Nancy Fraser, instead, by focusing on the notion of redistribution has provided key elements in understanding how it is possible to overcome economic inequalities and power-imbalances in post-industrial societies where cultural affiliations are no longer significant sources of power. Only Benjamin refused to leave Europe and in 1940, while attempting to cross the border between France and Spain at Port Bou, committed suicide. Knowledge would be simply a mirror of reality. This study was published by Habermas in 1962 under the title of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, just before he handed in his Habilitation. He thereby inaugurated a vigorous debate among Marxist … Horkheimer was involved in the administration of the university, whereas Adorno was constantly occupied with different projects and teaching duties. For Foucault it was not correct to propose a second-order theory for defining what rationality is. (Consider that when these scholars began crafting their critiques, radio and cinema were still new phenomena, and television didn't exist.) That is, in addition to propositional contents or performatives, it includes gestures, ceremonies and so forth (Geuss 1981, pp. Ideology, in the descriptive sense, incorporates both “discursive” and “non-discursive” elements. The central message is that Critical Theory, while drawing from Marxism, must avoid hypostatization and closure into a single Weltanschauung on the pain of losing its “critical” capacity. Yet, what was once a lively intellectual community became soon a small team of very busy people. While never officially supporting any party, the Institute entertained intensive research exchanges with the Soviet Union. If one were to defend the view according to which scientific truths should pass the test of empirical confirmation, then one would commit oneself to the idea of an objective world. Abstract. In one of his later writings of 1969 (republished in Adorno 2003, pp. In 1956, Horkheimer retired just when several important publications were appearing, such as Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization and the essay’s collection Sociologica. Genealogical methods, though, do not reject the idea that (ir)-rationality is part of history; on the contrary, they rather pretend to illuminate abstract and procedural rational models by dissecting and analyzing concrete institutional social practices through immanent criticism. Benhabib’s views, by making explicit several Habermasian assumptions, aim to countervail both post-structuralist worries as well as post-modern charges of political action ineffectiveness of Critical Theory models. Last but not least, to the Habermasian role of consensus or agreement in discursive models, Foucault objected that rather than a regulatory principle, a true critical approach would simply enact a command in case of “nonconsensuality” (see Rabinow, ed. Crucial in this sense is the understanding and the criticism of the notion of “ideology”. Pollock’s critical reinterpretation of Marx received support also from intellectuals who greatly contributed to later developments of the School as, for instance, in the case of Leo Lowenthal, Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno and Erich Fromm. It was under Horkheimer’s leadership that members of the Institute were able to address a wide variety of economic, social, political and aesthetic topics, ranging from empirical analysis to philosophical theorization. The Frankfurt School is also known as critical theory in sociology. Definition, Principles, and Applications, Understanding Culture Jamming and How it Can Create Social Change, Biography of Angela Davis, Political Activist and Academic, The Major Theoretical Perspectives of Sociology, Max Weber's Three Biggest Contributions to Sociology, Franz Boas, Father of American Anthropology, Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, M.A., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara. On the contrary, “the optimal conditions approach” is reinterpreted, at least for Habermas, in terms of an “ideal speech situation” that by virtually granting an all-encompassing exchange of arguments, it assumes the function of providing a counterfactual normative check on actual discursive contexts. This separation has been at the basis of those ethical theories that have not recognized moral statements as a truth-property. If, as Weber believed, modern rationalization of society came to a formal reduction of the power of rationality, it followed that hyper-bureaucratization of society led not just to a complete separation between facts and values but also to a total disinterest in the latter forms. The activity of the analyst in this sense is not far from the same activity of the participant: there is no objective perspective which can be defended. The debate between Foucault and Critical Theory—in particular with Habermas—is quite illuminating of the common critical-universalist orientations of the first phase of the Frankfurt School versus the diverging methodologies defended starting from the Habermasian interpretation of modernity. If the task of critical social theory is to evaluate the degree of rationality of any system of social domination in accordance to standards of justice, then ideological criticism has the function of unmasking wrong rationalizations of present or past injustices—that is, ideology in the factual and negative sense—such as in the case of the belief that “women are inferior to men, or blacks to whites…”. In 1930, Max Horkheimer succeeded to Grünberg. In his case, the central problem became that of interpreting the interest in the genealogical roots of capitalist ideology. Nevertheless, for Critical Theory it remained essential to defend the validity of social criticism on the basis of the idea that humanity is embedded in a historical learning process where clash is due to the actualization of reason re-establishing power-balances and struggles for group domination. