Frankfurt School

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The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule ) is a school of social and philosophical theories associated with the Institute for Social Research at University of Goethe Frankfurt. Established during the interwar period, the School consists of neo-Marxist dissidents who feel uncomfortable with the existing capitalist, fascist or communist system. Many of these theorists believe that traditional theory can not adequately account for the turbulent and unpredictable developments of capitalist society in the twentieth century. Critical to Soviet capitalism and socialism, their writings indicate the possibility of an alternative path to social development.

These theorists are sometimes only loosely affiliated, and some authors point out that the "Frankfurt Circle" is not a philosophical school or political group. Nevertheless, they speak with the same paradigm in mind; they share a Hegelian Marxist place and are busy with similar questions. To fill the perceived negligence of classical Marxism, they seek to draw answers from other schools of thought, then using the insights of antipositivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy and other disciplines. The principal figures of the school seek to learn from and synthesize the works of varied thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber, Simmel and Lukács.

Following Marx, they are concerned about the conditions that enable social change and the establishment of rational institutions. Their emphasis on the "critical" component of the theory derives significantly from their efforts to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and his successors in German idealism, especially Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on dialectics and contradictions. as the inherent trait of human reality.

Since the 1960s, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School has been further guided by the work of JÃÆ'¼rgen Habermas on communicative reasons, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity". Critical theorists such as Raymond Geuss and Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, stating that he has undermined the aspirations for social change that originally gave objectives on critical project theories - for example the problem of what reason should be, the analysis and enlargement of "probable conditions" for the social emancipation and critique of modern capitalism.

Video Frankfurt School

History

Social Research Institute

The term "Frankfurt School" appears informally to describe an affiliated thinker or only linked to the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research; it is not the title of a particular position or institution per se , and few of these theorists use the term itself. The Institute for Social Research Institut fÃÆ'¼r Sozialforschung was founded in 1923 by Carl GrÃÆ'¼nberg, a Marxist professor of law and politics at the University of Vienna, as an assistant from the University of Frankfurt; it was the first Marxist-oriented research center to be affiliated with a large German university. However, the school can trace its origins back to Felix Weil, who uses the money from his father's grain business to fund the Institute .

Weil (1898-1975), a young Marxist, has written his doctoral thesis (published by Karl Korsch) on the practical problem of applying socialism. In the hope of bringing different trends of Marxism together, Weil organized the week-long symposium (the Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche) in 1922 in Ilmenau, Thuringia, a meeting attended by Georg LukÃÆ'¨cs, Karl Korsch, Karl August Wittfogel, Friedrich Pollock, and others. The show was so successful that Weil started building and funding salaries for a permanent institution. Weil negotiated with the Ministry of Education that the Director of the Institute would be a full professor of the state system, so the Institute would have the status of the University institution.

Georg LukÃÆ'¨cs and Karl Korsch both attended Arbeitswoche, which has incorporated the study of Marxism and Korsch Philosophy - but both are too committed to political activity and Party membership to join the Institute , even though Korsch participated in the publishing business for several years. The way Luke is obliged to deny his History and Class Awareness, published in 1923 and perhaps a major inspiration for the work of the Frankfurt School, shows that the independence of the Communist Party is necessary for the original theory. work.

The philosophical tradition now referred to as the "Frankfurt School" may be closely related to Max Horkheimer (philosopher, sociologist and social psychologist), who took over as institute director in 1930 and recruited many of the most talented school theorists, including Theodor W Adorno (philosopher, sociologists, musicians), Erich Fromm (psychoanalyst), and Herbert Marcuse (philosopher).

The pre-war context of Germany

The political turmoil of the troubled years of war in Germany greatly affected the development of the School. His thinkers were primarily influenced by the failure of the communist revolution in Western Europe (precisely where Marx predicted that communist revolutions would occur) and by the rise of Nazism in an economically and technologically advanced country like Germany. This led many of them to take up the task of choosing what part of Marx's thought might serve to clarify the contemporary social conditions that Marx had never seen before. Other key influences also came from publications in the 1930s Marx Economy-Manuscript Philosophy and German Ideology , which indicates continuity with Hegelianism that underlies Marx's thinking.

