Kant's revenge?

Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that human beings could never fully know the objects we perceive outside ourselves. The "thing-in-itself" of the object would be forever unknown to human cognition.

Immanuel Kant: still out of space and time?

As Max Horkheimer and Theordor Adorno put in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/1969), "Kant combined the doctrine of thought's restlessly toilsome progress toward infinity with insistence on its insufficiency and eternal limitation." (Edmund Jephcott translation, 2002)

A key limitation of the ego's ability to perceive objects has to do with the categories that the human mind imposes on its perceptions. For Kant, time and space were both such qualities. Subjective qualities, in other words, rather than objective qualities of external reality.

Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity explained that spacetime was a quality of the universe itself. Quantum physics revealed some aspects of subatomic reality that weren't fully compatible with Einstein's theories. But Einstein's theories are still "operative." They still explain observed reality, if not all its quantum features.

As Horkheimer and Adorno argue, science has set itself the task of infinite mastery of external nature. Whatever caution against hubris Kant's conception contained, the science of the 19th and 20th centuries developed in the direction of seeking total knowledge for asserting total dominance over nature:

Both subject and object are nullified. The abstract self, which alone confers the legal right to record and systematize, is confronted by nothing bur abstract material, which has no other property than to be the substrate of that right. The equation of mind and world is finally resolved, but only in the sense that both sides cancel out. The reduction of thought to a mathematical appararus condemns the world to be its own measure. What appears as the triumph of subjectivity, the subjection of all existing things to logical formalism, is bought with the obedient subordination of reason to what is immediately at hand.

This approach, they argue, is focused on the "abstract spacial-temporal relationships" of objects "by which they can then be seized" by human perception and hands. It reduces knowledge to "mere perception, classification, and calculation."

But old Kant may not be out of the game yet. For one thing, we know much more today about the concrete physical mechanisms in human perception, which take us far from David Hume's view of the ego being basically the passive recipient of raw empirical perceptions from the outside, a view that heavily influenced Kant. Hegel wrote that Hume's historical notability was the fact that "Kant really took the starting point of his philosophy" from Hume. (Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie II.1.C.2.A.2, 1908, my translation) Where Hume recognized that the ego formed empirical impressions into concepts, he believed that such concepts directly reflected the empirical data, although in a weaker form. But the complexity of the physical mediations between the empirical phenomenon and the formation of a human concept of them could be an argument on the side of the unknowability of the thing-in-itself.

The human reception of information isn't mediated only by concepts. Those impressions take a physical path to the brain for such concepts to be formed. Charles Liberman explains the path of sonic perceptions to the brain in Hidden Hearing Loss Scientific American 313:2 Aug 2015:

Hearing begins as the outer ear funnels sound waves through the ear canal to the eardrum, which vibrates and sets the bones of the middle ear in motion. The resulting vibrations then make their way to the inner ear’s fluid-filled tube, the cochlea — the location of hair cells that occupy a spiraling strip of tissue called the organ of Corti. These cells get their name from hairlike protrusions known as stereocilia that extend in bundles from one end of the cells. Hair cells most sensitive to low frequencies lie at one end of the cochlear spiral, and those most sensitive to high frequencies lie at the other end. As sound waves bend the “hairs,” these cells convert vibrations to chemical signals, emitting a neurotransmitter molecule — glutamate — at the other end, where the hair cells form synapses with the fibers of the auditory nerve.

At the synapse, the glutamate released from a hair cell crosses a narrow cleft to bind to receptors on the end, or terminal, of an auditory nerve fiber. Each terminal is at one end of a nerve cell that extends a long fiber, an axon, to its other end in the brain stem. Glutamate bound to nerve fibers triggers an electrical signal that travels the entire length of the auditory nerve to the brain stem. From there the signals move through a series of parallel neural circuits that traverse various regions — from the brain stem to the midbrain and thalamus—and finish their journey at the auditory cortex. Together this complex circuitry analyzes and organizes our acoustic environment into a set of recognizable sounds, whether it be a familiar melody or the wail of a siren.

So, between raw empirical perception and a concept in the mind, the sound signal has to go through the outer ear, the ear canal, the eardrum, the middle ear's bones, the coclea and its Corti organ, and the chemical signals created by the coclea's hairs that form glutamate that stimulate the synapses that transmit the signal to the auditory nerve, which in turn transmits it to the brain, where the brain stem, midbrain, thalmus and auditory cortex using various chemical processes to allow it to turn it into a concept. This doesn't prove the unknowability of Kant's thing-in-itself. But it is a reminder of the physical components of human perception.

Kant's concepts of space and time were transcendental categories of human consciousness. The physical mechanisms of sensual cognition theoretically don't touch them at all.

But, on Kant's side, there is the possibility that physics could turn out to require the rejection of time as an objective condition. Philosopher Craig Callender writes (Is Time an Illusion? Scientific American 302:6 June 2010):

The equations of physics do not tell us which events are occurring right now — they are like a map without the “you are here” symbol. The present moment does not exist in them, and therefore neither does the flow of time. Additionally, Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity suggest not only that there is no single special present but also that all moments are equally real ... Fundamentally, the future is no more open than the past. [my emphasis]

Quantum mechanics in seeking to describe quantum gravity has produced a real puzzle for physics:

Canonical quantum gravity emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, when physicists rewrote Einstein’s equations for gravity in the same form as the equations for electromagnetism, the idea being that the same techniques used to develop a quantum theory of electromagnetism could then be applied to gravity as well. When physicists John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt attempted this procedure in the late 1960s, they arrived at a very strange result. The equation (dubbed the Wheeler-DeWitt equation) utterly lacked a time variable. The symbol t denoting time had simply vanished. [my emphasis in bold]

Kant would presumably be pleased to hear that!

Physicists as yet haven't yet generally discarded the concept of time. But the problem remains unsolved. Still, Callender writes, "Physicists are able to compactly summarize the workings of the universe in terms of physical laws that play out in time. But this convenient fact should not trick us into thinking that time is a fundamental part of the world’s furniture." For more on this particular topic, see: Carlo Rovelli, Forget Time FQXi Community 08/25/2008.

Somewhere in the transcendental Beyond, Kant is chuckling at us.

(By the way, in explaining the above, Callender mentions another hitch in understanding the physics of time: "Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann [1844-1906] ... reasoned that, because Newton’s laws work equally well going forward or backward in time, time has no built-in arrow." Physics is awesome.)