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/frankfurt-school-3026079. On the contrary, to preserve one’s identity means to find in the emancipatory force of knowledge the fundamental interest of human beings. It was in this context that Habermas reacted to the extremism of Rudi Dutschke, the radical leader of the students’ association who criticized him for defending a non-effective emancipatory view. In this respect, Habermas defined these as the “unavoidable pragmatic presuppositions of mutual understanding”. Whereas the early Frankfurt School and Habermas viewed rationality as a historical process whose unity was taken as a precondition for social criticism, later critical philosophies, influenced mainly by post-modernity, privileged a rather more fragmented notion of (ir)rationality manifested by social institutions. Horkheimer’s aversion towards Habermas was even more evident when he refused to supervise his Habilitation. Even though greatly influential in philosophy, Adorno’s most innovative contribution is unanimously thought to be in the field of music theory and aesthetics. As Geuss has suggested, there are two possible ways to propose such separation: “the perfect-knowledge approach” and “the optimal conditions approach” (1981, p. 48). Habermas described discourse theory as relying on three types of validity-claims raised by communicative action. A verificationist procedure of this kind was what positivism considered to be the best explicatory account for the notion of praxis in scientific investigation. 10. He built himself a bungalow near other German intellectuals, among whom were Bertold Brecht and Thomas Mann as well as with other people interested in working for the film industry (Wiggershaus 1995, p. 292). What Is Critical Race Theory? In the latter views, social criticism could not act as a self-reflective form of rationality, since rationality cannot be conceived as a process incorporated in history. Critical Theory has a narrow and a broad meaning in philosophy and in the history of the social sciences. Adorno, Theodor W. “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” (1951), in Arato, Andrew and Eike Gebhardt (eds.). It was Fromm, nevertheless, who achieved a significant advancement of the discipline; his central aim was to provide, through a synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis, “the missing link between ideological superstructure and socio-economic base” (Jay 1966, p. 92). For Critical Theory, rationality has always been a crucial theme in the analysis of modern society as well as of its pathologies. Whereas Hegel found that Rationality had finally come to terms with Reality with the birth of the modern nation state (which in his eyes was the Prussian state), Marx insisted on the necessity of reading the development of rationality through history in terms of a class struggle. The universality of such epistemological status differs profoundly from Adorno’s contextualism where individual epistemic principles grounding cultural criticism and self-reflection are recognized to be legitimately different along time and history. One week later he inaugurated the academic year as a new Rector of the University. " This phrase refers to the technological developments that allowed for the distribution of cultural products—music, film, and art—on a mass scale. Accordingly, for the Frankfurt School, modern processes of bureaucratic administration exemplified what Weber considered as an all-encompassing domination of formal rationality over substantive values. After this period, only few devoted supporters remained faithful to the project of the School. In the latter case, there seems to be required an extra layer of justification, namely, a process through which a norm can be defined as valid. It originated from criticism by Horkheimer of orthodox Marxism’s dichotomy between productive structures and ideological superstructure, as well as positivism’s naïve separation of social facts and social interpretation. In Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), Max Horkheimer defined critical theory as social critique meant to effect sociologic change and realize intellectual emancipation, by way of enlightenment that is not dogmatic in its assumptions. A radical shift though occurred in the late 1930s, when Adorno joined the School and Fromm decided, for independent reasons, to leave. This decade was crucial for the definition of the School’s research objectives. On the other hand, if one takes “ideology” according to a positive sense, then, reference is not with something empirically given, but rather with a “desideratum”, a “verité a faire” (Geuss 1981, p. 23). This point is strictly connected to another conceptual category playing a great role within Critical Theory, the concept of interest and in particular the distinction between “true interests” and “false interests”. Found a huge digital library of works by and about Adorno, mostly in English, in PDF format. Indeed, his communitarian turn has been paralleled by the work of some of his fellow scholars. Claudio Corradetti The Frankfurt School and “Critical Theory” Index to the biographies and writings of members of the “Frankfurt School”, or Institute for Social Research, set up by a group of Marxist intellectuals in Germany in 1923, affiliated to the University of Frankfurt and independently of the Communist Party, which has been influential in the development of Marxist theory ever since. Marcuse, Herbert. Chambers, Simone. He claimed that it was only when the conditions of truth, rightness and sincerity were raised by speech-acts that social coordination could be obtained. Differently from Hegelianism or Marxism, dialectics amounted for Horkheimer to be neither a metaphysical principle nor a historical praxis; it was not intended as a methodological instrument. Accordingly, critical theorists like Fromm referred to Freud’s notions of the unconscious which contributed defining ideologies in terms of “substitute gratifications”. 