27 results
157. - Max Horkheimer (1895–1973)
- from II - Names
- Edited by Amy Allen, Pennsylvania State University, Eduardo Mendieta, Pennsylvania State University
-
- Book:
- The Cambridge Habermas Lexicon
- Published online:
- 29 March 2019
- Print publication:
- 11 April 2019, pp 573-575
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
4 - The Beginnings of a Critical Theory of Contemporary Society
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 141-184
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
As we have seen, Horkheimer was deeply dissatisfied with the philosophical schools that dominated German universities in the 1920s. One of the central tasks he pursued in the lectures on the history of modern and contemporary philosophy that he gave after becoming a Privatdozent in 1925 was to provide a socio-historical explanation of the origins of the dominant philosophical tendencies at that time, such as neo-Kantianism, positivism, phenomenology, metaphysics, and Lebensphilosophie. These lectures occupied much of Horkheimer’s time during this period, and they reflected his interests in important ways, but they did not represent his primary concern, particularly after 1928. Skeptical about the prospects of imminent political change and no longer satisfied with a purely aesthetic refusal, Horkheimer had originally come to Frankfurt in hopes of gaining a rigorous, scientific understanding of modern capitalist society, whose exploitative underpinnings and volatile irrational potential he had witnessed first hand during World War I. In 1928, when it became clear that he would most likely become the next director of the newly founded Institute for Social Research, Horkheimer’s latent desire to develop a critical theory of contemporary society was given new impetus. It suddenly became more important that he work out explicitly the principles that would guide him as the new director. As Horkheimer would soon make clear, under his direction the Institute would not be dedicated primarily to the history of the workers’ movement and socialist theory, as it had been under Carl Grünberg, but rather to developing a theory of contemporary society. There are no detailed statements of Horkheimer’s plans for the Institute prior to the inaugural address he delivered in 1931, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research,” but an examination of his writings from the late 1920s goes a long way toward clarifying the evolution of the theory of society that he would outline in his inaugural address. In our examination of his lectures, we have already touched on the historical sources of some of the ideas he presents there – in the French Enlightenment and German Idealism, for example – but we have not yet explicitly examined Horkheimer’s appropriation of Marx at this time, because it took place largely in writings that were published only later, if at all. In what follows, we will examine Horkheimer’s writings from the late 1920s that illustrate most clearly his efforts to develop a Critical Theory of contemporary society. We will focus particularly, if by no means exclusively, on his interpretation and appropriation of Marx, because of their central importance to these efforts.
2 - Student Years in Frankfurt
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 51-84
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Biographical developments in the 1920s
After his near escape in May 1919 from the Munich police, who had mistaken him for Ernst Toller, and his parting of ways with Germaine Krull at the end of the summer, Horkheimer was ready to move to Frankfurt with Friedrich Pollock, where the two of them would continue their university studies. During the spring and summer of 1919, Horkheimer and Pollock attended lectures sporadically at the university in Munich, but they were too preoccupied with the volatile political situation and with preparations for their Abitur to take their studies seriously at this time. No longer enamored of the life of a bohemian artist and convinced that the “the revolution in the streets is over,” Horkheimer had decided that the best way to pursue his political ideals was to gain a rigorous understanding of the social, psychological, and economic factors that had made a catastrophe like World War I possible. The experience of the war was central to Horkheimer’s decision to attend the university. As he put it in a later interview,
The idea to study at the university did not come to me until near the end of the war, when I fully realized just how insane this war actually was…. What seemed absurd to me is that in a society like the one we live in, just like the others, one wages war instead of making each others’ lives more pleasant…. That in a common culture and among cultures … which should have respect for one another, people do not work together to make each other greater, more beautiful and more significant … but instead attempted to destroy one another, for any old silly reason that has not even been clarified. This is why I decided after the war to get my Abitur and to study at the university.
