In his book, The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion: Translating Critical Faith into Critical Theory, Dustin J. Byrd argues that at the core of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory is a secularized theology. Unlike their predecessors, especially Feuerbach, Marx, Lenin, Freud, and Nietzsche, who argued for an abstract negation of religion, the first generation of Critical Theorists followed Hegel's logic and attempted to rescue and preserve the revolutionary, emancipatory, and liberational aspects of (...) religion in their secular non-conformist philosophy. They saw in both Judaism and Christianity certain conceptual and semantic elements that could be enlisted into their struggle for a future reconciled society, one beyond the slaughterbench of history. In order to rescue religion, theological concepts had to go through the process of determinate negation, wherein such materials migrate from the depth of the religious mythos into publicly accessible reasoning, thus making the revolutionary impulse of prophetic religion accessible to the secular world. Byrd also argues that this determinate negation of religion remains relevant to today's post-secular societies, especially in regard to religious Muslims attempting to find their place in Western countries, which are often hostile to religion and religiosity. Examining the strengths and weaknesses of Habermas' famous "translation proviso," he argues that both religious and secular citizens of the West can learn from the Frankfurt School's dialectical approach to religion in order to find a space wherein both religious faith and secular reason can not only co-exist, but also join together in the process of creating a more reconciled future society. (shrink)

Grand Hotel Abyss investigates the lives and afterlives of the critical theorists who formed the Frankfurt School.

This article addresses, from a Frankfurt School perspective on law identified with Franz Neumann and more recently Habermas, the attack upon the principles of war criminality formulated at the Nuremberg trials by the increasingly influential legal and political theory of Carl Schmitt. It also considers the contradictions within certain of the defence arguments that Schmitt himself resorted to when interrogated as a possible war crimes defendant at Nuremberg. The overall argument is that a distinctly internal, or (...) “immanent”, form of critique is required of Schmitt's position, in which its is found wanting even on its own terms. In principle, the application of this dialectical mode of critique can allow a genuine debate to emerge between those seeking to continue both the Schmittian and critical theory traditions, whilst safeguarding the latter from the dangers of formulating polemical interventions that are, in effect, counterproductive to their own intentions. (shrink)

The Institute of Social Research, from which the Frankfurt School developed, was founded in the early years of the Weimar Republic. It survived the Nazi era in exile, to become an important centre of social theory in the postwar era. Early members of the school, such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, developed a form of Marxist theory known as Critical Theory, which became influential in the study of class, politics, culture and ideology. The work (...) of more recent members, and in particular Habermas, has received wide attention throughout Europe and North America. Tom Bottomore's study takes a new and controversial look at the contributions of the Frankfurt School to modern sociology, examining several issues not previously discussed elsewhere. He discusses the neglect of history and political economy by the critical theorists, and considers the relationship of the later Frankfurt School to the radical movements of the 1960s and the present time. His critical analysis makes the school's writers accessible, through an assessment of their work and an exploration of the relationship of Critical Theory to other forms of sociological thought, especially positivism and structuralism. (shrink)

The present essay focuses on the Frankfurt School’s views on relations between philosophy and science. The author specifically concentrates on Horkheimer, the School’s leader, and Habermas, its most prominent contemporary representative. In her reconstruction of the Frankfurt School’s approach to the dependencies between philosophy and science the author—similarly to the Frankfurt theoreticians—abstains from treating it abstractly, instead placing it in its social and historiosophical context. The essay’s leading thesis is that the Frankfurt (...) class='Hi'>School sees philosophical self-reflection as a remedy for the crisis in European culture, visible since the beginnings of the modern era in the rise of instrumental thinking. The author reminds that the assumption of philosophy’ primacy over science—or the primacy of wisdom over knowledge—has found avid support among philosophers of other eras and other schools of thought. (shrink)

This book provides an intellectual biography of Max Horkheimer during the early and middle phases of his life and analyzes his model of early Critical Theory.