6-8); also, it shows a systematic set of beliefs—a world-view—characterized by conceptual schemes. It can be said to include also scholars such as Andrew Feenberg, even if he was a direct student of Marcuse, or people such as Albrecht Wellmer who became an assistant of Habermas due to the premature death of Adorno in 1969. In the already mentioned work—>Dialectic of Enlightenment (1969 [1947])—Horkheimer and Adorno emphasized the role of knowledge and technology as a “means of exploitation” of labor and viewed the dialectic of reason as the archetypical movement of human self-liberation. Brunkhorst, for instance, in his Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community (2005 [2002]), canvasses a line of thought springing from the French Revolution of 1789 to contemporary times: the notion of fraternity. Gradually, Adorno assumed a prominent intellectual leadership in the School and this led to co-authorship, with Horkheimer, of one of the milestones works of the School, the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947. “Philosophie und Kritische Theorie”, Rabinow, Paul (ed.). The mission of Critical Theory, therefore, is not exhausted by a theoretical understanding of social reality; as a matter of fact, there is a strict interconnection between critical understanding and transformative action: theory and practice are interconnected. The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism by Jack Jacobs Cambridge University Press, 268 pages, $90.00. To come to terms with negations of subjective forms of self-realization means to be able to transform social reality. Normatively, though, acts of social struggle activated by forms of misrecognition point to the role that recognition plays as a crucial criterion for grounding intersubjectivity. 2 comments. Discussions of the notion of emancipation had been at the center of the Frankfurt School political debate since the beginning. The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory . “The Justification of Human Rights and the Basic Right to Justification. Indeed, the finality of knowledge as a mirror of reality is mainly a theoretically-oriented tool aimed at separating knowledge from action, speculation from social transformative enterprise. In other words, Critical Theory is an activist ideology. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. "The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory." In 1933, due to the Nazi takeover, the Institute was temporarily transferred, first to Geneva and then in 1935 to Columbia University, New York. This view is firmly rejected by critical theorists. Traditional theory, whether deductive or analytical, has always focused on coherency and on the strict distinction between theory and praxis. For the opponents to the Critical Theory paradigm, a clear indication in this sense was exemplified by Marcuse’s idea of “the Great Refusal”, one predicating abstention from real political engagement and pretences of transformation of the capitalist economy and the democratic institutions (Marcuse 1964). According to this view, reason had been seen essentially as a form of control over nature characterizing humanity since its inception, that is, since those attempts aimed at providing a mythological explanation of cosmic forces. The academic influence of the critical method is far reaching. The first officially appointed director was Carl Grünberg (1923-9), a Marxist professor at the University of Vienna. Introduction to Theory of Literature (ENGL 300)This first lecture on social theories of art and artistic production examines the Frankfurt School. From these conceptually rich implications one can observe some of the constant topics which have characterized critical social theory, that is, the normativity of social philosophy as something distinct from classical descriptive sociology, the everlasting crux on the theory/practice relation and, finally, ideology critique. Accordingly, the use of reason did not amount to formulating prescriptive models of society but aimed at achieving goals through the selection of the best possible means of action. This fight represents a subjective negative experience of domination—a form of domination attached to misrecognitions. Two years later Horkheimer published the ideological manifesto of the School in his Traditional and Critical Theory ([1937] 1976) where he readdressed some of the previously introduced topics concerning the practical and critical turn of theory. First of all, Habermas himself has suggested a further pre-linguistic line of enquiry by making appeal to the notion of “authenticity” and “imagination”. A further line of criticism against Habermas, one which included also a target to Critical Theory as a whole, came from scholars like Chantal Mouffe (2005). Marcuse took imagination as a way to obtain individual reconciliation with social reality: a reconciliation, though, with an underlying unsolved tension. Psychoanalysis represented such a strong component within the research of the Frankfurt School that even Adorno in his article Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda (1951) analyzed Fromm’s interconnection between sadomasochism and fascism. If, as Mouffe claimed, the model of discursive action is bound to the achievement of consensus, then, what rolecan be left to politics once agreement is obtained? Pollock directed his research to study anti-Semitism. ThoughtCo. The so-called “struggle for recognition” is what best characterizes the fight for emancipation by social groups. Hot. The purpose served by instrumental rationality was essentially that of promoting self-preservation, even if this goal turned paradoxically into the fragmentation of bourgeois individuality that, once deprived of any substantive value, became merely formal and thus determined by external influences of mass-identity in a context of cultural industry. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to … The School’s interest in psychoanalysis coincided with a marginalization of Marxism, a growing interest into the interrelation between psychoanalysis and social change, as well as with Fromm’s insight into the psychic (or even psychotic) role of the family. The Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory is and will be essential for anyone who wants to approach, study in depth and orientate oneself in that which falls under the name of critical theory.The authors of this volumes, extending the basis of the foundation of critical theory to include thinkers such as Bloch, Benjamin, Lukács, Kracauer, Sohn-Rethel, and … The work of Forst testifies, indeed, of the synthesis between analytical methodological rigor and classical themes of the Frankfurt School. The control of life—known as bio-power—manifests itself in the attempt of normalizing and constraining individuals’ behaviors and psychic lives. Posted by 5 years ago. These are the primary tasks that a critical social theory must accomplish in order to be defined as “critical”. While