But surely our scientists can reassure us on the existence of space? They must have ruled out the possibility of Kant having the last laugh on that one, right? Well, maybe not.

George Musser removes that assurance from us in "Where Is Here?" Scientific American 313:5 Nov 2015. Einstein, it turns out, caused trouble there, too:

Although the shape shiftiness of spacetime explains away the kind of nonlocality that Newton talked about, it produces a new variety. It comes out of relativity theory's core innovation: that there's no such thing as a place outside spacetime, no external or absolute standard to judge it by. This seemingly self-evident proposition has remarkable consequences. It means that spacetime not only warps but also loses many of the qualities we associate with it, including the ability to define locations. ...

The ambiguity of localized measurements is a form of nonlocality. To begin with, quantities such as energy can't be situated in any specific place, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a specific place. You can no sooner pin down a position than you can plant a flag on the sea. Points in space are indistinguishable and interchangeable. Because they lack any differentiating attributes, whatever the world consists of must not reside at points; space is unable to support any localized structure. Gravitational quantities must instead be holistic properties of spacetime in its entirety. [my emphasis]

Yeah, it looks like Kant is still in the game on space and time.

Claus Offe on Angela Merkel and the euro crisis

Joachim Zinsen interviewed leading German political scientist Claus Offe: Claus Offe ist überzeugt: Die Krise der Euro-Zone dauert an Aachener Nachrichten 14.05.2014. Offe comments on how Merkel's austerity politics and her general arrogance as the de facto boss of the eurozone has affected Germany's image in Europe:

Was sollte Angela Merkel zu einer Änderung ihres bisherigen Kurses veranlassen? Innenpolitisch steht sie doch gerade auch wegen ihrer harten Sparvorgaben für andere Länder hervorragend da.

Offe: Gleichzeitig aber sind das Ansehen und die Reputation der deutschen Politik im Ausland im Keller. Ungefähr vier Fünftel der Italiener und Franzosen meinen, dass der deutsche Einfluss – konkret: der von „Madame Non“ – in Europa zu groß ist. Bundespräsident Joachim Gauck hat dazu sinngemäß gesagt: „Ich hasse es, gehasst zu werden“.

[What would induce Angela Merkel to a change of her course up until now? In internal politics, she is doing extremely well precisely because of her harsh austerity policies for other countries.

Offe: But at the same time, respect for and the reputation of German policy internationally is in the cellar. Around four-fifths of Italians and the French think that German influence - concretely: that of "Madame Non" {Merkel} - in Europe is too great. Federal President Joachim Gauck once said sensibly: "I hate to be hated."]

Offe works in the "critical theory" tradition of the Frankfurt School. I believe he's considered part of the "third generation" Frankfurt School.

Offe also observes, "Angela Merkel jedenfalls hat mit der zunehmenden Armut in vielen Euro-Ländern offenbar kein Problem" ("Angela Merkel in any case clearly has no problem with the growing poverty in many euro countries").

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, claus offe, critical theory, eu, euro, european union, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule

Slavoj Žižek is a clown

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek is one of the odder figures who counts as a "public intellectual" these days. He is regarded as an important contemporary philosopher. And philosophy is an academic field where important accomplishments are made by people who may have eccentricities.

But this guy is also considered a major contemporary practicitioner of political theory and a leftwing, even Marxist political philosopher. Does this sound like any kind of left-leaning person to you?

In this video, Zizek On Racism YouTube 02/12/2011 he argues that that racist and nationalistic dirty jokes are good things and can be used in "progressive racism." He sneers at "political correctness" in Santa Cruz, in terms that Rush Limbaugh could pretty much use with minor changes. He uses as an example of the virtue of such "jokes"

In this clip, he explains that, well, that The Sound of Music is racist against Germans because it portrays Germans as Jews modeled on anti-Semitic stereotypes. Yes, he seriously argues that. Slavoj Žižek explains why the Sound of Music is racist YouTube date 11/25/2007:

Whatever the quality of his philosophical work, in his role as a public intellectual, he strikes me more and more as a clown. A rightwing clown.

Johann Hari came to a similar conclusion in his article, Pseud's corner New Statesman 04/30/2007.

In the opening scenes of Zizek!, a new feature-length documentary, it is not hard to see why they fall for him. Zizek looks like an immense human Droopy Dawg. He talks with such babbling, neurotic force about everything from quantum physics and Hegel to Meg Ryan that, for a moment, he is hypnotic. Leading the film-makers through his chaotic transcontinental life, he jabbers to them from his bed and even takes them to a long staircase where he fantasises about killing himself - before posing as a splattered corpse on the concrete floor beneath.

As the film progresses, however, Zizek does more than symbolically enact his own death; he commits intellectual suicide, all but admitting that his "philosophy" is a slew of nonsense. If the director, Astra Taylor, intended to make a fawning fan letter - as her cameos in the film suggest - she has failed. If she intended to shred Zizek's credibility, she has succeeded stunningly.

Tags: critical theory, racism, slavoj žižek

A strange interview with philosopher Slavoj Žižek

I've had occasion a couple of times recently to post on Slavoj Žižek, a Marxist and critical theorist, in connection with Occupy Wall Street. OWS may be a big boost to the Slavoj Žižek, because he's getting a level of public attention that he probably never has before. This Aljazeera English interview is an example. I'm getting the impression that Žižek may be better at diagnosing fundamental social problems than he is about grasping real existing political movements.

Žižek saw in the London riots of this summer some like feral violence. He discusses it a bit at the start of this interview. He wrote about it more extensively in Shoplifters of the World Unite London Review of Books 08/19/2011.

Talk to Al Jazeera - Slavoj Zizek YouTube date 10/29/2011:



Žižek says beginning around 2:00 that he considers Communism to be a bigger "ethical catastrophe" than fascism, in which he presumably includes Nazi Germany. (In poli sci and history, there's substantive disagreement whether German National Socialism/Nazism represents a variant of fascism or was its own distinct form of far-right dictatorship.) Here's his reasoning:

Let's face it, 20th century Communism was, precisely because it started with such hopes and ended in a nightmare, was maybe the greatest catastrophe, ethical catastrophe, I'm almost tempted to say, in the history of humanity. More than fascism.

