What do you make of this: 'Adorno and Horkheimer are responding to the pitfalls of Enlightenment's conception of reason. In Kant's famous essay titled "What is Enlightenment" he distinguishes between a private use of reason and a public use. The private use of reason ultimately instrumental, while the public has more general (human) interest. Adorno sees that Kant's successors have emphasized only one particular use of reason and it has had deleterious effects. A more holistic approach to reason would not lead to myths, but would lend itself to demystification'.

Here’s how I’d read and assess that passage—both what it gets right and where it needs tightening.

What it’s basically saying (and mostly right about)

1. Adorno & Horkheimer’s target
   The passage correctly situates Adorno and Horkheimer (especially in Dialectic of Enlightenment) as criticizing the Enlightenment’s conception of reason, not reason per se. Their core worry is that Enlightenment reason collapses into instrumental reason—reason as calculation, control, and efficiency—rather than reflection on ends, meaning, or emancipation.

2. Instrumentalization of reason
   The claim that later thinkers emphasize “only one particular use of reason” captures Adorno’s idea well: reason becomes a tool for domination (over nature, others, even oneself). This is what leads, paradoxically, to new forms of myth and unfreedom rather than liberation.

3. Demystification vs. re-mythologization
   The final point—that a more holistic conception of reason could demystify rather than generate new myths—is very Adornian. For him, Enlightenment reason ironically becomes mythic when it absolutizes itself and suppresses self-critique.

Where the passage is shaky or misleading

1. The Kant point needs correction/precision
   Kant’s distinction between public and private use of reason is often misunderstood, and the passage slips into that problem.

   • For Kant:

     • Public use of reason = free, critical reasoning as a scholar addressing humanity.

     • Private use of reason = reasoning constrained by one’s role or office (soldier, civil servant, priest), where obedience is required for social order.

   Kant does not describe the private use of reason as “instrumental” in the modern critical-theory sense. That’s a retrospective reinterpretation, not Kant’s own claim.

2. Adorno isn’t simply blaming Kant’s successors
   Adorno doesn’t argue that Kant’s successors merely “emphasized one use of reason” by accident. He sees a structural tendency within Enlightenment rationality itself—already present in Kant—to slide toward domination once reason is severed from reflection on suffering, contradiction, and non-identity.

3. “Holistic reason” risks sounding un-Adornian
   Adorno would be cautious about the phrase “a more holistic approach to reason.” He doesn’t propose a positive, unified alternative concept of reason so much as:

   • a negative, self-reflective reason

   • reason that remains aware of its limits and its complicity in domination

   He’s wary of any totalizing or harmonizing concept—even a “holistic” one—because those can become mythic too.

A cleaner, more accurate reformulation

If you wanted to sharpen this passage philosophically, it might read more like:

Adorno and Horkheimer critique the Enlightenment not for valuing reason, but for reducing it to instrumental calculation. While Kant distinguished between public and private uses of reason, later Enlightenment rationality increasingly privileged reason as a tool for control and administration. For Adorno, this instrumentalization turns Enlightenment back into myth. What is needed is not a rejection of reason, but a self-critical form of rationality capable of reflecting on its own limits and social consequences, thereby enabling genuine demystification.

Bottom line

• The passage has the right intuition about instrumental reason and Adorno’s project.

• It oversimplifies Kant and slightly overstates Adorno’s solution.

• With more precision about Kant and more caution about proposing a “holistic” reason, it becomes a solid critical-theory summary.

If you want, I can also help you align this more closely with Dialectic of Enlightenment or tailor it for an essay vs. seminar discussion.