Abstract
I contrasted Ernst Bloch’s concrete philosophical attempt to appropriate Marx creatively through the notions of concrete phantasy, labor, and the futurity of the present with the Critical Theory of Max Horkheimer. Since my concern was with Bloch, for purposes of exposition I did not treat the nuances in Horkheimer’s text. I now want to show that Horkheimer’s writings as well as the influence exercised through his self-declared ‘dictatorship of the director’ are more probing than they first appeared; the result is a concept of Critical Theory that is a research program with practical implications. Looking first at Horkheimer’s own explicit program will make clear that he fits clearly into the search for the Marxian legacy. However, as his project deepened philosophically, its socio-political concerns widened in the dark days of exile and war; the reflections that Horkheimer published in 1942 under the laconic title ‘Authoritarian State’ mark a turning point in his debate attempt to appropriate Marx for Critical Theory. The path toward pessimism opened; the vision of revolutionary politics dimmed before it disappeared.
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Notes
- 1.
The literature examining the legacy of the Institute for Social Research has expanded greatly since Martin Jay’s early, well-documented book, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1973). In the present context, I want to add to the list the recent study by Robert Zwarg, Die Kritische Theorie in Amerika. Das Nachleben einer Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). Zwarg focuses on the appropriation of the Frankfurt School particularly by participants in the New Left who wrote extensively in the journals Telos and New German Critique. I was one of them; and I have learned a great deal from reading Zwarg’s work.
- 2.
I will concentrate on Horkheimer’s earlier writings, putting them in the context of a programmatic statement by Herbert Marcuse written during the time when he was the most creative exponent of Horkheimer’s views. Although the Institute for Social Research was not a one-man show, focus on Horkheimer to the exclusion of Adorno, who also returned to Frankfurt after the war, is justified by my concern here with the legacy of Marx (in contrast to Robert Zwarg’s stress on the American ‘afterlife’ of Critical Theory).
- 3.
‘Kritische Theorie gestern und heute’, in Gesellschaft im Uebergang (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1972). p. 168.
- 4.
‘Bemerkungen über Wissenschaft und Krise’, in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Band 1, 1932, p. 3. (Future references to this journal will be indicated with the sign ZfS.)
- 5.
‘Zum Problem der Voraussage in den Sozialwissenschaften’, in ZfS, Band 2, 1933, p. 412.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
‘Die gegenwaertige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und die Aufgaben eines Instituts für Sozialforschung’, originally in Frankfurter Uniuersi-taetsreden, Heft xxxvii, 1931, pages 3–16; reprinted in Max Horkheimer, Sozialphilosophische Studien (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1972), p. 34.
- 8.
See the discussion below of the role of mediation in Critical Theory’s own self-understanding.
- 9.
‘Die gegenwaertige Lage’, op. cit., p. 38.
- 10.
Ibid., p. 41.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 43.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 46.
- 13.
‘Vorwort’, in ZfS, Band 1, 1932, pp. 2–3.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 3.
- 15.
Ibid., p. 1.
- 16.
It should be parenthetically noted that Horkheimer is aware that this assertion does not hold for nature, which will always exist and will always demand a traditional approach, though modified still, as the results of quantum mechanics indicate. I cannot deal here with Horkheimer’s notion of inner and outer nature and his theory of mimesis, which are fully developed only in the Dialectic of Enlightenment.
- 17.
ZfS, Band 6, 1937, p. 625.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 629.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 279.
- 20.
This notion of an interest in emancipation guiding Critical Theory is not mentioned explicitly in Jürgen Habermas’ Knowledge and Human Interests, which will be discussed in Chap. 5. The influence of Horkheimer and of the distinction between traditional and critical theory certainly affected Habermas’ work.
- 21.
ZfS, Band 6, 1937, p. 263.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 268.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid., pp. 291–2.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 630.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 292.
- 27.
Marcuse, Ibid., p. 632.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Marcuse developed this argument critically in the same issue of the Zeitschrift in his essay ‘On the Affirmative Character of Culture’.
- 30.
Herbert Marcuse, ‘Zum Begriff des Wesens’, in ZfS, Band 5, 1936, p. î.
- 31.
ZfS, Band 6, 1937, p. 643.
- 32.
‘Authoritärer Staat’, in Max Horkheimer, Gesellschaft im Übergang, op. cit., 13.
- 33.
Ibid., p. 19.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Ibid., p. 18.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Not the cause! Horkheimer is still working with traditional Marxian categories here, despite the critique of Marxism developed later in his essay. This fidelity to the Marxian theory as describing of the essential laws of capital regardless of its changed structure has already been noted. It is one of the reasons that, by the end of the War, Horkheimer would give up entirely on Marxism and the possibility of revolution. I will discuss this fidelity to Marxian economics which also affects earliest reformulations of Critical Theory by the ‘second generation’ of Critical Theory in the early work of Jürgen Habermas in the next chapter.
- 38.
‘Authoritärer Staat’, op. cit., p. 15.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 17.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 20.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 27.
- 43.
Ibid., p. 22.
- 44.
Ibid., p. 28.
- 45.
This is argued in detail in Horkheimer’s critique of Mannheim, ‘Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff’, reprinted in Sozialphilosophische Studien, op. cit.
- 46.
‘Authoritaerer Staat’, op. cit., p. 23.
- 47.
Ibid., p. 23.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Ibid., p. 24.
- 50.
Ibid., p. 22.
- 51.
Ibid., p. 20.
- 52.
Ibid., p. 25.
- 53.
Ibid., p. 30.
- 54.
Ibid.
- 55.
Ibid., p. 34.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
This theoretical argument needs to be stressed against those who would date the decline of the Critical Theory from their stay in America, the adoption of ‘American’ empirical research methods, or even from Horkheimer’s own ‘bourgeois’ character which showed itself to be susceptible to the rewards and honors heaped upon him on his return to Germany after the war.
- 58.
Marcuse’s case is somewhat more complex if one recalls, for example, his early, Heidegger-influenced essay on ‘The Philosophical Foundations of the Concept of Labor in Economics’ (1933), as well as the previously mentioned essay on Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts which appeared in Die Gesellschaft in 1931.
- 59.
- 60.
I have of course ‘linearized’ Horkheimer’s exposition here. Much of his work, because of his self-critical rigor, can appear uncertain of its political implications, although this chapter has hopefully better defined the kind of practical theory Horkheimer was seeking.
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Howard, D. (2019). Toward a Critical Theory: Max Horkheimer. In: The Marxian Legacy. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04411-4_4
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