Adorno and Horkheimer show how the submission of everything natural to the autocratic subject finally culminates in the mastery of the blindly objective and natural. Kant and Sade's idea were branded 'bourgeois thought' and accused of morality mixed with amorality. First chapter deals with how myth is already an enlightenment. Second one shows the reverse of enlightenment to mythology. Third, projects the submission of subject which makes the object a master.
Fifth chapter traces the movement of humanity to barbarism.
It is a thorough trashing of enlightenment. They understand that extreme enlightened self is as dangerous as that of fully radiant earth which radiates disaster triumphant. One has to undergo an intellectual torture to read this book. But it is a must for any mind which have urge to know the other side of modernity. A positive utopianism and optimism towards the possibility of revolutionary change characterize the first stage in his thinking.