As the growing influence of National Socialism became increasingly threatening, its founders decided to prepare to move the Institute abroad. After Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, the Institute left Germany for Geneva, before moving to New York City in 1935, where he became affiliated with Columbia University. His journal Zeitschrift fÃÆ'¼r Sozialforschung has been renamed the Study in Philosophy and Social Sciences. It was at this point that most of the important work began to emerge, having been well received by American and British academics. Horkheimer, Adorno and Pollock eventually settled back in West Germany in the early 1950s, though Marcuse, Lowenthal, Kirchheimer and others chose to remain in the United States. It was not until 1953 that the Institute was officially reestablished in Frankfurt.

Theorists

The "theorists" to be included in what is now called the "Frankfurt School" may vary among different scholars. Indeed, the title "school" can often be misleading, because members of the Institute do not always form a series of closely-knit complementary projects. Some scholars therefore limit their view of the Frankfurt School to Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Lowenthal and Pollock. However, most pre-war theorists can be considered to have shared a very similar paradigm. Most members of the Institute of Social Research are of Jewish descent. Although initially he was part of the inner circle of Schools, JÃÆ'¼rgen Habermas was generally regarded as the first to have deviated from the Horkheimer research program, thereby generating a new generation of critical theorists.

Anggota awal Sekolah Frankfurt adalah:

• Max Horkheimer
• Theodor W. Adorno
• Herbert Marcuse
• Friedrich Pollock
• Erich Fromm
• Otto Kirchheimer
• Leo LÃÆ'¶wenthal
• Franz Leopold Neumann
• Henryk Grossman

People associated with the Institute or his theory include:

• Siegfried Kracauer
• Alfred Sohn-Rethel
• Walter Benjamin

Then the theorist with the roots in Frankfurt School's critical theories include:

• JÃÆ'¼rgen Habermas
• Claus Offe
• Axel Honneth
• Oskar Negt
• Alfred Schmidt
• Albrecht Wellmer

Maps Frankfurt School

Theoretical work

Critical and ideological criticism of ideology

The work of the Frankfurt School can not be overcome without understanding the purpose of critical theory. Initially outlined by Max Horkheimer in his book Traditional and Critical Theories (1937), critical theory can be defined as self-conscious social criticism aimed at change and emancipation through enlightenment and which is not dogmatically attached to its own doctrinal assumptions. The original purpose of critical theory is to analyze the true meaning of the "powerful understanding" that results in bourgeois society, to show how they misunderstand real human interaction in the real world, and thus function. to justify or legitimize the domination of people with capitalism. A certain type of story (narrative) is given to explain what is happening in the community, but the story is hidden as much as revealed. Frankfurt theorists generally assume that their task is primarily to interpret the areas of society that Marx has not dealt with, especially in the superstructure of society.

Horkheimer defies it with traditional theory, which refers to a theory in a positivistic, scientific, or purely observational mode - that is, derived from generalization or "law" on various aspects of the world. Describing Max Weber, Horkheimer argues that the social sciences differ from natural sciences as far as generalization can not easily be made from what is called experience because the understanding of "social" experience itself is always shaped by the ideas within the researchers themselves. What the researcher does not realize is that he is caught in the historical context in which ideology shapes thinking; thus, the theory will fit the ideas in the mind of the researcher rather than the experience itself:

The facts given by our senses to us socially are done in two ways: through the historical character of the perceived object and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not only natural; they are shaped by human activity, yet the individual perceives itself as receptive and passive in the act of perception.

For Horkheimer, the approach to understanding in social science can not simply imitate them in the natural sciences. Although various theoretical approaches will approach the ideological barriers that limit them, such as positivism, pragmatism, neo-Kantianism, and phenomenology, Horkheimer argues that they fail because all are subject to the "logicogmatic" prejudices that separate the theoretical activity from real life (meaning that all schools it seeks to find the logic that always remains true, regardless of and without consideration for ongoing human activities). According to Horkheimer, the appropriate response to this dilemma is the development of critical theory.

The problem is, Horkheimer argues, is epistemological: we must reconsider not just scientists but individuals who know in general. Unlike orthodox Marxism, which only applies "ready-to-use" templates for criticism and action, critical theories seek to be self-critical and reject any pretensions to absolute truth. Critical theory defends material primacy (materialism) or consciousness (idealism), and argues that both epistemologies distort reality for the benefit of, ultimately, from some small group. What critical theory attempts to do is to place itself outside the philosophical strictures and limitations of existing structures. However, as a way of thinking and "restoring" human self-knowledge, critical theories often look to Marxism for its methods and tools.

