The Frankfurt School, Authority, and the Psychoanalysis of Utopia

  • C. Fred Alford
Chapter
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Part of the Political Philosophy and Public Purpose book series (POPHPUPU)

Abstract

The chapter first examines Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s well-known critique of authority and the family. One aspect of this groundbreaking work is its exclusive focus on men and boys. In the 1970s, Jessica Benjamin wrote two seminal essays critiquing this focus, showing how it resulted in the idealization of the bourgeois father and a punitive superego. This critique is part of the chapter’s study, before it moves on to Marcuse’s dialectical transformation of Freudian psychoanalysis into a ground of utopia. Arguably, there is no more important work in Marcuse’s oeuvre than Eros and Civilization. It represents the utopian spirit in critical theory at its strongest, a spirit, the author argues, that has been lost in the next generation of critical theorists, particularly in the early work of Habermas in Knowledge and Human Interests.

Keywords

Instrumental Reason Frankfurt School Mass Society Reality Principle Authoritarian Personality 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • C. Fred Alford
    • 1
  1. 1.University of MarylandCollege Park, MDUSA

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