Horkheimer stresses repeatedly in his later recollections that he was not interested in an academic career at this point. He simply wanted to familiarize himself with the most advanced research in the social and human sciences in order to gain the best possible understanding of the chaotic world around him. Although he never gives any explicit reasons for his decision to attend the university in Frankfurt as opposed to another German university, after Horkheimer’s harrowing experiences in Munich, the relative political calm of Frankfurt certainly played a role. The innovative character of the university, the liberal tradition of the city, and its large Jewish community may have also played a role in Horkheimer’s decision.
Selected Bibliography
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 433-436
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
8 - Reflections on Dialectical Logic in the Mid-1930s
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 301-335
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Eine Bestimmung der philosophischen Begriffe ist immer zugleich eine Darstellung der menschlichen Gesellschaft in ihrer geschichtlich gegebenen Verfassung.
Max Horkheimer (1938)In a letter to Erich Fromm on July 20, 1934, Horkheimer mentioned that he was beginning work on a project on dialectical logic. In another, more substantial letter to Fromm nine days later, he went into some detail about his preliminary work on the project. He outlined some of the central problems he planned to address, including the difference between idealist and materialist dialectics, the role of psychology in a critical theory of history, and his critique of the abstract ego of consciousness philosophy. This attempt by Horkheimer to develop a materialist, or dialectical, logic appropriate to current historical conditions remained central to his concerns throughout the 1930s. This project on dialectical logic represented a continuation of his reflections on materialism in the early 1930s; dialectical logic became the most general philosophical concept that linked together and guided Horkheimer’s essays in the 1930s. In fact, in a letter to friend in September 1938, Horkheimer stated clearly that he viewed the essays that he had published until then in the Zeitschrift as “in truth merely preliminary studies for a larger work on a critical theory of the social sciences.” From other letters that Horkheimer sent to friends at this time, it is clear that the work in question here was the “long-planned work on dialectics” that he had intended to write at least since 1934. In September 1938, Horkheimer was traveling through North America, looking for new place to live where he could work on the project uninterrupted. He was frustrated that his activities at the Institute had prevented him from devoting his full attention to it. He had also just received news of the seriousness of the Institute’s financial crisis, which provided further impetus to scale back on Institute activities and turn his attention to the project on dialectical logic. In a letter to a friend from September 1938, Horkheimer wrote, “The necessity to find a less expensive place to live has moved us to look for a small house with a garden in the vicinity of New York. There I will finally find the necessary peace and quiet to realize my long-standing plans for a book. Mr. Marcuse should, if possible, move nearby and provide substantial help.” Horkheimer had been discussing the project from the beginning with Marcuse, as one of his letters to Fromm in July 1934 makes clear; but by 1938, his relationship with Theodor Adorno had improved considerably, such that he was also considering Adorno as a possible collaborator on the project. In a letter to Adorno in September 1938, Horkheimer told him that “my thoughts are revolving around our [work on] dialectics.” The context of the remark leaves no doubt that Horkheimer was referring to the project and alluding to the possibility of Adorno becoming his collaborator. In the end, Horkheimer chose neither a house near New York nor Marcuse as his assistant, but rather a house in Los Angeles and Adorno as his coauthor of what would eventually become Dialectic of Enlightenment.
A Note on References and Permissions
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp xiii-xiv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Acknowledgments
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp ix-xii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Excursus I - The Theoretical Foundations of Horkheimer’s Split with Erich Fromm in the Late 1930s
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 336-348
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Having established the basic concepts and methods that characterized Horkheimer’s model of Critical Theory through approximately 1938, we are now in a position to identify the causes and consequences of the rather dramatic shift in his thought that occurred in the subsequent years. At the risk of being overly schematic, one could say that the three most important factors in this shift were Horkheimer’s break with Fromm, his increasingly close working relationship with Theodor Adorno, and his general acceptance of Friedrich Pollock’s argument about the emergence in the 1930s of a new form of “state capitalism.” This brief excursus will examine the theoretical causes and consequences of Horkheimer’s break with Fromm. The following, lengthier excursus will address Horkheimer’s shifting relationship with Adorno in the 1930s. After setting the stage with these two excursuses, we will be able to add the final piece of the puzzle of Horkheimer’s shift, namely the new concept of “state capitalism.”