You know why? Because, let's be very simple. In fascism, we have bad guys who said, our program is to do this and this bad things, no?, And - what a surprise - they took power, they did bad things, no?. In Communism, you have authentic tragedy. Which is why you have dissidents, you have always inner struggles. So, but nonetheless, it is over.

Now, one could argue that this comes from the perspective of a person who grew up and formed his perspective in a then-Communist country (Yugoslavia) and is trying to argue that the official ideologies of those countries contained important elements that were true, but not realized in "real existing socialism", as those regimes were known to refer to themselves.

Still, Nazi Germany was oriented toward war from the time Hitler took power until V-E Day. It plunged Europe into the most destructive, deadliest war in all history. The Communist governments did not do that. Nor did any Communist governments undertake the physical extermination of an entire ethnic group as we saw with Nazi Germany and the Jews, in Rwanda, and arguably with the dying Ottoman Empire and the Armenians.

Nazi ideology was explicitly bad in the sense that Žižek argues. But I wouldn't endorse his view that somehow a betrayal of the stated ideals of noble ideals of some sort is ethically more catastrophic than the fact of Nazi Germany having launched the deadliest war in all of history, of which the Holocaust was very much a part. It may suit Žižek's stance of being part of a grand historical tragedy from the side of the East European Communist regimes. But as an ethical argument, it just doesn't wash.

Beginning around 3:40, he approvingly quotes (gulp!), Ayn Rand. No, I'm not kidding. And it gets even more problematic from there. For me, this whole interview was like nails on a blackboard. At the end, he even seems to think that the American Tea Party movement is a progressive workers' movement. (?!)

Žižek is a respected philosopher in the field of critical theory, an area on which I've posted many times. For reasons I discuss more below, critical theory is generally focused on diagnosing large problems, which is one reason it played an important role in sociology, notably with the 1940s studies on authoritarianism of which The Authoritarian Personality is the most famous. It has not focused so much on describing the shape of a fundamental alternative to capitalism and the "modernity" associated with it. Most of them have understood themselves as socialists. But the defining experience for critical theory - which originally meant the people associated with the Social Social Research, aka the Frankfurt School in the 1930s - was European fascism, especially the experience of Nazi Germany. That left them with a partisan appreciation of civil liberties and the fundamentals of representative democracy, which expressed itself in a radical-democratic outlook that didn't approve the forms of government in the Communist world but also didn't reject Marxist perspectives wholesale. It would be fair to say as a generalization that they built on the radical-democratic element in historical Marxism, which made them not partisans of the Communist movements but also highly critical of the post-First World War course of Social Democracy.

Žižek in this interview discusses violence in the sense of the Sorelian utopian general strike. For history buffs or philosophy geeks who happen to be familiar with that concept, it makes some sense. But for the average news consumers, even very well-informed ones, are likely to be left scratching their heads over the way he puts it.

Critical theory continues the analysis of the problems and opportunities of modernity that emerged from the classical German philosophy of the late 18th and early 19th century, of which Kant and Hegel are the most significant. Broadly speaking, critical theory draws from that tradition as well as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freudian psychoanalysis, Husserl's phenomenology, and existentialism. Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse actually defined the term "critical theory" to describe their general approach, though the term was also used earlier to refer to Kantian thought.

Žižek in this interview shows the pitfalls of this viewpoint when processing contemporary political events. He brings up some interesting empirical observations that alerted me to some things to look for, e.g., describing a mass demonstration in Istanbul for gay rights that, he says, did not attract any attempts at violence by onlookers. But he seems almost sensationalist at times in trying to make people think with provocative statements. But in terms of giving us a sense of social and political dynamics, it's pretty deficient.

The catchiest phrase I noticed in the interview comes just after 2:50: "The marriage between democracy and capitalism is over."

He makes it specifically in reference to China. But there is a conflict between capitalism and democracy in that capitalist economies, left to their preferred course, will tend to concentrate wealth and power in a small number of people, as we see now in the 1% society that OWS is highlighting. Democracy gives the public the power to offset, mitigate and potentially end the disproportionate power of the 1% over the rest of society. Capitalism will always produce types like the Koch brother billionaires who want to buy out the political system and have it serve solely the perceived self-interests of the 1%. A healthy democracy has to be able to counteract that disproportionate economic power.

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, occupy wall street, slavoj žižek

Frankfurt School, 1939-40: Franz Neumann on natural law

Political scientist Franz Neumann, whose Behemoth. Struktur und Praxis des Nationalsozialismus 1933–1944 (first published in English in 1942 as Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism and in an expanded English edition in 1944), is still considered a classic on the Nazi regime, wrote on "Types of Natural Law" in Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 3/1939 (1940).

(The Frankfurt School's flagship journal, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, began appearing with its 3/1939 issue under the English title Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. Due to the German invasion of France, this issue could not be published in Paris as had preceding issues, and was actually published in New York in 1940.)

During the Second World War, Neumann, a Jewish emigrant from Nazi Germany, worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Neumann was the dissertation advisor to Raul Hilberg on the pioneering study that later became Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews, the first book-length study of the Holocaust published.

Neumann's essay surveys the history of Natural Law theory in modern times. As he explains early in the essay, Hegel criticized Natural Law in its "empirical" forms with the philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), and in it "critical" forms with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) Fichte. Hegel, in Neumann's summary, "discloses the dogmatic and arbitrary character of the traditional Natural Law doctrines." But he also notes:

But in every Natural Law doctrine there is one element which Hegel, incorporating it in his Philosophy of Right, recognizes as progressive, as the emanation of reason possessing true universality. We must, therefore, be careful not to confuse the many criticisms of Natural Law. If Hume rejects it because there can be no rational justice, if George Sorel denounces it because of its arbitrariness, or if counter-revolutionists attack it because it contains revolutionary elements, they attack it because they deny the possibility of a rational theory of justice. That is quite different from a theory of law which (like Hegel's) asserts the possibility of constructing a rational theory of right and justice but which merely denies that the historic forms of Natural Law have fulfilled this possibility.

