Dialectic of Enlightenment (German: Dialektik der Aufklärung) is a work of philosophy and social criticismwritten by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno and first published in 1944. A revised version appeared in 1947.

One of the core texts of Critical Theory, Dialectic of Enlightenment explores the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Age of Enlightenment. Together with The Authoritarian Personality (1950; also co-authored by Adorno) and Frankfurt School member Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (1964), it has had a major effect on 20th -century philosophy, sociology, culture, and politics, inspiring especially the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s.