In this study so far, a significant amount of space has been devoted to reconstructing the early theoretical development of Erich Fromm. This careful examination of the early Fromm is justified insofar as Horkheimer’s own early theoretical development cannot be understood apart from Fromm’s influence. Already in the late 1920s, Horkheimer had sought to secure Fromm’s loyalty by offering him a lifetime membership in the Institute and an opportunity to conduct a major research project on the attitudes of the German salaried employees and workers. What strikes the close observer of the development of Critical Theory in the late 1920s and early 1930s are the remarkable similarities and complementarity of the work of Fromm and Horkheimer. It is not an exaggeration to say, as Rolf Wiggershaus does, that Fromm was Horkheimer’s most important theoretical interlocutor during this time. Although Horkheimer was always the senior partner in the relationship, Fromm’s psychoanalytic training and his abiding interest in applying psychoanalytic categories to social and historical problems put him in a position not only to collaborate with Horkheimer, but also genuinely to contribute to the advancement of Critical Theory. As we have seen in earlier chapters, Horkheimer and Fromm were both interested in a selective and critical appropriation of psychoanalytic categories, which would be placed within a larger Marxist theory of history and society. Both were interested, in particular, in using Freud’s early drive theory and his notions of introversion, repression, and compensation to revise and bring up to date Marx’s theory of ideology. The collaboration between Horkheimer and Fromm reached a high point in 1935, when Fromm completed his introductory essay for the Institute’s collective Studies on Authority and Family, which was published at the beginning of 1936. Fromm’s essay presented a psychoanalytic analysis of the sadomasochistic character, whose origins and development Horkheimer would subsequently seek to explain historically in his 1936 essay, “Egoism and Freedom Movements.” At this point, there was still an extensive unity in Horkheimer and Fromm’s theoretical interests and approaches.
7 - The Anthropology of the Bourgeois Epoch
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 248-300
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Although Horkheimer’s reflections on materialism should not be seen as foundational in a strong or static sense, insofar as his thought was thoroughly historical and not ontological or metaphysical, they do present the most general, philosophical assumptions that informed his Critical Theory in the early 1930s. As we shall see in the following chapter, with his project on dialectical logic Horkheimer would continue throughout the 1930s to develop and refine the theoretical assumptions that guided his Critical Theory. Yet many interpretations of Horkheimer’s work in the 1930s have focused on the methodological reflections he puts forth in what have become his two best-known essays, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research” and “Traditional and Critical Theory,” without adequately examining the philosophical reflections that underlay them. It was Horkheimer’s understanding of materialism and dialectical logic that informed his methodological reflections in these two essays, not vice-versa. This general focus on methodology in the reception of Horkheimer’s writings from the 1930s has led to a neglect not only of his important reconceptualization of materialism and dialectical logic, but also of his substantial contributions to fleshing out the positive content of Critical Theory. Horkheimer’s writings in the 1930s can by no means be reduced to abstract reflections on the methodology of critical, interdisciplinary social scientific research. With his concept of the anthropology of the bourgeois epoch, Horkheimer moves beyond and carries out concretely – at least in a preliminary way – his more general methodological and philosophical reflections. This concept captures Horkheimer’s understanding of the dominant character structure in modern capitalist societies and thus forms an essential part of the substance of his Critical Theory in the 1930s. In order to counter this widespread neglect of what must be seen as the core of Horkheimer’s Critical Theory in the 1930s, we will reconstruct Horkheimer’s concept of the anthropology of the bourgeois epoch with regard both to its historical foundations as well as its implications for a Critical Theory of European societies in the 1930s. We will begin with an examination of his methodological reflections, which are found primarily in the essays “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy,” “History and Psychology,” and “Remarks on Philosophical Anthropology.” We will then see how he fleshes out the historical content of these reflections in the essay “Egoism and Freedom Movements.” Finally, we will examine how the Institute’s collective Studies on Authority and Family represent an attempt to test Horkheimer’s working hypotheses about bourgeois anthropology in contemporary Europe and also serve as an important point of departure for his subsequent historical investigations in “Egoism and Freedom Movements.”