The first systematic analysis of the Frankfurt School’s research and theorizing on modern antisemitism. Although the Frankfurt School represents one of the most influential intellectual traditions of the twentieth century, its multifaceted work on modern antisemitism has so far largely been neglected. The Politics of Unreason fills this gap, providing the first systematic study of the Frankfurt School’s philosophical, psychological, political, and social research and theorizing on the problem of antisemitism. Examining the full range (...) of these critical theorists’ contributions, from major studies and prominent essays to seemingly marginal pieces and aphorisms, Lars Rensmann reconstructs how the Frankfurt School, faced with the catastrophe of the genocide against the European Jews, explains forms and causes of anti-Jewish politics of hate. The book also pays special attention to research on coded and “secondary” antisemitism after the Holocaust, and how resentments are politically mobilized under conditions of democracy. By revisiting and rereading the Frankfurt School’s original work, this book challenges several misperceptions about critical theory’s research, making the case that it provides an important source to better understand the social origins and politics of antisemitism, racism, and hate speech in the modern world. Lars Rensmann is Professor of European Politics and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His books include Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations (coedited with Samir Gandesha). (shrink)

Are the arguments of the Frankfurt School still relevant? Modern Culture and Critical Theory investigates this question in the context of important issues in contemporary cultural politics: neoconservatism and new social movements, discontents with modernity and debates on postmodernism, the political hegemony of Ronald Reagan, and the cultural hegemony of structuralism and poststructuralism. Russell Berman thoughtfully explores the theories of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Foucault and their relevance to both historical and contemporary issues in literature, politics, (...) and the arts. (shrink)

This paper explores the paradox of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory where the notion of "critical theory" became identified with aesthetics and asks whether the disappearance of the political dimension of critical theory was necessary.This disappearance of the political also presents some uncomfortable affinities between it and postmodernism. But in the more sober world after 1989, post-communism poses more relevant questions than post-modernism for an assessment of the history of the Frankfurt School.The political (...) project of the old Frankfurt School has to be revivified - or at least given a decent burial. (shrink)

The 1930s–1940s underwent profound structural economic and political turmoil following the collapse of the nineteenth century liberal market economies. The intellectual debates of the time were dominated by the question of whether Marx’s theory of the tendency of rate of profit to fall was true, or what consequence could be imagined in the survival of capitalist societies. Placed in the middle of such debates was also the reorganization of national productions into war economies. By means of reconstructive analysis, the (...) paper provides a critical overview of the debates that took place within the circle of the Frankfurt School during those years. It also advances an interpretive thesis suggesting that remedies to capitalist crises of the time turned state powers into privatized, illiberal coercive entities. Coercion and privatization reinforced each other. This general tendency is well illustrated by the famous Pollock-Neumann debate. These intellectuals expressed views not only intended to shed light on the historical period of time, but also to formulate long-term considerations on the authoritarian trends embedded in our contemporary democracies. Through historical reconstruction, the paper’s aim is to identify a long-term structural thread of transformation starting from the transformation of the German economy in 1930s and touching upon post Second World War problems of states’ restructuring along privatization/coercion divides. (shrink)

"The Critical Theory of Religion: From the Frankfurt School to Emancipatory Islamic Thought" is a collection of essay of Dr. Dustin J. Byrd, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Olivet College. The book concerns the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society and how it relates to religion, especially Islam, in the contemporary world.

This is the definitive study of the history and accomplishments of the Frankfurt School. It offers elegantly written portraits of the major figures in the school's history as well as overviews of the various positions and directions they developed from the founding years just after World War I until the death of Theodor Adorno in 1969.The book is based on documentary and biographical materials that have only recently become available. As the narrative follows the Institute for Social (...) Research from Frankfurt am Main to Geneva, New York, and Los Angeles, and then back to Frankfurt, Wiggershaus continually ties the evolution of the school to the changing intellectual and political contexts in which it operated. He also interweaves these accounts with incisive summaries of substantive works by Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Fromm, Kirchheimer, Lowenthal, Marcuse, Neumann, Pollock, and Habermas.The book is self-contained and can serve as a general introduction to critical theory, but it also has a wealth of new material to offer those who are familiar with this tradition but would like to learn more about its history and context.Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. (shrink)