Horkheimer argues that critical theory must be directed to the totality of society in its historical specificity (ie, how it is configured at some point in time), as it should improve people's understanding by integrating all major social sciences, including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology , and psychology. While critical theory must always be critical of itself, Horkheimer insists that theory is only important if it is an explanation. Critical theories should, therefore, combine practical and normative thought to "explain what is wrong with current social realities, identify actors to change them, and provide a clear norm for criticism and practical goals for the future." Whereas traditional theory can only reflect and explain reality as it is today, the goal of critical theory is to change it; in the words of Horkheimer, the purpose of critical theory is "human emancipation from the conditions that enslave them".

The Frankfurt School Theorists are explicitly associated with Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy, where the term criticism means philosophical reflection on the limits of claims made for certain types of knowledge and the direct link between such criticism and the emphasis on contradictory moral autonomy with traditional human action theories are deterministic and static. In an intellectual context defined by dogmatic positivism and scientism on the one hand and "dogmatic socialism" on the other, critical theorists intend to rehabilitate Marx's ideas through a critical philosophical approach.

While both Marxist-Leninists and democratic orthodox thinkers view Marxism as a new kind of positive science, the Frankfurt School theorists like Horkheimer instead base their work on the epistemological basis of Marx's work, which presents itself as criticism, as in Marx's Capital: Critics of Political Economy . They thus emphasize that Marx sought to create a new type of critical analysis oriented towards the unity of revolutionary theory and practice rather than a new kind of positive science. Criticism, in this Marxian sense, means taking the ideology of a society (eg, belief in individual freedom or free market capitalism) and criticizing it by comparing it with the social realities composed of that society (eg, social inequality and exploitation). The Frankfurt School theorists based this on a dialectical methodology founded by Hegel and Marx.

Dialectical method

The Institute also attempted to formulate dialectics as a concrete method. The use of such dialectical methods can be traced back to Hegel's philosophy, which contains dialectics as a tendency for ideas to pass to his own negation as a result of the conflict between the inherent contradictory aspects. Contrary to the earlier mode of thought, which sees things in abstraction, each by itself and as though endowed with fixed traits, Hegelian dialectics has the ability to consider ideas according to their movements and time changes, as well as by interrelation them and interaction.

History, according to Hegel, develops and evolves in a dialectical way: the present embodies a rational sublation, or "synthesis," a contradiction of the past. Thus history can be seen as a comprehensible process (so-called Hegel as Weltgeist), which moves toward a certain condition - the rational realization of human freedom. However, consideration of the future did not appeal to Hegel, whose philosophy could not be prescribed for merely understanding behind. Therefore, the study of history is limited to a description of past and present reality. Therefore for Hegel and his successors, dialectics must lead to the approval of the status quo '- indeed, Hegel's philosophy serves as a justification for Christian theology and the Prussian state.

This is strongly criticized by Marx and the Hegel Muda, who argue that Hegel has gone too far in defending his abstract concept of "Absolute Reason" and has failed to notice the "real" - that is irrational and irrational - the living conditions of the working class. By turning Hegel's idealist dialectics in reverse, Marx advanced his theory of dialectical materialism, arguing that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, conversely, their social creatures that determine their consciousness." Marx's theory follows the materialist concept of history and space, in which the development of productive forces is seen as the ultimate motive force for historical change, and according to which the inherent social and material contradictions of capitalism must inevitably lead to its negation - thus replacing capitalism with a new form of rational society: communism.

Marx thus broadly relies on a form of dialectical analysis. This method - to know the truth by uncovering the contradictions in today's dominant ideas and, with extension, in the social relations in which they are related - reveals the fundamental struggle between opposing forces. For Marx, only by realizing the dialectical consciousness of the opposing forces, in the struggle for power, that individuals can free themselves and change the existing social order.

For their part, the Frankfurt School theorists quickly realized that the dialectical method could only be adopted if it could be applied to itself - that is, if they adopted a method of self-correcting - a dialectical method that would enable them to improve false dialectical interpretation before. Thus, critical theory rejects the historicism and materialism of orthodox Marxism. Indeed, the material tensions and class struggles in which Marx speaks are no longer seen by Frankfurt School theorists as having the same revolutionary potential in contemporary Western society - an observation that shows that Marx's dialectical and predictive interpretations are incomplete or false.

