Online research in philosophy

Despite accusations of irresponsibility and negativity, Jacques Derrida's deconstruction has had an immense influence on contemporary social, political and cultural critique. 'Evolving negativity' offers a preliminary explanation of this influence by tracing the philosophical 'family tree' that links deconstruction to German Critical Theory via the Frankfurt School. The paper explores the origins of a certain dynamic and productive notion of negativity in Hegel's dialectic and describes its 'evolution' in the works of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno as a process of de-determination that finds its culmination in Derrida's notion of 'différance'. Set free of its totalizing, teleological force, Derrida's negativity as 'différance' is compared with Hegel's more general and generative notion of Negativität. The paper concludes that for this branch of 'critical' thinking, to flourish in the shadow of Hegel means also to be continually reinventing his respect for difference and negativity, and transforming it to respond to the questions of the present. Key Words: Adorno • Critical Theory • deconstruction • Derrida • dialectic • différance • difference • Hegel • Horkheimer • negativity.

In this book, Horkheimer surveys and demonstrates the gradual ascendancy of Reason in Western philosophy, its eventual total application to all spheres of life, ...

As a result of a new understanding of the relation between theory and practice, the “New Frankfurt School,” with Jürgen Habermas as its major representative, highly values the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism, in contrast to the first generation Critical Theorists represented by Max Horkheimer. In Habermas, the idea of “critique” is, both substantially and methodologically, closely connected with the idea of “praxis” in the following senses: communicative action, rational argumentation, public discussion and political culture. “Critique” is thus found to be immanent in “praxis”; or, a la Horkheimer, pragmatism turns out to be a “critical philosophical analysis” without “falling back upon objective reason and mythology.”.

I critically engage Max Horkheimer’s “Art and Mass Culture” from Critical Theory. I split Horkheimer’s essay into three parts, which correspond to the three sections of my essay. The first section details the objective historical conditions that have lead up to Horkheimer’s diagnosis. The second section describes the change in consciousness that corresponds to these conditions, and the third section outlines Horkheimer’s critique of Mortimer Adler and art that belongs to “the amusement industry.” I describe the basic elements of Horkheimer’s aesthetic theory, use several pieces of art as examples of the application of the theory, andprovide contemporary analogues in order to illustrate the relevance of the essay to today’s world.

Introduction Max Horkheimer was born on February in Stuttgart. By the time he died, on 7 July in Nuremberg, he had played a decisive role in launching and ...

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. Coming of age in Wilhelmine Germany; 2. Student years in Frankfurt; 3. A materialist interpretation of the history of modern philosophy; 4. The beginnings of a critical theory of contemporary society; 5. Horkheimer's integration of psychoanalysis into his theory of contemporary society; 6. Horkheimer's concept of materialism in the early 1930s; 7. The anthropology of the bourgeois epoch; 8. Reflections on dialectical logic in the mid-1930s; Excursus I. The theoretical foundations of Horkheimer's split with Erich Fromm in the late 1930s: Fromm's critique of Freud's drive theory; Excursus II. Divergence, estrangement, and gradual rapprochement: the evolution of Horkheimer and Adorno's theoretical relationship in the 1930s; 9. State capitalism - the end of Horkheimer's early critical theory; Epilogue: toward a historicization of Dialectic of Enlightenment and a reconsideration of Horkheimer's early critical theory.

Max Horkheimer does not generally receive the scholarly attention given to other ‘Frankfurt School’ figures. This is in part because his early work seems contradictory, or unphilosophical. For example, Horkheimer seems, at various points (to use contemporary metaethical terms), like a constructivist, a moral realist, or a moral skeptic, and it is not clear how these views cohere. The goal of this article is to show that the contradictions regarding moral theory exist largely on the surface, and that one can go below the surface to reconstruct a coherent position. Part I will examine Horkheimer’s skeptical critique of morality, and show that it leads to the realist position discussed in part II. Part III then shows that such realism can only be understood within a larger constructivist project, which elaborates on a minimal normativity present in human experience. This reconstruction should make sense of Horkheimer’s work, and show its contemporary relevance.