And with that, Neumann is pointing to a key aspect in theories of Natural Law (he capitalizes the letters) important for the Frankfurt School's "critical theory" perspective:

If every doctrine of Natural Law is based upon men as an individual [sic],either autonomous or subject to the lawfulness of external nature, then man must be considered as a rational individual. That in turn implies the recognition of the essential equality of human beings. And this again leads to the universality of the Natural Law doctrine which is the central view common to all doctrines. It also follows that no theory of Natural Law can accept facts as they are and because they are. Natural Law doctrines are thus fundamentally opposed to traditionalism and historicism. Each human institution is open to critical reason, none is exempt from it. Finally, Natural Law doctrines cannot be reconciled with anti-rational doctrines, such as Vitalism, Universalism or the theory of Charismatic Leadership. If Life is an original datum, irreducible and not open to critical examination; if the Whole stands categorically before the individual; if obedience is owed because a leader is endowed with superhuman, God-like qualities; then reason is excluded. It is true that attempts have been and will be made to reconcile anti-rational political theories with Natural Law. Such attempts appear to be meaningless. The protagonists of anti-rationalism [he mention Pareto in particular here] have themselves acknowledged the incompatibility of their position with Natural Law doctrines, whatever form they may take. [my emphasis]

Neumann was coming from a Marxist/socialist viewpoint that considered philosophical liberalism insufficient. But the work of the Frankfurt School was deeply influenced by the experiences of it practitioners with the Third Reich. And they gave close attention to the ways that fascism and National Socialist (Nazi) ideology rejected liberalism wholesale, both in its parliamentary and theoretical forms. There were parts of classical liberalism which Neumann, Herbert Marcuse and others of the Frankfurt School defended and which formed a central part of their own perspectives.

Here, the insistence on reason as a measure of the validity of political, philosophical and scientific claims is the one stressed by Neumann. He doesn't embrace the concept of Natural Law completely. As he warns, "The doctrine of natural rights may very well be used for entirely reactionary aims, namely for the sabotage of democratic processes. The insistence upon the primacy of a liberal as compared with a democratic Natural Law is often the first stop of a counter-revolution." But he doesn"t want to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. "But though reactionary, even this perverted doctrine of Natural rights does at least contain elements of a rational theory of law." And, "The democratic theory of Natural Law is ... on the whole, a truer one than any other since it provides for the rational justification of the State."

Neumann also summarizes it this way:

Although the absolutistic theories of Natural Law sacrifice human rights to the need for establishing a central coercive authority, they are predominantly rational because they base the authority upon the consent of man. They, too, must therefore recognize the essential and indestructible rationality and equality of man. [my emphasis]

Thomism provided theological justification for medieval feudal rule and is, in Neumann's words, the "representative conservative doctrine." Thomas Aquinas recognized Natural Law (lex naturalis). The thomistic concept of Natural Law included obligations for the rulers and therefore implicitly provided a basis for the rejection of illegitimate rule. But, in practice, Aquinas and his followers could pretty much accept the entire structure of feudal practice, and even slavery, as being compatible with their concept of the lex naturalis.

Neumann writes that the absolutist theories of the English Tudor and Stuart claims against which Thomas Hobbes argued rejected Natural Law as the basis of the King's authority in favor a personalist doctrine. He quotes William Tyndale expressing this Tudor perspective: "The King is, in this world, without law, and may at his lust do right or wrong, and shall give accounts but to God only."

In the United States today, we know that theory in the very similar form of Dick Cheney's Unitary Executive Doctrine. For Cheney, it's the American President instead of the King. And the Cheney Doctrine doesn’t figure God, conscience or morality into the mix at all.

Neumann explains that John Calvin (Jean Cauvin;1509-1564) rejected the doctrine of Natural Law explicitly. To Calvin, Natural Law implied an authority not providentially given by God and therefore had no part in his theology. Calvin did recognize a right of resistance to unjust authority. But its scope and meaning are unclear. Neumann notes that John Knox may or may not have followed Calvin’s theological doctrines "in attacking his Catholic queen." But if Knox is to be seen as having acted within Calvin's theological system, it would be in the form of a:

... "saviour of his people," the latter concept playing a decisive rôle in Calvin’s system. The stress which has always been laid on the right of resistance [in Calvin] has tended to over shadow another means of overthrowing established government outside the framework of the constitution. Calvin maintained that God may send the people a providential saviour. He may appoint one of his servants and send him out to punish an unjust ruler and deliver the people from oppression. It is again characteristic that the deliverance of man from despotic rule is entrusted to a charismatic leader. The oppressed themselves are never allowed to revolt [in Calvin’s theology]. The only freedom left to the oppressed is to obey either their ruler or their saviour. The anti-rational and anti-Natural Law is thus apparent not only in Calvin’s doctrine of authoritarian rulership but equally in his doctrine of revolution. [my emphasis]

In Neumann’s historical account, Natural Law no longer formed an adequate basis for claiming the legitimacy of royal authority in the 16th century and following with the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion. Thomas Hobbes introduced an authoritarian version of the Social Contract theory of the state:

In spite of its absolutistic character, Hobbes’ theory is, however, at its core democratic. The democratic starting point is clearly expressed by Hobbes himself. The "people rule in all governments," because every government, when first established, was necessarily a democracy. The democratic kernel and the inherent revolutionary dynamics were clearly perceived by the Court and rejected by the ruling classes, who were afraid and ashamed of that outspoken philosopher whose materialism allowed no veiling ideology. "I never read a book which contained so much sedition, treason and impiety" exclaimed Charles II.

Neumann points to a number of Natural Law theories that are revolutionary on their face, but served more in practice as material for demagogues, including the Albingensian heresy, William Ockham’s defense of King Ludwig of Bavaria and those of the "Catholic monarchomachs Jean Boucher and Guillaume Rose."

The counterrevolutionary theorists of the late 18th and 19th centuries rejected Natural Law completely. He briefly discusses the cases of Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald (1754-1840), Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853) and Friedrich Julius Stahl (1830-1854). He quotes Stahl, "Natural Law from Grotius to Kant is the scientific foundation of revolution." And for Stahl, that was the opposite of a good thing. Donoso Cortés argued that democracy would produce a "gigantic, colossal, universal, and immense tyrant." "For de Maistre and Bonald," writes Neumann, "Natural Law and social contract theories represented everything which was execrable in this world. They were responsible for the French revolution and they ran counter to the very principles upon which the world rests and must continue to rest."