1 - Coming of Age in Wilhelmine Germany
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 19-50
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
There is nothing a philistine hates more than the dreams of his youth.
Walter BenjaminChildhood and youth
Max Horkheimer was born on February 14, 1895, in Zuffenhausen, a small town on the outskirts of Stuttgart, in southern Germany. Horkheimer’s parents were part of Stuttgart’s Jewish community that had grown steadily in the course of the nineteenth century and had succeeded in establishing itself as an integral part of the city’s economic, political, and cultural life. When King Charles of Württemberg approved the passage of a law in 1864 that guaranteed equal citizenship for Stuttgart’s Jews, the road was opened for fifty years of prosperity and relatively harmonious coexistence. Horkheimer’s father, Moritz, who was born in neighboring Baden in 1858, was able to take advantage of the economic opportunities available in Stuttgart during this period of rapid industrialization in Germany as a whole. Although Moritz Horkheimer’s father had been an unsuccessful businessman from whom he had inherited substantial debts, he was able steadily to work his way up in the Stuttgart textile industry. By the beginning of World War I, Moritz Horkheimer had firmly established himself among the ranks of the city’s millionaires, an elite that numbered no more than 250 at the time. In 1892, however, when Moritz Horkheimer married Babette Lauchheimer, he was still far from being an established figure. Lauchheimer’s parents, who were very well-to-do and of strict orthodox faith, agreed to the marriage with considerable reluctance. Only gradually, with his mounting business success, was Moritz Horkheimer able to overcome the suspicion and condescension of his in-laws.
Moritz Horkheimer thus came to embody the promise of the liberal capitalism that was transforming the economy, if not the political institutions, of Imperial Germany in the last decades of the nineteenth century. He attributed his success in large part to the country and the region that he believed had made it possible. He was a patriotic citizen of Germany and proud of his regional affiliation with Stuttgart and the greater region of Württemberg as well. When the Second International met in Stuttgart in 1907, Max Horkheimer recalls his father castigating the Social Democrats in general and “bloody” Rosa Luxemburg in particular for their lack of loyalty to the fatherland. Moritz Horkheimer joined in the wave of enthusiasm that swept through Germany with the beginning of World War I. In the following years, he placed his factory in the service of the war effort, producing badly needed textiles. His devotion did not go unrecognized either. In 1916, he was awarded the Charlottenkreuz and the Ritterkreuz I. Klasse by the king of Württemberg. In 1917, he was given the honorary title of Kommerzienrat, once again by the king of Württemberg. In 1918, he was made a citizen of honor of Zuffenhausen; he was the last Jew in the Stuttgart area to receive the title. Moritz Horkheimer’s patriotism was so ardent that he refused to leave Germany until 1939. He defended his choice to stay in Germany by saying that his family had been living there longer than Adolf Hitler.
