For the authors, Homerian odyssey is the main target to show the dialectic of myth and enlightenment. Odyssey was accused as the earliest representative testimonies of western bourgeois civilization. Kant, Sade and Nietzsche were not spared. 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.