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, franz neumann

Frankfurt School, 1939-40: Adorno on Kierkegaard

Theodor Adorno’s essay "On Kierkegaard’s Doctrine of Love" appeared in English in the 3/1939 number of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Due to the German invasion of France this issue could not be published in Paris as had preceding issues. It was actually published in New York in 1940 under the English title Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. Adorno first presented it, in English, at a conference in New York on February 23, 1940. A German version of Adorno's essay, "Kierkegaards Lehre von der Liebe," appeared in the 3/1951 number of the Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte. The German essay also appears in the second volume of Adorno’s Gesammelte Schriften (1979).

Søren Kierkegaard, circa 1840

Adorno had written about Kierkegaard for his doctoral dissertation, Kierkegaard. Konstruction des Ästhetischen, originally published as a book in early 1993. That work is also included in the Gesammelte Schriften Bd. 2, along with at 1963 essay, "Kierkegaard noch einmal" ("Kierkegaard Once Again"). A 1966 publisher's note in the Gesammelte Schriften edition notes of the 1933 book that it was "overshadowed from the beginning by political troubles." The 1963 essay looks at Kierkegaard's influence on philosophy and theology, calls his arguments against Hegel's dialectic a form of the "unhappy consciousness" Hegel discusses in his Phenomenology of Spirit, and comments on on Kierkegaard’s application of the "power of powerlessness" in his attacks on the established Protestant Church in Denmark in his day.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–55) was an eccentric Danish theologian who is mainly remembered for having provided some of the conceptual background for existentialist philosophy. His religious perspective is often called "existential theology" and is known for his concept of the Leap of Faith. Kierkegaard is credited for the concept "existentialism." He had a great influence on Christian theology and the existential philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.

Adorno in his 1940 paper seems to have been reaching hard to find progressive elements in Kierkegaard's very conservative general attitude. This is a tricky business. Because although Kierkegaard had a sharp critical eye for problems in the developing mass society of 19th century European capitalism, his criticisms often stemmed from a retrograde perspective based in the mystical/pietistic version of the Christian faith in which he was raised. For example, his opposed marriage and the existing system of family, a view very much connected with his mysticism. But his critical perspectives on the family didn't stem from a perspective like Robert Owen's or Charles Fourier's. Kierkegaard was very much opposed to women's rights. And that was one overtly political issue in which he took an interest.

The most intriguing part of Adorno’s essay on love is his discussion of Kierkegaard's thoughts on love for those who have died, which he elaborated in a sermon called, "Wie wir in Liebe Verstorbener gedenken" ("How We Think of Love for The Dead") Adorno quotes him as saying (all quotes here from this essay come from the 1940 English version):

Truly, if you thoroughly wish to ascertain, how much love is in you or in another person: watch only the behavior to a dead one… For the dead man is cunning. He has really drawn himself totally out of any entanglements. He has not the slightest influence which could aid or hinder his opposite neighbor, the loving one ... That we think lovingly of those who passed away is a deed of truly unselfish love.

Adorno points out the obvious limitation of this, because one’s love for the dead is not living, reciprocal relationship. It could be seen as a love that is essentially abstract. Or, to use Adorno terminology, reified and fetishized. On the other hand, love for the departed is a very real thing, a real part of life and of individual experience and personality. Adorno writes of love for the dead:

... it is love absolutely void of any barter, of any "requital," and, therefore, the only unmutilated love permitted by our society. The paradox that the only true love is love for the dead is the perfect expression of our situation.

Adorno explains, "The relation to the dead is characterized as one free of aims," and therefore one that is beyond the dictates of the economic marketplace.

But this is a very unsatisfying way of pulling a social-critical conclusion out of an interesting insight of Kierkegaard's. Yes, love for the dead is love for one who cannot reciprocate, and is insofar unselfish. Someone somewhere has probably done a critical interpretation of William Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" in light of Kierkegaard's theory of love for the dead. Although I’m guessing Kierkegaards wasn't exactly thinking of the topic in that way.

Yet it's also obvious that there are ego interests involved with the love of the departed, as well, from prestige considerations to material inheritance to complying with the standards of one's community for mourning. The sentimentalizing of deaths in war can certainly have a selfish side, i.e., he died instead of me.

Love for the dead may hold up a revealing mirror to the limits society puts on love among the living. And such critical perspectives are still urgently needed. But our understanding of death is heavily conditioned by the societies in which we live. And while love for the departed is a special case that sheds light on other relationships of love, it's not at all clear that such love is particularly free of egoistic elements or chosen more freely than other types of love.

He connects Kierkegaard's concept of love for the dead with this observation from Max Horkheimer, who is identified in the German version by name but in the English version (in a journal edited by Horkheimer), he is called only "a secular philosopher of our own time":

On the death bed, when death is certain, the rich and the poor are alike in many regards. For with death a man loses his ‘relationships’: he becomes nothing. The proudest kings of France had to have this experience. The enlightened and humane physician who tries to help the lonely dying man in the hour of his last ordeal, not for the sake of economic or technical interest but out of pity – this physician represents the citizens of a future society. His situation is the present image of a true humanity.

But for Kierkegaard, the dying person does not become "nothing." The Christian in good standing has a share in eternal life with God. To Kierkegaard, in a quote Adorno goes on to give, death involves a kind of joke, "the roguishness to resurrection."

In most of this essay, Adorno is actually highly critical of Kierkegaard's ideas on love as expressed in his book Works of Love (1847), of which the sermon on love of the dead is part. The core of his criticism is that Kierkegaard takes the Christian concept of love for one’s neighbor and puts it on such a very abstract basis that it makes love into something unsubstantial, love without a real object. Adorno sees Kierkegaard’s concept of a Christian duty to love others as making love valid only as a "'breaking down' of nature." Adorno connects this with Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the "pure inwardness" of the individual's ego and his mystical outlook with its ascetic tendency. By making love into a duty, "The creo quia absurdum [I believe because it is absurd] is translated into the amo quia absurdum [I love because it is absurd]."

He gives credit to Kierkegaard for perceiving that the society of his time the concept of "neighbor" had become much more transitory than it had been for most people for most of history. "The neighbor no longer exists," as Adorno puts it, in contrast to the situation in the Gospels: "The neighbor of the Gospels implies fishermen and peasants, herdsmen and publicans, people whom one knows and who have their established locus in a life of simple production which can be realized adequately by immediate experience."

