Enlightenment, Reason, and Myth: the Inner Logic of Man and Nature——From the Collapse of Animism to the Establishment of a Unified Mathematical Nature

In Dialectic of enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno elaborated the relationship between enlightenment, reason and myth, and put forward the conclusion that “myth is enlightenment and enlightenment reverts to myth”, they found the inherent logical relationship between enlightenment, reason and myth, but enlightenment has dual functions.On the one hand, the purpose of enlightenment is to awaken the world, dispel myth, replace fantasy with knowledge, and defeat myth and witchcraft with scientific reason. On the other hand, the enlightenment went to self-destruction, and finally went to the opposite of the self under the principle of self-existence. Mathematics in scientific reason dominated personality and particularity, controlled and suppressed nature. Adorno summed up the scientific reason of enlightenment as mathematics, grasped nature as a system constructed by mathematical concepts, and returned the original animism to the mathematical nature constructed by scientific reason of enlightenment. On this basis, the relationship between human and nature becomes more and more antagonistic. As the main support of science, mathematics has become the power of man’ s self-preservation and domination over nature. This kind of mathematical power eventually leads to the separation of man and the subject and object of nature, and also destroys himself.