By "Enlightenment", Adorno and Horkheimer address the process during which humans transition from a fantastic and magical understanding - or so they believe - of Nature, to a knowledge and hard scientific facts based viewpoint on the world.
Not to be confused with the Age of Reason, Enlightenment is deeply rooted in the human will of dominating nature, of freeing ourselves from the ancient mythical thinking that was supposed to help us get rid of our fear of the unknown, eventually just succeeding in replacing it with a newfound fear of deities we've, ironically enough, created ourselves.
Indeed, from the beginning of times, humans have been at the mercy of Nature and its whimsical temper changes: not knowing what to expect, fearing another upcoming storm or famine, that was the world humans had to evolve in… And to tame this fear of the unknown, of how the world actually works, was created a new way to explain the world: Myth, and fantastic stories about magic entities that ruled the world, that we had to please in order for them to treat us mortals kindly.
Of course, apart from reassuring our nervous minds, that did little for mankind… And here comes Enlightenment, with its rational explanations and scientific facts, as a means for humans to dominate Nature finally, and to get rid once and for all of this ancient fear. However, is Enlightenment a way to freedom, a way for us humans to finally come at peace with nature and the world, as suggested by many? It could have been, if only Enlightenment wasn't so black-and-white, right-or-wrong, so factually exact that it itself stood in the way between humans and nature. This flaw is undeniably related to the concept of nominalism, which rejects everything that can't be encompassed by unity: by submitting to this law, abstract concepts such as deities are of course out of the question; but what about meaning? Can we really grasp even just a tiny bit of human life if we just follow nominalism and its principles?
By its domination, even qualified by Adorno and Horkheimer as "totalitarian", Enlightenment failed to free mankind, and even served to alienate it further with social division, to objectify it with a newfound working motto, and eventually, plunging again in a world of myths… Only this time it's modern myths we're faced with.
In this sense, this dialectic link between Myth and Enlightenment, where one emerges from the other only to eventually merge with it again, is a fundamental argument in Dialectic of Enlightenment, serving as a way to resolve the issue of Enlightenment with a dialectical method and logical reasoning, and opening up to a harsh critic of the Culture History, in slight contrast with W. Benjamin's point of view.
The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity (W. Benjamin)
Walter Benjamin adresses in The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity the changes occurring in Art as a result of scientific progress: is Art losing meaning as its access becomes easier and easier, or is it on the contrary rising to new potentials thanks to newfound techniques and freedom?
In the very beginning of the essay, Benjamin analyzes cultural production from a Marxist perspective, so as to reflect on the effects capitalism could have on culture by its never ending production process: "Superstructure" describes the system which controls the production, our capitalist economy and system, whereas "substructure" is used for the reproduction itself, in this case, our culture and art.
According to Benjamin, culture can have reactionary or revolutionary potentials: in a fascist context, culture is reduced to propaganda, where attempts have been made to beautify politics, wars, and all sorts of horrors; while the cinematographic art, because it wakes the masses from their inactive slumber and carries them along in the action, has revolutionary potentials. With its newfound accessibility, art can free the masses from fascism and alienation, and thus, be revolutionary. In this sense, Benjamin's take on culture contrasts with Adorno and Horkheimer's point of view: while the latter agree that these new artistic forms can free themselves from political and mythical domination, they make a point to condemn the objectification and idolization of culture made possible by its accessibility to the masses, enabling an easier manipulation of mankind through a deceptive cultural escape.
Benjamin discusses the mode of human sense perception and how it can not only be naturally determined, but also highly dependent on historical circumstances: he illustrates this claim with the birth of the late Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, developed as a result of great shifts of population, and enabling a new kind of perception.
The concept of "aura" is fundamental in this essay: by reproducing Art, aura is created and taken away at the same time. Indeed, when threatening an object's uniqueness, this object's authenticity is created, and thus its presence, in this time and place - its aura. At the same time, because it's reproduced and in another time, another place, another meaning, it loses its aura. It's a difficult concept to grasp, but inherently we all can understand it with Benjamin's analogy with nature.