Epilogue
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 425-432
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
If we are to believe the epigraph from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which stands at the beginning of this study, the presentation and critique of ideas are inextricably intertwined insofar as both involve the inherently negative “effort of conceptualization.” My presentation of the transformation of Horkheimer’s Critical Theory in the preceding chapter was carried out very much in this critical spirit. This study of Horkheimer has led me to the conclusion that Horkheimer’s and the Institute’s work from the late 1920s and 1930s could serve as a more promising point of departure for contemporary efforts to renew Critical Theory than his writings after 1940. In what follows, I would like briefly to present some additional reasons and evidence for this conclusion. Any attempt to make such an argument must, of course, reckon with the formidable Dialectic of Enlightenment. Although I have attempted throughout this study to adhere methodologically to Hegel’s insistence that critique can proceed only on the basis of conceptual presentation, I would like to propose a shortcut here – one that, hopefully, will not compromise my main conclusion. Rather than reconstructing the main arguments of Dialectic of Enlightenment, the following critical remarks will rely instead on two of the main arguments from the preceding chapter: First, that the most important reason for the transformation of Horkheimer’s thought around 1940 was his adoption of a modified version of Friedrich Pollock’s “state capitalism” thesis; and second, that this transformation reached a preliminary culmination in “The End of Reason.” With this essay, Horkheimer crossed a threshold into a qualitatively new phase in the development of his thought. It laid the foundations for his two most substantial theoretical works of this period: Dialectic of Enlightenment and Eclipse of Reason. Insofar as Dialectic of Enlightenment rests on the arguments presented in “The End of Reason” and on the “state capitalism” thesis in particular, the criticisms presented in Chapter 9 of the latter text can also be applied to the former. Chapter 9 should have made clear that the shift from a historically specific, self-reflexive theory of capitalism to a tendentially transhistorical critique of power and the domination of nature, which plays such a crucial role in Dialectic of Enlightenment, is already present in “The End of Reason.” Nonetheless, let me identify the limits of my critique right away by stating the obvious: The arguments presented in “The End of Reason” by no means exhaust Dialectic of Enlightenment. There are many aspects of Dialectic of Enlightenment that move well beyond “The End of Reason” and that are still relevant to contemporary theoretical discussions – such as the critique of the culture industry and the multidimensional analysis of anti-Semitism. So my plaidoyer here for a critical historicization of Dialectic of Enlightenment will be limited to those aspects of the text – which are, nonetheless, substantial – anticipated by “The End of Reason.”
Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- John Abromeit
-
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011
-
This book is the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Max Horkheimer during the early and middle phases of his life (1895–1941). Drawing on unexamined new sources, John Abromeit describes the critical details of Horkheimer's intellectual development. This study recovers and reconstructs the model of early Critical Theory that guided the work of the Institute for Social Research in the 1930s. Horkheimer is remembered primarily as the co-author of Dialectic of Enlightenment, which he wrote with Theodor W. Adorno in the early 1940s. But few people realize that Horkheimer and Adorno did not begin working together seriously until the late 1930s or that the model of Critical Theory developed by Horkheimer and Erich Fromm in the late 1920s and early 1930s differs in crucial ways from Dialectic of Enlightenment. Abromeit highlights the ways in which Horkheimer's early Critical Theory remains relevant to contemporary theoretical discussions in a wide variety of fields.
Frontmatter
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp i-iv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Index
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 437-441
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Excursus II - Divergence, Estrangement, and Gradual Rapprochement
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 349-393
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
This study so far has attempted patiently to reconstruct the major concepts and stages in the development of Horkheimer’s Critical Theory through the late 1930s. Retracing the steps that Adorno followed on his path to Horkheimer and eventually to Dialectic of Enlightenment would require an equally patient reconstruction of his work in the late 1920s and early 1930s – a task that is obviously beyond the scope of this work. Thankfully, scholarship on Adorno is much further advanced than on Horkheimer, so this task has already been attempted by several competent commentators. Here, I would like only to provide an overview of some of the key stages in the development of Adorno’s work and his relationship with Horkheimer, which will make it possible to understand the shift that occurred in the latter’s work in the late 1930s. To speak of a rapprochement between Horkheimer and Adorno in the 1930s may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the prehistory of their friendship. Unlike Horkheimer and Pollock, whose remarkable early friendship and symbiotic working relationship – one recalls their nicknames for one another: Horkheimer was the ministre de l’intériuer and Pollock the ministre de l’extérieur – had made them virtually inseparable since the age of fifteen, Horkheimer did not develop a serious friendship and working relationship with Adorno until much later. The secondary literature on Critical Theory has yet to fully examine the important differences that existed between Horkheimer and Adorno in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In what follows, I want to demonstrate in particular how and why Horkheimer and Adorno parted ways theoretically in the late 1920s and early 1930s; how this divergence led to a brief period of estrangement in 1933–4; how Adorno’s debate with Benjamin, a renewed study of Hegel, and his positive reception of Horkheimer’s work in the mid-1930s brought them back together; and how, finally, Horkheimer gradually overcame some of his reservations about Adorno’s work and began to move closer to him theoretically. Despite this gradual rapprochement in the mid-1930s, important theoretical differences remained between them; it was not until after Adorno’s arrival in New York in 1938 and a period of intense collaboration with him that Horkheimer abandoned many of the key assumptions of his early Critical Theory and moved closer to Adorno, thereby setting the stage for Dialectic of Enlightenment. It is crucial to identify the causes of the estrangement between Horkheimer and Adorno and to reconstruct the long and sometimes difficult rapprochement in order to demonstrate that the two authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment came to that work from very different paths and that this work ultimately represented a more significant break with Horkheimer’s early Critical Theory than it did with Adorno’s thought in the 1930s. We will return to Dialectic of Enlightenment in the epilogue.