Contrary to the orthodox Marxist praxis , which merely seeks to apply the unchangeable and narrow ideas of "communism" in practice, critical theorists argue that praxis and theory, following the dialectical method, must be mutual dependent and must influence each other. one another. When Marx famously states in his book Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers only interpret the world in various ways, the point is to change it", the original idea is that the sole validity of the philosophy is how it informs action. The Frankfurt School Theorists will correct this by stating that when action fails, the guiding theory should be reviewed. In short, socialist philosophical thought should be given the ability to criticize itself and "overcome" its own faults. While the theory should inform praxis, praxis should also have an opportunity to inform the theory.

Influence and initial work

The intellectual influence and theoretical focus of the first generation of Frankfurt school theorists can be summarized as follows:

In response to the intensification of alienation and irrationality in advanced capitalist societies, critical theory is a historically comprehensive and critical critical theory body aimed at simultaneously explaining dominance and pointing to the possibilities of bringing about a rational, human, and free society. The critical theorist of the Frankfurt School developed many theories about the structures of economic, political, cultural, and psychological dominance of advanced industrial civilizations.

The Institute makes major contributions in two fields relating to the possibility of human subjects becoming rational, ie, individuals who can act rationally to take over their own society and their own history. The former consists of social phenomena previously regarded in Marxism as part of the "superstructure" or as an ideology: personality, family and authority structure (one of the earliest published works to bear the title Authority and Family Study ), and the field of aesthetics and mass culture. The study sees a common concern here in the ability of capitalism to destroy the preconditions of critical political revolutionary consciousness. This means arriving at a sophisticated awareness of the profound dimension in which social oppression sustains itself. It also means the beginning of recognition of critical theory of ideology as part of the foundation of social structure.

Criticism of Western civilization

Dialectic of Enlightenment and Minima Moralia

The second stage of the Frankfurt School's critical theory center is mainly on two works: Adorno and Horkheimer Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) and Adorno's Minima Moralia (1951). The authors write both of them working during the Institute's exile in America. While retaining much of Marxist analysis, in these works critical theory shifts its emphasis from the critique of capitalism to the criticism of Western civilization as a whole, as seen in the Enlighten Dialectic , which uses Odyssey as a paradigm for their analysis of bourgeois consciousness. In these works, Horkheimer and Adorno present many themes that have dominated social thought in recent years; for example, their exposition of natural domination as a central feature of instrumental rationality in Western civilization was made long before ecology and environmentalism had become a popular concern.

Intellectual analysis now goes one step further: The rationality of Western civilization appears to be a fusion of technological dominance and rationality, which brings all external and internal traits under the strength of human subjects. But in the process, the subject itself is swallowed and there is no social power similar to the identifiable proletariat that allows the subject to free itself. Therefore the subtitle Minima Moralia : "Reflections from a Damaged Life". In Adorno's words,

Since since the extraordinary objectivity of the historical movement in the current phase has so far only been in the dissolution of the subject, without any newfoundness, the individual experience will base itself on the old, now historically doomed subject, which is still to-itself, but no longer alone. The subject still feels confident about his autonomy, but the nolitas shown to the subject by the concentration camp has gone beyond the form of subjectivity itself.

Consequently, at a time when it appears that reality itself has become the basis of ideology, the greatest contribution that can be made by critical theory is to explore the dialectical contradiction of the individual subjective experience on the one hand, and to defend the theory's truth on another. Even the progress of dialectics is doubtful: "its truth or untruth is not inherent in the method itself, but in its intention in the process of history." This intention must be oriented to integral freedom and happiness: "The only philosophy that can be practiced responsibly in the face of despair is the attempt to reflect on all things because they will present themselves from the point of view of redemption." Adorno goes on to distance himself from the "optimism" of orthodox Marxism: "in addition to the query placed on thought, the question of reality or unreal redemption [ie human emancipation] is itself not a problem."