But he argues that Kierkegaard's solution to the problem presented by this radical change in the nature of "neighbor" is to make it so abstract as to deprive it of all real-world meaning. He writes of Kierkegaard's discourse on mercifulness:

He modifies, as it were, biblical parables, in order to make them fit present reality. He tells the story of the Samaritan with the alteration that the Samaritan is incapable of saving the unfortunate man. Or he assumes that the sacrifice of the poor widow, which is supposed to be worth more than that of the rich, has been stolen without her being aware of it. Of course he maintains that her behavior is still that of true love. I should like to emphasize the configuration of the motives at hand. Pure inwardness is made the only criterion of actions at the very moment at which the world no longer permits an immediate realization of love. Kierkegaard is unaware of the demonic consequence that his insistence on inwardness actually leaves the world to the devil.

Kierkegaard makes love of the neighbor into a mystical abstraction, not related it real social conditions. The Biblical teaching of the equality of the believers and of humanity can and has been used to encourage activism and change. Kierkegaard uses it as a substitute. Freedom and equality, like neighborly love, become inner qualities whose violation and denial in the real world ceases to be a special problem for the Christian believer.

But Adorno finds that Kierkegaard's view of historical development as de-humanization, one he shared with the Left Hegelians, gave him the ability to describe some of the effects of that process with real insight:

The thesis underlying the present study, the thesis which I should like to put forward for discussion, may be expressed as follows: Kierkegaard’s misanthropy, the paradoxical callousness of his doctrine of love enables him, like few other writers, to perceive decisive character features of the typical individual of modern society. Even if one goes so far as to admit that Kierkegaard’s love is actually demonic hatred, one may well imagine certain situations where hatred contains more of love than the latter's immediate manifestations. All Kierkegaard’s gloomy motives have good critical sense as soon as they are interpreted in terms of social critique. Many of his positive assertions gain the concrete significance they otherwise lack as soon as one translates them into concepts of a right society.

... Kierkegaard regards the criticism of progress and civilization: as the criticism of the reification of man. He belongs to the very few thinkers of his epoch (apart from him I know only Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire) who were aware of the truly chthonian changes undergone by men, as it were, anthropologically, at the beginning of the modern industrial age: by human behavior and the total setting of human experience. It is this awareness which invests Kierkegaard’s critical motives with their genuine earnestness and dignity. [my emphasis]

The German version includes Alexis de Tocqueville along with Poe and Baudelaire in that group.

Adorno thought that Kierkegaard recognized the downside of democratic mass culture, "the mutilation of men by the very mechanisms of domination which actually change men into a mass." But he notes that what Kierkegaard expresses is "a hatred of the mass" which "styles itself" conservatively. Still, he finds a humane element within what is often a conservative hull: "Kierkegaard's doctrine of hope protests against the seriousness of a mere reproduction of life which mutilates man. It protests against a world which is determined by barter and gives nothing without an equivalent."

All in all, Adorno in this essay appears to be looking for a way to link the insights and concerns of a more strictly materialistic outlook with considerations that are at the center of religious thinking. He concludes with the thought that Kierkegaard's notion of the love for the dead and his understanding of death are ultimately in the service of "the hope of the reality of redemption." In the German version it reads, "Die Hoffnung ... auf die leibhafte Wirlichkeit der Erlösung," which I would translate as "the hope for the bodily reality of salvation" and which better expresses the attempt to find a connecting point between materialism and religion.

Tags: adorno, critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, kierkegaard

Frankfurt School, 1938: Max Horkheimer on Montaigne

Montaigne

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a French Catholic Skeptical philosopher and humanist whose skepticism was focused not on external reality as such, but on opinions and individuals. But his perspective did incline him toward empirical investigation, including reflection on one's own mind and body, as the most reliable path to knowledge. A man of the Renaissance, he is credited with originating the literary form of the essay and became an important influence on Enlightenment philosophy.

His thought drew heavily on classical philosophy, especially Pyrrhon von Elis, Sextus Empiricus and Cicero. His version of Skepticism was to deliver "a good whiplash to the ordinary stupidity of judgment." His Essays were considered disturbing enough to sacred truth to warrant inclusion on the Catholic Church’s Index of forbidden books in 1677.

For philosopher Richard Popkin (1923-2005), Montaigne was a leading intellectual figure of the Counter-Reformation who looked to protect religion against the dangerous reach of philosophy.

Montaigne put great weight on the influence of culture, and was considered by Claude Lévi-Strauss to be an early pioneer of cultural relativism. Montaigne used his understanding of the influence of culture to criticize European culture for its own "barbarian" elements. Though often regarded as a misogynist, Montaigne extended his understanding of the influence of culture to the recognition that the differences between men and women were largely culturally determined.

His perceived irreverent attitude toward religious dogma contributed to his influence on Voltaire, Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century. Stefan Zweig said of him, "Montaigne helps us answer this one question: 'How to stay free? How to preserve our inborn clear-mindedness in front of all the threats and dangers of fanaticism, how to preserve the humanity of our hearts among the upsurge of bestiality?'"

Max Horkheimer used Montaigne as a touchstone of his long essay "Montaigne und die Funktion der Skepsis" Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1-2/1938, whose English version the English synopsis in the journal gives as "Montaigne and the Changing Role of Skepticism".

Horkheimer's essay covers three major themes: situating Montaigne in his historical and intellectual context; a consideration of Protestant ideas of reason; and, a description of the changing social role of Skepticism.

He argues that Montaigne's brand of Skepticism served him well in the context of the Protestant-Catholic struggles in 16th-century France, struggle which took a particularly violent turn in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, unleashed by the Catholic Catherine of Medici, powerful Queen Mother to Charles IX against the Protestant Huguenots . Barrington Moore, Jr. gives this description of it in Moral Purity and Persecution in History (2000):

Between them Catherine and the king gave their royal blessing to the massacre. Charles IX is reported to have announced, "Kill them all," thus making mass murder legitimate. The citizens of Paris, especially the disreputable segment of the poor, responded with glee, grabbing "suspects" and hacking them to bits with any means available. Except for being authorized and legitimate, the massacre was utterly spontaneous. Small groups without any overall coordination and no connection with one another did the killing. In that sense this collective murder was premodern. A work of mere manual labor, without twentieth-century social organization and technology for mass slaughter, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew still managed to destroy several thousand lives.