Contents
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp v-viii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
3 - A Materialist Interpretation of the History of Modern Philosophy
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 85-140
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Having examined Horkheimer’s childhood, youth, and student years in the first two chapters, we turn now in the following three chapters to the development of his Critical Theory in the period 1925–31. In contrast to studies of Horkheimer’s work that begin with his assumption of the directorship of the Institute for Social Research in 1931, I would like to argue in the following three chapters that his Critical Theory took shape in the period following his break with Hans Cornelius in 1925. Although Horkheimer continued to test, refine, and develop his Critical Theory through his collaborative work at the Institute, its basic contours were already in place when he became the director in 1931. In contrast to arguments that maintain that Horkheimer’s Critical Theory remained beholden to the tradition of “consciousness philosophy,” a closer examination of his work during this time reveals that it developed precisely as a critique of consciousness philosophy along two interrelated yet distinct axes: one diachronic and historical, the other synchronic and social. In his move beyond the consciousness philosophy of both his philosophical mentor, Hans Cornelius, and almost the entirety of contemporary German academic philosophy, Horkheimer placed consciousness firmly within the larger objective and dynamic structures of history and society – without, however, eliminating the active role of subjective consciousness in reproducing and transforming these structures. This chapter examines how Horkheimer moved beyond consciousness philosophy along the diachronic, historical axis in his lectures and writings on the history of modern philosophy in the late 1920s. The following two chapters address the ways in which Horkheimer moved beyond consciousness philosophy along the synchronic, social axis: through an examination of his theory of contemporary society (Chapter four) and his integration of psychoanalysis into that theory (Chapter five).
Horkheimer’s break with consciousness philosophy and his turn toward history and society
Horkheimer’s dissertation and Habilitationsschrift marked the culmination of his exploration of the debates on neo-Kantianism and phenomenologythat dominated German academic philosophy in the mid-1920s. Although Horkheimer was skeptical of these debates from early on, he delayed explicitly developing his own position until he had completed his Habilitationsschrift in 1925, due to the tacit tactical truce he made with Cornelius. However, with the completion of his academic requirements and his attainment of the status of Privatdozent, Horkheimer no longer felt obliged to play the role of Cornelius’s disciple. He continued to teach with Cornelius until the latter retired in 1929, and relations between the two of them remained cordial until Cornelius’s death in 1948. Yet after 1925, Horkheimer was definitely ready to return to the incipient critique of consciousness philosophy he had begun to develop several years before. Evidence of this readiness can be found in a passage from Horkheimer’s philosophical diary from September 16, 1925, which is worth quoting at length because it so clearly illustrates this crucial juncture in Horkheimer’s intellectual development.
Immanence philosophy, any type of “world” view, which equates the “world” with phenomena of consciousness, with relations or functions of phenomena of consciousness, has to have the courage for solipsism…. Separately and privately our philosopher senses of course that he is not at all a world creator, but rather a simple human being in the world.