From a sociological point of view, both Horkheimer and Adorno's works contain a certain ambivalence about the main source or foundation of social domination, the ambivalence that gives rise to "pessimism" of the new critical theory of the possibility of human emancipation and freedom. This ambivalence takes root, of course, in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, in particular, the rise of National Socialism, state capitalism, and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that can not be adequately described in terms of traditional Marxist sociology. For Adorno and Horkheimer, state intervention in the economy has effectively eliminated the tension in capitalism between "production relations" and "the material productive forces of society" - the tension which, according to traditional Marxist theory, is a major contradiction in capitalism.. Previous "free" markets (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and irrevocable "private property" from Marx's day have been gradually replaced by centralized state planning and socialized ownership of the means of production in contemporary western societies. The dialectic with which Marx predicts that the emancipation of modern society is suppressed, effectively subjugated to the positivist rationality of domination.

From the second "phase" of the Frankfurt School, the critical philosopher and theoretician Nikolas Kompridis writes that:

According to the current canonical view of its history, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School began in the 1930s as a fairly confident interdisciplinary and materialist research program, the general aim being to relate normative social criticism to emancipatory latent potential in concrete historical processes. However, just a decade later, after reviewing their historical philosophy, Horkheimer and Adornic directed the entire company, provocatively and self-consciously, in a skeptical direction. bag. As a result they are caught up in the insoluble dilemmas of the "subject philosophy", and the original program becomes chaotic by the negative criticism that keeps the normative ideal implicitly dependent on it.

The compiler argues that this "skeptical cul-de-sac" arrives with "a great deal of help from the unprecedented and unspeakable barbarism of European fascism", and can not come out without "well-marked or" Ausgang , showing the way out of a recurring nightmare where the hopes of the Enlightenment and Holocaust horror are fatally entangled. "However, this Ausgang , according to Kompridis, will not come until later - supposedly in the form of JÃÆ'¼rgen Habermas's work on the basis of intersubjective rationality of communicative.

Music philosophy

Adorno, a well-trained classical pianist, wrote The Philosophy of Modern Music (1949), where he was, in effect, a polemic against music-for being part of the ideology of advanced capitalist society and false consciousness that contributed on social dominance. He argues that radical art and music can defend the truth by capturing the reality of human suffering. Therefore:

What radical music feels is the human suffering that is not transformed [...] Seismograph registration from traumatic shock becomes, at the same time, the technical musical structural law. It prohibits continuity and development. Polarized music language according to extremes; against the movement of shocks that resemble the convulsions of the body on one side, and on the other side to the crystal freeze of a human being whose anxiety leads to frozen on his track [...] Modern music sees absolute disconnection as its purpose. It is a living despair message from a shipwreck.

This view of modern art produces truth only through the denial of traditional aesthetic forms and traditional beauty norms as they have become ideologically characteristic of Adorno and the Frankfurt School in general. It has been criticized by those who do not share the conception of modern society as a false totality that makes the traditional conception obsolete and pictures of beauty and harmony.

In particular, Adorno hates jazz and popular music, seeing it as part of the cultural industry, contributing to the survival of current capitalism by making it "aesthetically pleasing" and "fun". The English philosopher Roger Scruton sees Adorno as a maker of 'turgid bullshit aimed at showing that Americans are just as alienated as Marxism demands, and that the music that affirms their lives is an' expansive 'commodity, expressive of them. deep spiritual slavery to the capitalist machine. '

Critical theory and dominance

Negative dialectic

With the growth of advanced industrial societies during the Cold War era, critical theorists acknowledge that the path of capitalism and history has changed convincingly that the ways of oppression operate differently, and the industrial working class is no longer a definite denial of capitalism. This led to attempts to root out dialectics in absolute absolute methods, such as in the work of Marcuse Dimensions Man (1964) and Negative Negative Dialog of Adorno (1966). During this period, the Institute for Social Research resided in Frankfurt (although many of its associates remained in the United States) with the task of not only continuing research but becoming a major force in the sociological education and democratization of West Germany. This leads to a particular systematization of the overall accumulation of empirical research institutions and theoretical analysis.

During this period, the Frankfurt School's critical theory primarily affected some of the left-wing segments and leftist thinking, especially the New Left. Herbert Marcuse is sometimes described as the theoretician or intellectual ancestor of the New Left. Their criticism of technology, totality, teleology and (sometimes) civilization is the influence on anarcho-primitivism. Their work is also heavily influenced by intellectual discourse on popular culture and the study of popular culture.

