated different perspectives and opinions.