The ideas and conceptions of the Frankfurt philosophical-sociological school, above all the "critical theory of society," the principles of "negative dialectics" and the "great refusal," the utopia of "pacified existence," occupy an important place in the contemporary ideological struggle between the world systems of socialism and capitalism, and comprise a significant ideological and theoretical arsenal of bourgeois ideology and revisionism. And this is not accidental. The "critical theory of society" formulated and argued for by T. Adorno, (...) M. Horkheimer, H. Marcuse, J. Habermas, and others, which proclaims a protest against any social status quo, is used for the critique both of capitalism and actually existing socialism. At the same time it is also interpreted as an imaginary alternative to Marxism, and from, moreover, both right and "left" positions. Therefore the social theory of the Frankfurt school impacts upon the most diverse currents—from bourgeois social thought to the right and "left" varieties of revisionism. The complex evolution made by the representatives of this school in the last half-century contributed to this wide dissemination of the ideas of the Frankfurt school. Theoretical arguments are found in it both by those whose ideology, being directed to the progressive forces, is developed in the direction of Marxism, and by those who fled the soil of Marxism and are hostile to it. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to discern intersections between the intellectual path of the young Habermas and the issues addressed by the Positivismusstreit, the dispute between Popper and Adorno about methodology in the social sciences. I will present two perspectives, focusing on different temporal moments and interpretative problems. First, I will investigate the young Habermas’ relationship to the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School: his views on philosophy and the social sciences, normative bases of critical theory (...) and political attitudes. Second, I will reconstruct Habermas’ contemplation of the Positivismusstreit, in light of his social scientific research programme in the 1960s. The thesis supported is that Habermas developed a position diverging from those of Adorno and Horkheimer, and that his position reasserted the agenda of the ‘first critical theory’. This article highlight the discontinuity between the first and the second generation of the Frankfurt School, the constructive openness to other philosophical and sociological traditions, as well as the aporias of a theory of knowledge not yet oriented towards the programme of reconstructive sciences. (shrink)

Considering the genesis of "critical theory" as an ideological current, we discover its deeper roots in the sociopolitical orientations of German social democracy between the two world wars. We have in mind: a) the negation of the Leninist analysis of imperialism and the Leninist theory of socialist revolution; b) the loss of faith in the revolutionary possibilities of the working class ; c) the fetishism of the economic factor , the isolation of economics from politics, culture and ideology; (...) d) the idea of Eurocentrism; e) an elitist position. (shrink)

Introduction to the new edition -- The philosophy of praxis -- The demands of reason -- Metacritique of the concept of nature -- Reification and rationality -- The realization of philosophy -- The controversy over subject-object identity -- From Lukács to the Frankfurt School -- The last philosophy of praxis -- Philosophy of praxis: summary and significance -- Appendix: the unity of theory and practice.

The term narcissism is normally used to describe an infatuation with the self so extreme that the interests of others are ignored. However, argues C. Fred Alford, psychoanalytic theory also implies that narcissism can be construed in a positive way, as a striving for perfection wholeness, and control over self and world. In this book, Alford applies the psychoanalytic theory of narcissism to the philosophies of Socrates and Frankfurt School members Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, (...) and Jurgen Habermas, contending that it can illuminate basic philosophical issues such as the nature of the ideal society, the integrity of the self, and the role of reason in human affairs. (shrink)

