Dialectic of Digital Enlightenment

"“Dialectic of Digital Enlightenment” revives and reclaims the radical legacy of the Frankfurt School, bringing its philosophy to life in response to the challenges of digital capitalism. It offers a powerful philosophical framework for critique, resistance, and emancipation in the age of AI-driven digitalisation." —Geeta Sinha, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University, India “This volume offers a brilliant and timely engagement with the legacies of the Frankfurt School, reviving its ideals and philosophers to make them relevant in the context of digitalisation. The book brings back Frankfurt School philosophers to life and highlights the urgent need for critical thought in an era dominated by algorithmic control, surveillance capitalism, and digital ideology of capitalism. By reclaiming the radical edge of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and their contemporaries, this book not only dissects the contradictions of digital capitalism but also provides a philosophical framework for resistance and emancipation. An essential read for anyone seeking alternatives and aiming to navigate—and challenge—the forces shaping our digital world”.

—Piyya Muhammad Rafi-Ul-Shan, Subject Lead and Senior Lecturer in Supply Chain Management & Organisational Behaviour, University for the Creative Arts, UK

From Kant and Hegel to Habermas and Marx, radical philosophical transformations have consistently intersected with technological advancements throughout human history. This volume on the Dialectic of Digital Enlightenment, engages with AI-driven digitalisation to examine the transformation of human nature, society, the state, and governance through the philosophical perspectives of Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, Adorno, Bloch, Benjamin, Fromm, Marcuse, Habermas, and Marx. It seeks to reclaim radical philosophy for our time and to liberate these European thinkers from the confines of Eurocentric knowledge traditions and their universalist claims—frameworks that, while dominating global discourse, paradoxically obscure the broader human relevance of these philosophers, whose insights speak profoundly to the shared conditions of humanity and the pursuit of its emancipation.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a Professor of Business Management at the Guildhall School of Business and Law, London Metropolitan University, UK.