In the first chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment, titled "Concept of Enlightenment", Horkheimer and Adorno hold that in the first half of the 20th century, under the sign of the Enlightenment, mankind was unable to “enter a truly human condition”. They discuss the question of how the belief in rationality in the form of an “instrumental reason” could act as a delusion on the subjects of thought. according to them:
Enlightenment in the broadest sense of advancing thought has always pursued the goal of removing fear from people and using them as masters. But the fully enlightened earth shines in the sign of triumphant calamity. The program of the Enlightenment was to disenchant the world.
For Horkheimer and Adorno, "Enlightenment strikes back in mythology." Myth and the enlightened worldview are very closely related. The ideal of the Enlightenment is the rational explanation of the world in order to rule nature. The argumentative defense of the mythical interpretation of the world already recognizes the principle of the rationality of the Enlightenment. This makes them more powerful in every argument. “The Enlightenment only recognizes as being and happening that which can be grasped through unity; their ideal is the system from which everything and everything follows". All gods and qualities are to be destroyed. In doing so, Enlightenment overlooks the fact that myths are already a product of the Enlightenment.
According to Horkheimer and Adorno, abstraction is the tool with which logic is separated from the mass of things. The sceintific scheme of predictability becomes the system of explanation of the world. Everything that eludes instrumental thinking is suspected of being superstitious . Modern positivism banishes it to the sphere of the non-objective, of appearance. But this logic is a logic of the subject, which acts on things under the sign of domination, the domination over nature persued by modernity. This domination now confronts the individual as reason, which organizes the objective worldview.
Horkheimer and Adorno apply this to humans in the unification of thought, By enlightenement, social subjects become a collective that can be manipulated. People too are objectified. Scientific world domination turns against thinking subjects and reifies people into objects in industry, planning, the division of labor, and the economy. Under the rule of the general, the subjects are not only alienated from things, but the people themselves are objectified. The general confronts them as a totalitarian form of rule, which construct the individual according to their own measure. The progress is destructive; instead of being freed from the constraints of overwhelming nature, there is adaptation to technology and market eventscalled for the liberating enlightenment from underage to be replaced by the economic and political interest in manipulating people's consciousness. Enlightenment is becoming mass fraud or mass deception.