More importantly, however, the Frankfurt School seeks to determine the fate of reason within a new historical period. While Marcuse does so through analysis of structural changes in the labor process under capitalism and features inherent in the scientific methodology, Horkheimer and Adorno concentrate on re-examining the foundations of critical theory. This effort emerged in a systematic form in Adorno's Adi's negative Dialectic Adorno, which attempted to redefine dialectics for an era in which "philosophy, which once seemed outdated, lived on because the moment to realize it was overlooked." Negative dialectics expresses the idea of ​​critical thinking contained in such a way that the apparatus of domination can not co-opt them.

The main idea, as long as the focus for Horkheimer and Adorno, shows that the original sin of thinking lies in the attempt to eliminate all other things besides thought, the attempt by the subject to gobble up objects, the struggle for identity. This reduction makes the mind as an accomplice of dominance. Negative Dialectics saves the "dominant object", not through naive epistemological or metaphysical realism but through thinking based on differentiation, paradox, and deception: "logic of disintegration". Adorno thoroughly criticizes Heidegger's fundamental ontology, which he says reintroduces idealistic and identity-based concepts under the guise of overcoming philosophical traditions.

negative dialectic consists of monuments to the end of the tradition of the individual subject as the critic locus. With no revolutionary working class, the Frankfurt School has no people to rely on, but an individual subject. However, since the liberal capitalist social base of the autonomous individual subsides into the past, the dialectics based on it become increasingly abstract.

Habermas and communicative rationality

Habermas's work takes a steady interest from the Frankfurt School in rationality, human subjects, democratic socialism, and dialectical methods and overcomes a series of contradictions that always undermine critical theory: the contradiction between materialist and transcendental methods, between Marxist and individualist social theories. assumption of critical rationalism between technical and social rationalization, and between cultural and psychological phenomena on the one hand and the economic structure of society on the other.

The Frankfurt School avoids taking a stand on the right relationship between materialist and transcendental methods, which causes ambiguity in their writings and confusion among their readers. Epistemology Habermas synthesizes these two traditions by showing that phenomenological and transcendental analyzes can be incorporated into the materialist theory of social evolution, whereas materialist theory makes sense only as part of the quasi-transcendental emancipatory science theory which is a self-reflection of culture. evolution. The empirical and transcendental nature as well as the emancipatory knowledge become the foundation stone of critical theory.

By placing conditions of rationality in the social structure of language use, Habermas moves the rationality locus of the autonomous subject to the subject in interaction. Rationality is a non-individual property per se, but rather from an undistorted communication structure. In this idea Habermas has overcome the ambiguous suffering of the subject in critical theory. If the capitalistic technological society undermines the autonomy and rationality of the subject, it is not through individual domination by the apparatus but through technological rationality replacing the communication rationality that can be described. And, in his communicative ethical sketch as the highest stage in the internal logic of the evolution of the ethical system, Habermas hints at the source of a new political practice that combines the imperative of evolutionary rationality.

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The critics of the Frankfurt School theorist

Horkheimer and Adorno pessimism

An early critic, from the left, states that the Frankfurt School's critical theory is nothing more than a form of "bourgeois idealism" that has no actual relationship to political practice, and is therefore completely isolated from the reality of the ongoing revolutionary movement. This criticism was captured in Georg LukÃÆ'¡cs's phrase "Grand Hotel Abyss" as the syndrome he referred to the members of the Frankfurt School:

Most of Germany's leading intellectuals, including Adorno, have stayed at the Grand Hotel Abyss that I describe in relation to my criticism of Schopenhauer as "a beautiful hotel, equipped with every comfort, on the brink, absence, absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the gulf between excellent food or artistic entertainment, can only enhance the enjoyment of the subtle comforts it offers. "

The philosopher Karl Popper both believed that the school did not fulfill Marx's promise of a better future:

Marx's condemnation against our own society makes sense. For Marx's theory it contains a better future promise. But the theory becomes hollow and irresponsible if this promise is withdrawn, as Adorno and Horkheimer do.

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Habermas solution: critical theory " past and future "

In 2006, Nikolas Kompridis (who conducted a postdoctoral fellowship with JÃÆ'¼rgen Habermas) published a new critique of Habermas's approach to critical theory, calling for dramatic break with the procedural ethic of communicative rationality. He writes:

For all the theoretical ingenuity and its practical implications, Habermas's reformulation of critical theory is engulfed by his own persistent problems... In my view, the depth of this problem shows how wrong Habermas's hope that paradigm turns into linguistic intersubjectivity will make "aimless" the dilemmas of the subject philosophy. Habermas accused Hegel of creating a conception of reason so "extraordinary" that he broke the too good problem of modernity [the need to] convince himself. It seems, however, that Habermas has repeated rather than avoided Hegel's mistakes, creating such a comprehensive theoretical paradigm that in one blow it also solved too well the dilemmas of the subject philosophy and confidence issues modernity.