the first two categories had been treated as instances of traditional theories, the latter connoted the methodology the Frankfurt School adopted. The Frankfurt School was a group of scholars known for developing critical theory and popularizing the dialectical method of learning by interrogating society's contradictions. Axel Honneth, for instance, starting from a revisitation of the Hegelian notion of (mis)-recognition and through a research phase addressing social pathologies, has proposed in one of his latest studies  a revisited version of socialism, as in The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal (2017). He returned there only in 1981 after having completed The Theory of Communicative Action. This led to two different approaches in the School. ), Adorno provides a short but dense interpretation in eight theses on the significance and the mission of Critical Theory. Horkheimer, Max. The final stage of this struggle would have seen the political and economic empowerment of the proletariat. During the time of Germany’s Nazi seizure, the Institute remained the only free voice publishing in German language. What she noticed is that in the notion of consensus it nested a surrendering to a genuine engagement into “political agonism”. Upon return to West Germany, Horkheimer presented his inaugural speech for the reopening of the institute on 14 November 1951. He was soon involved in an empirical study titled Students and Politics. Through such a solution, Marcuse overcame the strict opposition between biological and historical rationality that was preventing the resolution of the theory/practice problem. Social action whose coordination-function relies on the same pragmatic presuppositions was seen as connected to a justification discourse based on the satisfaction of specific validity-claims. Dialectics, as a method of social criticism, was interpreted as following from the contradictory nature of capitalism as a system of exploitation. As an instance of Horkheimer’s aversion to so-called Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life), he criticized the fetishism of subjectivity and the lack of consideration for materialist conditions of living. Critical Theory has been strongly influenced by Hegel’s notion of dialectics for the conciliation of socio-historical oppositions as well as by Marx’s theory of economy and society and the limits of Hegel’s “bourgeois philosophy”. Different interpretations of Marxism and its historical applications explain some of the hardest confrontations on economic themes within the Institute, such as the case of Pollock’s criticism of Grossman’s standard view on the pauperization of capitalism. After 1933, the Nazis forced its closure, and the Institute was moved to the United States where it found hospitality at Columbia University in New York City. As a number of commentators have pointed out, there is an important distinction that should be drawn between authoritarianism and totalitarianism [emphasis added]. He did so by recalling the annihilation of individual’s sexual energy laying at the basis of organized society and recalling, in its turn, the archetypical scenario of a total fulfillment of pleasure. This move is aimed at suggesting an alternative and hopefully more coherent route of explanation for the understanding of the liberal constitutional experience (Forst, [2007] 2014, see also Forst, [2010] 2011). Therefore, tthird generation of Critical Theory scholars consists of two groups. Furthermore, arguing against Cartesian and Kantian philosophy, Horkheimer, by use of dialectical mediation, attempted to rejoin all dichotomies including the divide between consciousness and being, theory and practice, fact and value. The third generation of critical theorists, therefore, arose either from Habermas’ research students in the United States and at Frankfurt am Main and Starnberg (1971-1982), or from a spontaneous convergence of independently educated scholars. What The Authoritarian Personality was really studying was the character type of a totalitarian rather than an authoritarian society. They believed that technological advancements in communications and the reproduction of ideas enabled this form of rule. Critical Theory has the following tasks: to clarify the sociopolitical determinants that explain the limits of analysis of a certain philosophical view as well as to transcend the use of imagination—the actual limits of imagination. Given the state of pre-WWII Germany, Horkheimer relocated the Institute for its members' safety. Indeed, the grounding of knowledge into the practical domain has quite far-reaching implications as, for instance, that interest and knowledge in Habermas find their unity in self-reflection, that is, in “knowledge for the sake of knowledge” (Habermas [1968], in Ingram and Simon-Ingram 1992, p. 264). The works of the Frankfurt School are understood in the context of the intellectual and practical objectives of critical theory. Derrida, for instance, while pointing to the Habermasian idea of pragmatic of communication, still maintained a distinct thesis of a restless deconstructive potential of any constructing activity, so that no unavoidable pragmatic presuppositions nor idealizing conditions of communication could survive deconstruction. In addition, in order to keep US citizenship, Adorno had to go back to California where he earned his living by conducting qualitative research analysis. The Institute was founded in 1923 thanks to a donation by Felix Weil with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany. In non-pathological social aggregations, individuals were said to be capable of achieving cooperative forms of self-actualizations only if freed from coercive mechanisms of domination. Differently from Freud’s tensions between nature and culture and Fromm’s total social shaping of natural instincts, Marcuse defended a third—median—perspective where instincts were considered only partially shaped by social relations (Ingram 1990, p. 93 ff). While Marcuse, quite ostensibly, sponsored the student upheavals, Adorno maintained a much moderate and skeptical profile. Horkheimer’s leadership provided a very distinct methodological direction and philosophical grounding to the research interests of the Institute. 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