The Subject of Emancipation

Bryan Lee Wagoner

Through a focus on four rubrics: emancipatory rationality, anthropology, metaphysics and religion, the dissertation demonstrates clearly that with similar resources yet different emphases, Paul Tillich, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno uniquely structure what are largely complementary critical interpretations of a modernity which they see to be diseased, and whose subjects are unable to realize the promises of enlightenment. They shine similar lights on the `steel-hard cage' of a modernity which they hope to overcome, and possibly to redeem, in largely compatible ways.