In addition, he writes that:

The paradigm shift to linguistic intersubjectivity has been accompanied by dramatic changes in critical self-understanding theory. Priority given to the issue of justice and the normative order of society has remodeled the critical theory in the image of liberal justice theory. While this has produced an important contemporary variant of liberal justice theories, quite different to be a challenge to liberal theory, but not enough to maintain sufficient continuity with the past of critical theory, it has greatly undermined the identity of critical theory and inadvertently initiated premature. dissolution.

To prevent the dissolution, Kompridis argued that critical theory had to "rediscover" itself as a "possibility-disclosure" of the company, incorporating Heidegger's controversial insight into world revelation and withdrawing from the sources of normativity he felt was hindered from critical theory by his recent change- recently. paradigm. Calling what Charles Taylor calls the "new department" of reason, with the possible revelation of a role called by the Complex as "reflective disclosure", Kompridis argues that critical theory must embrace its neglected German romantic heritage and once again envisage alternatives to existing social and political condition, "if you want to have a decent future from the past."

Critics of the psychoanalytic category

In an interview with Casey Blake and Christopher Phelps, historian Christopher Lasch criticized the early trend of the Frankfurt School against "automatic" rejecting political criticisms contrary to "psychological" reasons:

The Authoritarian Personality has a tremendous influence on Hofstadter and other liberal intellectuals, because it shows them how to conduct political criticism in the psychiatric category, to make the categories bear the burden of political criticism. This procedure frees them from the hard work of judgment and argumentation. Instead of arguing with an opponent, they simply fired them for psychiatric reasons.

Media and economic criticism

During the 1980s, anti-authoritarian socialists in the United Kingdom and New Zealand criticized the rigid and deterministic view of popular culture propagated in the theories of Frankfurt Capitalist cultural culture, apparently precluding the prefigurative role for social criticism in such works. They argue that the European Commission often contains such cultural criticism. The latest criticism of the Frankfurt School by the libertarian Cato Institute focuses on the claim that culture has grown more sophisticated and diverse as a consequence of free market and the availability of niche cultural texts for niche audience.

Conspiracy theories of Cultural Marxism

"' Cultural Marxism " in modern usage refers to the conspiracy theories that see the Frankfurt School as part of an ongoing movement to take over and destroy Western culture.

The term "cultural Marxism" has an academic use in cultural studies, in which it refers to a form of anti-capitalist cultural criticism that specifically targets the cultural aspects seen as profit-oriented and mass-produced under capitalism. As part of the Frankfurt School's discourse, "cultural Marxism" has generally considered industrialization and mass production of culture by the culture industry to have an overall negative influence on society, an effect that could mislead an audience not to feel more authentic. human values. British theorists such as Richard Hoggart of the Birmingham School developed the notion of the working class "British Cultural Marxism" who objected to "massification" and "drift" away from local culture, a process of Hoggart commercialization seen as activated by tabloid, advertising and industry newspapers American film.

The term remained academic until the late 1990s, when it began to gain currency among paleoconservatives as part of an ongoing cultural war where it argued that the same theorists who analyzed and objected to "massification" and mass control through the commercialization of Culture in fact working in a conspiracy to control and launch their own attacks against Western society, using the 1960s counter-culture, multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness as their method. The conspiracy theory versions of this term are associated with American religious paleoconservatives such as William S. Lind, Pat Buchanan, and Paul Weyrich; but also holds the currency among the right-white nationalist groups, and the neo-reactionary movement.

