Frankfurt School, 1939-40: Reason and criticism of existing conditions

Hegel

Two essays in the 3/1939 Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (published 1940) complement each other in addressing important aspects of critical theory. One is editor Max Horkheimer's "The Social Function of Philosophy," the other is the Herbert Marcuse's "Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy." The latter is the Introduction to his book Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941).

In this passage, Marcuse explains the role that reason played in Hegel's theory of history, a factor which the Frankfurt School valued in classical German philosophy:

In Hegel's view, the decisive turn which history took with the French Revolution was that man came to rely on his mind, and dared to submit the given reality to the standards of reason. "Nothing is reason that is not the result of thinking." Man has set out to organize reality according to the demands of his free rational thinking instead of simply accommodating his thoughts to the given reality and living according to prevailing empirical values. Man is a thinking being. His reason enables him to recognize his own potentialities and those of his world. He is thus not at the mercy of the facts which surround him, but capable of subjecting them to his reason. If he follows its lead, he arrives at certain concepts which comprehend reality as antagonistic to the actual state of affairs. For example, reason finds that freedom belongs to the essence of man, that his individuality requires a sphere of private property as the medium of his fulfillment, and that all men have an equal right to develop their human faculties. Actually, however, bondage and inequality prevail, most men have no liberty at all and are deprived of their last scrap of property. Consequently the "unreasonable" reality has to be altered until it comes into conformity with reason. In the given case, the existing social order has to be reorganized, absolutism and the remainders of feudalism have to be abolished, free competition has to be established, everyone has to be made equal before the law, and so on. [my emphasis]

Marcuse goes on to explain that, in practice, Hegel's came to regard the Prussian Restoration regime in the period after the Congress of Vienna as the most appropriate form of government for the moment, showing the conservative side of his philosophy. As Horkheimer puts it in his essay:

Hegel, the philosopher to whom we are most indebted in many respects, was so far removed from any querulous repudiation of specific conditions, that the King of Prussia called him to Berlin to inculcate the students with the proper loyalty and to immunize them against political opposition. Hegel did his best in that direction, and declared the Prussian state to be the embodiment of the divine Idea on earth.

Max Horkheimer

But the fundamental dialectical perspective of Hegel's thought always implied the emergence of new demands that required adjustments in existing conditions to meet the demands of reason whose ultimate goal is freedom. The Left Hegelians developed Hegelian thought in the years after his death along the lines framed in that quotation from Marcuse. As Horkheimer puts it:

The fact that Hegel thus had to train his students in theoretical thought, had highly equivocal consequences for the Prussian state. In the long run, Hegel’s work did more serious harm to that reactionary institution than all the use the latter could derive from his formal glorification. Reason is a poor ally of reaction. A little less than ten years after Hegel’s death (his [university] chair remained unoccupied that long), the King appointed a successor to fight the "dragon's teeth of Hegelian pantheism," and the "arrogance and fanaticism of his school."

Horkheimer discusses rationalism with a larger irrationality in a passage that was marked by his situation at the time, living in exile in the United States and the Second World War underway and the outcome far from certain:

We are fortunate that we live in a country [the US] which has done away with national boundaries and war situations over half a continent. But in Europe, while the means of communication became more rapid and complete, while distances decreased, while the habits of life became more and more alike, tariff walls grew higher and higher, nations feverishly build up armaments, and both foreign relations and internal political conditions approached and eventually arrived at a state of war. The antagonistic situation asserts itself in other parts of the world, too, and who knows whether, and for how long, the remainder of the world will be able to protect itself against the consequences in all their intensity. Rationalism in details can readily go with a general irrationalism. Actions of individual, correctly regarded as reasonable and useful in daily life, may spell waste and even destruction for society. That is why in periods like ours, we must remember that the best will to create something useful may result in its opposite, simply because it is blind to what lies beyond the limits of its scientific specialty or profession, because it focuses on what is nearest at hand and misconstrues its true nature, for the latter can be revealed only in the larger context. In the New Testament, "They know not what they do" refers only to evildoers. If these words are not to apply to all mankind, thought must be not merely confined within the special sciences and to the practical learning of the professions, thought which investigates the material and intellectual presuppositions that are usually taken for granted, thought which impregnates with human purpose those relationships of daily life that are almost blindly created and maintained. [my emphasis]

These two quotations taken together provide a good brief overview of several recurring themes in Frankfurt School thought: classical German philosophy as a continuing source and reference point; the insistence of the use of reason as a criteria social action; a cautious appreciation of religion as a source of insights; a rejection of positivism as a limiting and distorting approach to science; a focus on the contradictions between rationality in individual spheres of life and the irrational aspects of mass society in capitalism (euphemistically and emptily called "the market economy" today).

As Horkheimer puts it, "The real social function of philosophy lies in its criticism of what is prevalent." This is a matter for him of focusing people’s attention on "the relationship between [a person's] activities and what is achieved thereby, between his everyday projects and the great ideas which he acknowledges." If it is fulfilling that role, "Philosophy is inconvenient, obstinate, and with all that, of no immediate use – in fact it is a source of annoyance."

Horkheimer's essay also has an interesting short discussion of the concept of "ideology." In classical Marxist theory, "ideology" was held to be false consciousness, an intellectual superstructure based on the interest of a group or class, like the capitalist class, whose class interest was not in the long run identical with the interests of society of the whole, and therefore an inadequate, erroneous view of reality. In the Marx'’s concept, the interest of the working class was the only one whose class interest was ultimately the interest of all of society and even all of humanity. Therefore, a correct Marxist understanding of the world was true consciousness, accurate science, and therefore not "ideology." It had traditionally been used in the context of political theory.

In the usage of Karl Mannheim in Ideology and Utopia (1929), all systems of belief or patterns of thinking were regarded as ideologies because they are from particular interests. While Horkheimer admits that there is "no doubt ... some truth in this attitude," he insists that philosophy cannot just be regarded in today’s society as "merely the expression of a specific social situation," a kind of programmatic statement of the desires of a certain group. Instead, its function is to be the kind of creative annoyance described above.

Horkheimer had addressed Karl Mannheim's concept of ideology at length in "Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff?" Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung [Grünberg Archiv] 1930. There he critiques the "comforting idealistic conviction" of Mannheim's broader philosophical outlook out of which his particular notion of ideology is taken.

Tags: frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, hegel, herbert marcuse, max horkheimer