Heteronomy and poverty of experience: notes on formation problems on nowadays based on critical theory

Abstract

The article strives to discuss some of the many obstacles to the formation of the individual, that is, the formation of the autonomous person, able to think for himself in the Kantian sense, without interference of another person. Based in Kant, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin these reflections try to highlight the obstacles to emancipation. The concern about the issue of autonomy is due to the fact that its absence may lead to barbarism, as witnessed in concentration camps in the twentieth century, because the individual, for example, undergoes authoritarian leaders. The blind technical development thought as an end and not a means; lack of formative experiences and the cultural industry as a manipulative way of the masses are some of the analyzed elements that become obstacles to the individual formation. Finally, it seeks to show that the absence of autonomous persons is the fact that obliterates the good performance of democracy.