In this environment, Montaigne's sense of religious tolerance (he himself was Catholic) made his Skepticism a progressive idea. The classic liberal demand for tolerance in matters of conscience, i.e., freedom of religion, was directed at prevented incident of horror like the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the Wars of Religion of that century, and even more so the Thirty Years War of 1618-48. Montaigne was an important figure in formulating that demand for tolerance. His position also served him well in navigating the hazards of religious sectarianism. He even served as a mediator between French Catholic and Huguenots, with the blessing of the Holy Office in Rome, aka, the Inquisition.

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Horkheimer praises Montaigne’s influence on the understanding of Reason by Rene Descartes, Leibniz and Immanuel Kant. By contrast, he considers the ideas of the leading lights of the Reformation as "inhuman". Luther, he argues, emphasized inner freedom as corresponding to outer subservience. And he managed to reconcile "Christian love and equality" with "suppression, plunder and mass murder", the latter referring especially to Luther'’s belligerent position on the side of the princes in the Peasant Wars. On the other hand, Luther's dedication to bring the Word of God to ordinary people in their own language nevertheless brought a critical function with it, the idea of the priesthood of the individual believer which inherently implied a capability of judgment on the individual’s part that could be at variance with established authority.

Calvin, he says, in his teaching of predestination, "reduced the concept of freedom to almost nothing". But as anti-religious as he is, Horkheimer notes, "In the entire period of early capitalism, from its emergence of the begging orders [of monks] into the early years of the 19th century, the Gospel possessed not just an explanatory but also a revolutionary meaning." Christian figures like Thomas Müntzer, the most famous peasant leader in the Peasant Wars, found such revolutionary impulses in the Bible that the Reformation made more accessible to them. But, as Horkheimer also notes, in this sense "the Gospel is the negation of Skepticism, according to which actions are matters of taste or a question of individual cleverness." Establishing tolerance in religion required revolutionary changes. But revolutions by their nature require intolerance against the existing order, albeit of a different kind than religious intolerance such as that of Catherine de Medici.

"With the disappearance of liberalism in the period of monopoly capitalism," writes Horkheimer, "Skepticism once again changes its meaning." He refers here to the period of roughly 1870-1900, which is generally recognized as the period in which business monopolies came to be a dominant economic form in leading capitalist economies, including that of Germany. The liberalism Horkheimer refers to as disappearing was the classical liberalism of free-market capitalism which had been the leading ideology of capitalists in the 19th century. In Horkheimer's case, he saw the rise of fascism in Italy and Austria and of National Socialism in Germany as the surrender of the general concept of liberalism in political matters by its natural advocates, the capitalist class. And he feared that such authoritarian forms of government could become the preferred and characteristic form of capitalist rule everywhere. Here he pessimistically calls the Leader's State (Führerstaat) the "most characteristic form" of the present-day capitalist state.

Here Horkheimer makes a quirky and not very well-developed argument that in the present-day state, by which he apparently means the Führerstaat form, it is not possible for individuals systematically to develop the kind of well-established personal ego on which the entire Skeptical orientation depends. He says of Montaigne’s time, "The positive form of Skepticism is the individual." But he argues that kind of individualism required for meaningful Skepticism only develops accidentally in the conditions of the totalitarian Führerstaat.

What he seems to be saying is that present-day dictatorships have such wide-ranging abilities to enforce conformity on the individuals subject to their rule that, unlike Montaigne using his personal Skepticism to navigate the treacherous times of the 16th-century Wars of Religion, such an individual manner of adjustment is not practical in the conditions of the dictatorial Führerstaat:

Es stellt sich als der Wahn der Skepsis heraus, dass sie trotz allem das Ich für einen sicheren Ort der Zuflucht halt. Durch jede Faser ist es mit der materiellen Realität verbunden. Die Fähigkeiten, die es konsitutuieren, Sinne, Gedächtnis und Verstand, hängen nicht bloss am gut funktionierenden Körper, sondern am stetig fortlaufenden sozialen Prozess.

[The madness of Skepticism stands out in that it regards the ego as a secure place of retreat, despite everything. It {the ego} is bound up with its material reality in every fiber. The capabilities that constitute it – senses, memory and understand – don't depend only on a well-functioning body, but also on a continually progressing social process.]

He is basically arguing that the Führerstaat invades all aspects of the individual's life. And its conditions call for an all-or-nothing choice. Either you decide consciously to conform or you decide that a radical change is needed. "The ego can now defend itself only so far as it seeks to defend humanity in general, as well."

But he also argues that a form of Skepticism does in fact exist among people in conformity with the Führerstaat, a degraded version that comes down to cynicism about the possibility of change. Presumably he refers to the attitude of many people under the Third Reich that is now referred to as "inner immigration"”, a withdrawal into oneself. With particular reference to this degraded brand of thought, he writes, "Skepticism is a sick kind of intellectual independence; it is immune to truth and to untruth."

The best part of Skepticism, he argues, was taken up by Hegel's dialectic, a variant of which is contained in the brand of "critical theory" represented by the Frankfurt School.

This essay of Horkheimer's seems to wander around more than others of his I've read, possibly reflecting a dissatisfaction at the incompleteness of his argument about how the Führerstaat makes Skepticism an unrealistic and reactionary approach by stunting the development of the individual ego. Still, his essay is a provocative one containing some valuable observations and arguments. And, more than previous essays of his in the ZfS, it reflects the increasing urgency with which he regarded developments in Germany.

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, max horkheimer, montaigne

Frankfurt School, 1937: Max Horkheimer defends metaphysics

"Metaphysics should be proud of the new attack [against it]; it is being confused with thinking [itself]."

It may seem surprising that a materialist thinking with a decidedly anticlerical/antireligious bent like Max Horkheimer should be defending metaphysics as he does in that quote. But in "Der neueste Angriff auf die Metaphysik" [The latest attack on metaphysics] Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung 1/1937, that's exactly what he does.

In particular, he is focusing here on philosophic claims that try to limit philosophy and science to quantitative, formally logical and narrowly empiricist views. A big part of the Frankfurt School viewpoint, which Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse would define in the following two numbers of the as "critical theory", was to argue that philosophy and science should both be understood in their social contexts and also that they should apply a genuine critical view to the facts they examine. Especially in aspects of science and philosophy that dealt with social and political issues, theory should look for the possibilities of improvements that make the lives of human being more free, more secure and more just.