9 - State Capitalism – The End of Horkheimer’s Early Critical Theory
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 394-424
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In February of 1941, Horkheimer completed “The End of Reason.” It would be his final contribution to the Institute’s journal, which he had edited for the past eleven years. Yet “The End of Reason” represented the culmination of Horkheimer’s previous theoretical efforts not only in a literal sense; he also viewed the essay as the first coherent articulation of the project on dialectical logic that had occupied him for the past several years, and that would remain the primary focus of his and Adorno’s efforts in the coming years. In a letter to Leo Lowenthal from February 11, 1942, Horkheimer says the following about “The End of Reason”: “I have worked on these thirty pages with Teddy during the last weeks and I dare say that this is a piece of work which gives an idea of what I intend to do in the future. I have worked so closely together with Teddy that I even consider to publish [sic] it in connection with him.” A few months earlier, in a letter to Herbert Marcuse, Horkheimer had also described “The End of Reason” as “a conclusion, in a certain way, of my earlier work.” To clarify the status of “The End of Reason” as a qualitative shift in Horkheimer’s thought and at the same time to conclude this examination of Horkheimer’s early Critical Theory, we are left with two interrelated sets of questions. First, how did the transition to the theoretical positions articulated in that essay occur? What motivated Horkheimer to adopt these new positions? Second, how did they differ from his earlier work? Are the differences great enough to justify speaking of a “qualitative shift” in his work? In what follows we will attempt to answer these questions through a brief analysis of the four most important essays Horkheimer wrote during the years 1938–1941: “Montaigne and the Function of Skepticism,” “The Jews and Europe,” “Authoritarian State,” and “The End of Reason.” The chapter will be divided into three parts. In the first part, we will see how Horkheimer’s essay on Montaigne is still firmly grounded in the basic assumptions upon which his early Critical Theory was based – what we have called here the “dialectic of bourgeois society” – while at the same time anticipating the imminent shift in his thought in certain key ways. In the second part, we will examine “The Jews and Europe” and “Authoritarian State” as key transitional essays in which Horkheimer sets forth for the first time his new understanding of contemporary society as “state capitalist,” and his new interpretation of modern history as possessing powerful inherent tendencies that lead to state capitalism. Horkheimer’s adoption of the state capitalist argument – an earlier and different version of which had already been developed by Friedrich Pollock – was the primary cause of the shift in his thought during this time. Once Horkheimer had worked out his new position, many of Adorno’s arguments, which he had viewed skeptically until then, began to seem more appealing. In “The End of Reason,” to which we will turn in the third and final section, Horkheimer definitively crossed the threshold that separated him from his early Critical Theory and laid the foundations for the next phase of his theoretical work, which would find its fullest expression in Dialectic of Enlightenment and Eclipse of Reason. The fact that Horkheimer also viewed “The End of Reason” as “the first ‘official’ result” of his cooperation with Adorno was not a coincidence either. A line of direct continuity exists between “The End of Reason” and Dialectic of Enlightenment. In fact, one could easily view Dialectic of Enlightenment as an attempt to flesh out and provide case studies of the core arguments that are presented in “The End of Reason.”