The Frankfurt School attacked Veblen ’ s claims regarding machine-induced rationality in industrial societ y. Their criticisms stemmed in part from the fact that Veblen failed to present his ideas systematically in a formal treatise on either economics or sociolog y, and because he did not use concepts or jargon familiar to the critical theorists. This article thus aims at: (1) demonstrating through textual exegesis the meaning of social rationality in the corpus of Veblen ’ s writing, especiall (...) y The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904); (2) elucidating the problems that arose in the Frankfurt School ’ s critique of Veblen because he used nomenclature and conceptualizations unfamiliar to Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer; (3) reiterating Veblen ’ s thesis on the impact of ‘transfer effects’ on workers interacting with the machine process; and (4) outlining the failure of the Frankfurt School adequately to examine his claims in the American political environment in which they were made. (shrink)

Frankfurt School critical theory is perhaps the most significant theory of society to have developed directly from a research programme focused on the critique of political authoritarianism, as it manifested during the interwar decades of the 20th century. The Frankfurt School’s analysis of the persistent roots – and therefore the perennial nature – of what it describes as the ‘authoritarian personality’ remains influential in the analysis of authoritarian populism in the contemporary world, as evidenced (...) by several recent studies. Yet the tendency in these studies is to reference the final formulation of the category, as expressed in Theodor Adorno and co-thinkers’ The Authoritarian Personality, as if this were a theoretical readymade that can be unproblematically inserted into a measured assessment of the threat to democracy posed by current authoritarian trends. It is high time that the theoretical commitments and political stakes in the category of the authoritarian personality are re-evaluated, in light of the evolution of the Frankfurt School. In this paper, I review the classical theories of the authoritarian personality, arguing that two quite different versions of the theory – one characterological, the other psychodynamic – can be extracted from Frankfurt School research. (shrink)

“Just for the record, however: I don't hate Communists.” So wrote Arcadius Rudolph Lang Gurland to his longtime friend, colleague, and collaborator Otto Kirchheimer in 1958.1 Behind this straightforward statement lay over thirty years of Gurland's experience as a passionate scholar, spokesperson, and advocate of that most dialectical of the many forms of socialist politics, revolutionary social democracy. Throughout his peripatetic life of near-constant exile in Russia, Germany, France, and the United States as student, journalist, theoretician, researcher, writer, teacher, and (...) translator in the service of political organizations, newspapers, research institutions, universities, governments, publishers, and his own political and scholarly.. (shrink)

Unlike the first generation of critical theorists, contemporary critical theory has largely ignored technology. This is to the detriment of a critical theory of society – technology is now a central feature of our daily lives and integral to the contemporary form of capitalism. Rather than seek to rescue the first generation’s substantive theory of technology, which has been partly outmoded by historical developments, the approach adopted in this article is to engage with today’s technology through the (...) conceptual apparatus offered by the early Frankfurt School. This rationale is guided by the conviction that the core ideas of critical theory still offer a sound basis for assessing the nature of technology today. Through a reconstruction and engagement with some of the core concepts of first-generation critical theory, as well as the work of Bernard Stiegler and Andrew Feenberg, we can arrive at a more robust theory of technology, capable of critically interrogating the role of technology in contemporary society. (shrink)

The fundamentals of the Frankfurt school's conception of art were expounded in Horkheimer and Adorno's book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, where the "critical theory of society" appeared in the form of a specific philosophy of history—the history of bourgeois enlightenment, whose sources the authors trace to ancient Greek mythology.

The essay focuses on the impact of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization in Germany in 1968. First, the essay discusses how Freud’s theory was used in the late twenties at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Then, it focuses on how certain of Adorno and Horkheimer’s ideas were developed in Eros and Civilization . Finally, it shows how Marcuse’s work became relevant for the intellectual development of the student movement in Germany.

Its first paradigms are in the writings of Marx and Freud. In this book Raymond Geuss sets out these fundamental claims and asks whether they can be made good.

