Die Helvetische Gesellschaft Book

The enlightenment wasn't all that. You think science replaced magic and religion? Not so fast. Isn't science, at a certain point, based on faith just as much as religion? Horkdorno (Horkheimer and Adorno) views the achievements of the enlightenment with a gimlet eye, refusing to accept that a forward movement in history equates to positive progress. You can just as easily move forward while descending. If you believe in progress, concomitantly, you must believe in decline. Many of the things that are generally accepted to be advances, both technological and cultural, in modern society actually threaten the liberty of the individual.
There's a scene in "Deadwood" where Swearengen and someone else are watching the construction of telegraph lines in the distance. Rather than embracing the new technology, they express a deep fear of what it might bring. As they are trying to build a community--violent and chaotic though it may be--this new technology threatens the the very basis of that community: one-on-one human contact. The technology effaces the individual.
If this is the outcome of the advances of the enlightenment, then doesn't it contradict the very ideas of individual freedom that the enlightenment was based on? These are the dangers and fears with which Horkdorno grappled.