5 - Horkheimer’s Integration of Psychoanalysis into His Theory of Contemporary Society
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 185-226
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
As the final step in our examination of the development of Critical Theory in Horkheimer’s thought in the late 1920s, we turn now to his appropriation of psychoanalysis. In order to understand this process, it is necessary to reconstruct, at least briefly, the historical and biographical, as well as the theoretical, context in which it occurred. This will entail an examination not only of the principal protagonists, Horkheimer and Erich Fromm, but also the important supporting roles played by Leo Lowenthal, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and Karl Landauer. It will also be necessary to retrace certain key developments at the Institute for Social Research in late 1920s as well as the founding of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute in February 1929. One should be forewarned, however, that it is no longer possible to reconstruct the biographical and historical context in any great detail or with absolute certainty, because the vast majority of sources upon which such a reconstruction would be based have been lost or destroyed. One cannot, in other words, avoid a certain amount of conjecture at the biographical and historical level. However, when combined with an analysis of Horkheimer’s and Fromm’s theoretical development from this time, a relatively clear picture emerges of the integration of psychoanalysis into Critical Theory. Toward this end, we will cast a quick glance back at Horkheimer’s move from Gestalt psychology to psychoanalysis in the late 1920s, and also answer the question of why Theodor Adorno’s interpretation of psychoanalysis in his first Habilitationsschrift (submitted in 1927) failed to capture Horkheimer’s attention at that time. We will then proceed to an examination of Fromm’s theoretical trajectory in the late 1920s, including the influence of his colleagues, such as Siegfried Bernfeld, from the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Finally, we will examine the empirical study of the attitudes of German workers that Horkheimer and Erich Fromm began in 1929. The study represents a decisive moment, not only in Horkheimer’s integration of psychoanalysis, but also in the development of Critical Theory as a whole, insofar as it was the first time that both were applied to a concrete social problem. Although Fromm officially directed the study, a closer examination of the conditions in which it was conceptualized and carried out leaves no doubt that it was the first concrete attempt to put Horkheimer’s nascent program of Critical Theory to the test. The undogmatic Marxist theoretical hypotheses and the emphasis on empirical research that informed the study as a whole were largely attributable to Horkheimer, whereas the implementation of psychoanalytic methods in the formulation of survey questions and the analysis of responses to them were Fromm’s primary contribution. The study was the first product of a fruitful collaboration between Fromm and Horkheimer and would play a crucial role in the further development of both Horkheimer’s own thought and Critical Theory as a whole.
6 - Horkheimer’s Concept of Materialism in the Early 1930s
- John Abromeit
-
- Book:
- Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2011, pp 227-247
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The standpoint of the old materialism is bourgeois society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or socialised humanity.
Marx, Tenth Thesis on FeuerbachHaving completed our examination of the origins of Horkheimer’s Critical Theory in the period 1925–31, we turn now to its further development during the time when Horkheimer served as the director of the Institute and editor of its journal, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Whereas the previous three chapters were intended to demonstrate how Horkheimer moved beyond consciousness philosophy along two interrelated yet distinct axes – one diachronic and historical, the other synchronic and social – the following four chapters adopt a different approach to Horkheimer’s Critical Theory. Each chapter examines a particular concept that was essential to his Critical Theory during a particular time. Through an examination of these key concepts – materialism (Chapter 6), the anthropology of the bourgeois epoch (Chapter 7), dialectical logic (Chapter 8), and state capitalism (Chapter 9) – the overall development and transformation of Horkheimer’s Critical Theory in the period between 1931 and 1941 should become clear. Despite this change of approach, the continuities in Horkheimer’s work in the periods before and after 1931 are much greater than those between his work before and after approximately 1940. After becoming director of the Institute, Horkheimer tested, refined, and developed his Critical Theory. However, a qualitative shift in his Critical Theory did not occur until the late 1930s, when he broke with Erich Fromm, began working more closely with Theodor W. Adorno, and adopted a modified version of Friedrich Pollock’s state capitalism thesis. Thus, while Chapter 9 pursues the same methodological approach as Chapters 6, 7, and 8, thematically it belongs to a separate section of the study that, along with the two excursuses that examine Horkheimer’s changing relations with Fromm and Adorno, address the transformation of Horkheimer’s early Critical Theory into something qualitatively different.
Materialism and Metaphysics
In the essays “Materialism and Metaphysics” and “Materialism and Morality,” both published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung in 1933, Horkheimer examined the relationship of contemporary materialism to a wide range of philosophical schools, from metaphysics and idealism to nominalism and positivism, and also to older forms of materialism itself. Horkheimer developed his own concept of materialism through a series of determinate negations of each of these various historical schools and/or philosophical concepts. He demonstrated in each case which aspects of these schools a concept of materialism adequate to contemporary socio-historical conditions should preserve and which it should negate. In what follows, we will briefly reconstruct Horkheimer’s analysis of the relationship of materialism to these various schools in order to clarify his own concept of materialism, which served as the philosophical foundation of his Critical Theory at this time.