Weyrich first presented the idea of ​​Cultural Marxism in a 1998 speech to the Conservative Leadership Conference of the Civitas Institute, then repeated this use in his much-syndicated "cultural war". At Weyrich's request, William S. Lind wrote a brief history of the conception of Cultural Marxism for the Free Congress Foundation; in it Lind identifies homosexual presence on television as proof of cultural Marxist control over the mass media and claims that Herbert Marcuse considers the "black, student, feminist, and homosexual" coalition as the forerunner of the cultural revolution. Lind has since published her own portrayal of a fictitious Marxist Culture allusion. Lind and Weyrich's writings on this subject advocate fighting what they consider Cultural Marxism to "vibrant cultural conservatism" consisting of the "retroculture" mode of the past, the return of the rail system as a public transport, and the agrarian culture of the modeled self-sufficiency. after Amish.

In 1999, Lind led a one-hour program called "Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School". Some of Lind's content was later reproduced by James Jaeger in his YouTube movie "MARXISM CULTURE: American Corruption".

Historian Martin Jay commented on this phenomenon by saying that Lind's original documentary:

... Ã, spawned a number of thick textual versions, reproduced on radical right-wing sites. This in turn leads to a row of new videos now available on YouTube, featuring an odd player of fake experts repeating exactly the same line. The message is very simple: all modern American cultural diseases, from feminism, affirmative action, sexual liberation and gay rights to the decay of traditional education and even environmentalism are ultimately caused by the malicious influence of members of the Institute for Social Research. who came to America in the 1930s.

Heidi Beirich also argues that conspiracy theories are used to vilify conservative "botan noires" including "feminists, homosexuals, secular humanists, multiculturalists, sex educators, environmentalists, immigrants and black nationalists."

According to Chip Berlet, who specializes in the study of right-wing movements, the Culture Marxism conspiracy theories found a place in the Tea Party movement of 2009, with contributions published at American Thinker and WorldNetDaily > highlighted by some Tea Party websites.

The Center for Southern Poverty Law has reported that William S. Lind in 2002 gave a speech at the Holocaust denial conference on the topic of Cultural Marxism. In this speech Lind noted that all members of The Frankfurt School were "a man, Jew", but it was reported that Lind claimed no question whether the Holocaust occurred and showed him present in an official capacity for the Free Congress Foundation "to work with various groups on the basis of the issue - issues ".

Although the theory became more widespread in the late 1990s and through the 2000s, the modern iteration of the theory came from the 1992 Michael Minnicino essay "New Dark Age: Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'", published in Fidelio Magazine by the Schiller Institute. The Schiller Institute, an offshoot of the LaRouche movement, further promoted the idea in 1994. Minnicino's article alleged that the Frankfurt School promoted Modernism in art as a form of cultural pessimism and formed a counter-culture of the 1960s (like the British pop band The Beatles) after Wandervogel from the Ascona commune.

Recently, Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik included the term in his document "2083: The Declaration of European Independence", which - together with The Free Congress Foundation Political Accuracy: A Brief History of Ideology - is provided with e-mail to 1,003 addresses about 90 minutes before the 2011 bombing in Oslo in charge of Breivik. William S. Lind's writing segment of Marxism Culture has been found in the Breivik manifesto.

In July 2017, Rich Higgins was removed by US National Security Adviser HR McMaster of the United States National Security Council after the discovery of a seven-page memorandum he had written, depicting a conspiracy theory of plot to destroy Donald Trump's presidency by cultural Marxist, as well as Islamist, globalist , bankers, media, and members of the Republican and Democratic parties.

The philosopher and lecturer of political science JÃÆ'   à ¢ â, "Jamin has declared that" [n] leads to the global dimension of the conspiracy theory of Cultural Marxism, there is an innovative and original dimension, allowing authors to avoid racist discourse and pretend to be defenders of democracy ". Oxford professor and associate Matthew Feldman has traced the terminology back to the pre-war concept of Cultural Bolshevism, placing it as part of a degeneration theory that helped in Hitler's rule. William S. Lind confirms this as the period of his interest, writing that "[Cultural Marxism] is an effort not to return to the 1960s and hippies and peace movements, but back to World War I".

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See also

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References

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Further reading

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External links

• The official website of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt
• "Critical Theory" at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Gerhardt, Christina. "Frankfurt School (Jewish ÃÆ' Â © migrÃÆ'Â © s)." The International Encyclopedia of the Revolution and the Protest. Ness, Immanuel (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 2009. References Blackwell Online.
• "The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory". Encyclopedia of Internet Philosophy .
• The Frankfurt School on the Marxist Internet Archive
• BBC Radio 4 Audio documentary "In our day: Frankfurt School"

Source of the article : Wikipedia