Frankfurt School, 1935 (3): Max Horkheimer on "the problem of truth"

Max Horkheimer(1895-1973)

Max Horkheimer, editor of the Frankfurt School's flagship journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, published two of his own essays in the 1935 numbers of the journal.

In "Bemerkungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie" (Comments on Philosophical Anthropology) 1/1935, he argues against the notion of any fixed theory of "human nature" that denies or minimizes the ability of human societies evolving in a more positive direction, i.e., that leads to what he calls "social pessimism". He warns that a science – he’s referring particularly to anthropology but his observation is more general – can become a "fetish", an abstract body of thought whose practitioners are unconscious of the real foundations of their worldview. He notes that this occurs often with philosophy, but also "to the struggle of skepticism against it."

Here is part of the English-language synopsis published with the article:

... philosophical anthropology attempts to consider the essence of man as permanent and independent of historical change, and thus to impart meaning to individual and social life. In this way it proves its relationship to metaphysics and religion. In contradiction to this, H[orkheimer] indicates the results that might be achieved on the basis of an historical approach. He shows how the attitude of modern man towards contracts has changed in the last decades; how the principle of equality has taken on an entirely different meaning; how the human qualities of sympathy and understanding change their essence and their functions and are being transferred from one social group to another.

Most of the English-language synopses that I've read in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung don’t strike me as being very good. But that one was useful.

Horkheimer’s other essay is "Zur Problem der Wahrheit" (On the Problem of Truth) 3/1935.

With so grand a title, it sounds more like a multi-volume study than an article in a journal. He's actually addressing a somewhat more restricted field of inquiry than the title might imply. He discusses the ways in which modern Western philosophy in its understanding of truth and accuracy in perception has been caught in a conflict between relativism and dogma:

Kants Werk schliesst den Gegensatz der deutschen und englischen Philosophenschulen in sich ein. Die Auflösung der Widersprüche, die es aufweist, die Vermittlung zwischen Kritik und dogmatischem System, zwischen einem mechanistischen Begriff der Wissenschaft und der Lehre von der intelligiblen Freiheit, zwischen dem Glauben an ewige Gebote und einer von der Praxis isolierten Theorie haben in steigendem Mass sein eigenes Denken bis in die letzten Lebensjahre vergeblich beschäftigt und bilden zugleich das Zeugnis seiner Grösse. Bis ans Ende vorgetriebene Analyse, skeptisches Misstrauen gegen Theorie überhaupt auf der einen Seite und Bereitschaft zu naivem Glauben an losgelöste, starre Prinzipien auf der anderen sind ein Kennzeichen des bürgerlichen Geistes, wie er in Kants Philosophie in hochst vollendeter Gestalt erscheint.

[Kant’s work includes within itself the opposition between German and English philosophical schools. The resolution of the contradiction that it presents, the mediation between criticism and a dogmatic system, between a mechanistic concept of science and the teaching of intelligible Freedom, between the belief in eternal commandments and a theory isolated from practice, to an increasing extent occupied his own thought into his last years of life, in vain. And at the same time form the witness of his greatness. Analysis taken to the end, skeptical mistrust toward theory as such on the one side, and on the other, readiness accept naïve beliefs in detached, rigid principles, are symptoms of the bourgeois spirit, as it appears in Kant’s philosophy in the form of its highest achievement.]

In his article, Horkheimer discusses the ways in which that contradiction plays out in the context of the pragmatism of William James (1842-1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952), the phenomenology of Max Scheler (1874-1928), and the religious thought of Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), who he describes as "the most representative religious philosopher" in pre-First World War Germany.

Tags: frankfurt school, max horkheimer