The Institute of Social Research, from which the Frankfurt School developed, was founded in the early years of the Weimar Republic. It survived the Nazi era in exile, to become an important centre of social theory in the postwar era. Early members of the school, such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, developed a form of Marxist theory known as Critical Theory, which became influential in the study of class, politics, culture and ideology. The work (...) of more recent members, and in particular Habermas, has received wide attention throughout Europe and North America. Tom Bottomore's study takes a new and controversial look at the contributions of the Frankfurt School to modern sociology, examining several issues not previously discussed elsewhere. He discusses the neglect of history and political economy by the critical theorists, and considers the relationship of the later Frankfurt School to the radical movements of the 1960s and the present time. His critical analysis makes the school's writers accessible, through an assessment of their work and an exploration of the relationship of Critical Theory to other forms of sociological thought, especially positivism and structuralism. (shrink)

In "The Frankfurt School on Religion," Eduardo Mendieta has brought together a collection of readings and essays revealing both the deep connections that the Frankfurt School has always maintained with religion as well as the significant contribution that its work has to offer. Rather than being unanimously antagonistic towards religion as has been the received wisdom, this collection shows the great diversity of responses that individual thinkers of the school developed and the seriousness and sophistication (...) with which they engaged the core religious issues and major religious traditions. Through a careful selection of writings from eleven prominent theorists, including several new and previously untranslated pieces from Leo Lowenthal, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas, this volume provides much needed sources for religious leaders, philosophers, and social theorists as they grapple with the nature and functions of religion in the contemporary social, political, and economic landscape. "The Frankfurt School on Religion" recovers the religious dimensions of the Frankfurt School, for too long sidelined or ignored, and offers new perspectives and insights necessary to the development of a fuller and more nuanced critical theory of society. Selections and essays from: Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Johann Baptist Metz, Jurgen Habermas, Helmut Peukert, Edmund Arens. (shrink)

The “Frankfurt School” refers to a group of German-American theorists who developed powerful analyses of the changes in Western capitalist societies that occurred since the classical theory of Marx. Working at the Institut fur Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, theorists such as Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm produced some of the first accounts within critical social theory of the importance of mass culture and (...) communication in social reproduction and domination. The Frankfurt School also generated one of the first models of a critical cultural studies that analyzes the processes of cultural production and political economy, the politics of cultural texts, and audience reception and use of cultural artifacts (Kellner 1989 and 1995). (shrink)

Since World War II social theory has generated two major critical analyses of science as a social phenomenon: that of the Frankfurt School, and of Science and Technology Studies. These academic efforts grew out of a broader movement in Western societies in the decades following the war to reach a better accommodation between science and society, motivated by deep-seated popular anxieties about the challenges posed by the advance of science and technology. In this paper, I first examine (...) the overlooked parallels between these two academic efforts, and go on to explain why they would in the end prove fruitless, indeed somewhat self-defeating. The explanation points to the instrumentalist and constructivist conception of science shared by the two schools which would eventually play into the hands of the “entrepreneurial university” and the commodification of science. (shrink)

The following introduction has two parts: the first part provides a sketch of the Frankfurt School’s history, highlighting the circumstances under which the authors discussed in this issue engaged philosophically with matters of economy. We thereby follow the prevailing periodization, starting with the school’s foundation in 1924 and ending with Theodor W. Adorno’s death in 1969 and the school’s preliminary dissolution. The second part of the introduction explores the legacy of the Frankfurt School’s philosophical (...) critique of economy. Max Horkheimer’s writings thereby serve as a model case for such a critique and become the point of departure for the discussion of contemporary critical theories of the economic. (shrink)

This paper examines the often overlooked parallels between the critical theory of the German Frankfurt School and Science and Technology Studies in Britain, as an attempt to articulate a critique of science as a social phenomenon. The cultural aspect of the German and British arguments is in focus, especially the role attributed to the humanities in balancing cultural and techno-scientific values in society. Here, we draw parallels between the German argument and the Two Cultures debate in Britain. (...) The third and final purpose of the paper is to explain why these efforts in support of the humanities would in the end prove fruitless, even somewhat self-defeating. The key factor is the instrumentalist analysis of science adopted in both arguments, which played into the hands of the emergent “entrepreneurial university” with its strengthened emphasis upon the economico-technological aspect of science and consequent neglect of the humanities. (shrink)