Horkheimer in this essay uses the German term Wissenschaft, which means science but in which he includes philosophy as a scientific way of thinking. Rather than use "science and philosophy" in these comments, I'll use "Science" to indicate the meaning he gives to the word in this essay.

The urgent awareness of the growing power of Hitler Germany and the seemingly sinking probability of a near-term internal change of regime in Germany is very clear in this essay. Not dominant perhaps, but clearly hanging over the entire academic, philosophical analysis as an immediate example of how badly developments in capitalist society could go.

Horkheimer gives a relatively accessible example; accessibility is always relative in the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung. And the example has to do with relativity, Einstein's theory of relativity:

Die Realtivitätstheorie ist ein wichtiger Faktor bei der Umstrukturierung der Erfahrung, wenn man die Vorstellungswelt des alltäglichen Lebens mit hinzurechnet. Innerhalb ihres eignen Gebiets, der Physik, bleibt freilich die Empirie, sofern man sie vom Denken isoliert, derselben Art wie auf dem früheren Stand der Forschung, nämlich ein Inbegriff "atomischer" Wahrnehmungen. Dies liegt im Wesen der Physik als isolierter Disziplin und tut der Bedeutung ihrer Theorie nicht den leisesten Abbruch – nur der empiristischen Logik, die solche Leistungen in gehörigem Abstand von individualler Existenz und gesellschaftlicher Praxis betrachtet und dann bestimmte Momente an ihren zum Prototyp der Erkenntnis macht.

[The theory of relativity is an important factor in the restructuring of experience, if one adds in the world of ideas belonging to everyday life. Inside its own field, physics, of course the empiricism remains the same type as it was at the earlier level of research, so far as one isolates it from thought, namely, the incorporation of "atomistic" perceptions. That lies in the nature of physics as an isolated discipline and makes not the slightest truncation of the meaning of its meaning – only the empiricist logic that views such achievements in relative distance from individual existence and social practice and then makes particular moments in them into prototypes of perception.]

Horkheimer in that example was pointing to the theory of relativity as being what scientific theories actually are, a framework for describing known phenomena. But it's a framework that looks at relationships and draws logical conclusions from them. Einstein's theory is based on observations and on extensive mathematical calculations. He certainly didn’t cook them up from visions in his head or find them written on golden plates buried in the woods, although the special and general theories of relativity certainly required imagination. But he also drew inferences from what Hegelians might say lay "behind" the known facts. He described black holes, for instance, as a theoretical necessity. Only decades later were black holes confirmed to exist from far more specific observations made possibility by better measuring devices.

But a physicist can make calculations and record observations without immediate reference to the curve of spacetime or the existence of black holes. On the other hand, a narrow empiricism can't get much beyond compilation and classification. Up to a point, narrow empiricism can co-exist with the theory of relativity. But you can’t get to the theory of relativity from narrow empiricism.

In the postwar German Democratic Republic (DDR; Communist East Germany), the science of physics was actually significantly hindered by a philosophical controversy over the thought of Hegel. (!!!) The official Soviet line required a rejection of Hegelian thought as a lot of reactionary Prussianism, in contrast to the prewar position that recognized Hegel's significance, at least as a predecessor of Marxist thought. In opposition to Hegel's concepts of perception, the official line declared the position Lenin laid out in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909) and other, earlier scientific concepts of Frederick Engels to be beyond challenge. In practice, that worked out to a narrow empiricism that would have required the rejection of both quantum physics (which includes the inter-relationship between subject and object as Hegel assumed on different grounds) and Einstein’s theory of relativity (because it assumed a finite universe, something Engels had rejected). The East German physicist Robert Havemann, who became a leading democratic dissident in the DDR, later declared that the successful physicists he knew in the Soviet Union quietly disregarded much of the official position on those questions. They had to, if they wanted to deal with the physics of atomic power and space travel.

Thinkers that Horkheimer discusses as examples of the positivist, logical empiricist camp include Friedrich Adler (1879-1960); Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945); Ernst Mach (1838 –1916); Max Planck (1858-1947); Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953); Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970); the logical positivist Vienna Circle of philosophers including Hans Hahn (1879-1934), Otto Neurath (1882- 1945), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) and Moritz Schlick (1882-1916); and, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). These thinkers were not all reactionaries, by any means. Friedrich Adler was a Social Democratic Member of Parliament in Austria, who had gone to prison for shooting the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Minister-President Graf Stürgkh in 1916.

Horkheimer focuses on the limitations of what he sees as the narrow empiricism of their philosophies. Points out that one trend of metaphysical thinking, the neoromantics who celebrated race and nation as vital entities overruling reason, contributed in its own way to the rise of reactionary thinking which included the Nazi seizure of power in Germany. Horkheimer writes that the neoromantics sought to resolve "the contradictions of modern consciousness" and bring "unity and harmony" to it. And in their quest to do so, they sought to discredit Science as such.

Horkheimer doesn’t specify particular advocates of the neo-Romantic school. But one such pro-Nazi was Hans Heyse (1891-1976), whose book Idee und Existenz (1935) was reviewed by Karl Löwith in ZfS 1/1936. At that time, Heyse was Rector of the University of Königsburg.

The logical positivists, on the other, insisted on the value of individual branches of professional knowledge (Fachwissenschaft) as a way to achieve the same end, the discrediting of Science in the larger sense. This viewpoint "romanticizes the professional branches of knowledge". The tendency of logical positivism to minutely define what is and isn't a legitimate part of their particular branch of knowledge – a frustrating habit that I remember well from my long-ago undergraduate encounter with Wittgenstein's work – Horkheimer rather grumpily calls the vocabulary of closed worldview "to which one clings like the modern European and American Buddhists or Christian Science cling to their own special formulas and ways of speaking". He argues of logical empiricism that this kind of thinking in terms of mathematical calculation is "suited for a type of people who are still relatively powerless", i.e., a passive way of thinking.

Both neoromanticism, which he calls "pre-authoritarian metaphysics", and logical empiricism share a deep pessimism about human society, even though the one claims to base itself on an unchangeable notion of Being (existence, Sein) and the other on a narrow empiricism and formal logic. Even more grumpily, Horkheimer writes of the two viewpoints, "They are against thinking, whether it be with reason looking forward or with metaphysics looking backward." That is also his meaning in the quote that opens these comments.

Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School viewed themselves as materialist thinkers. As he says here, "Science (Wissenschaft) is largely itself criticism of metaphysics." But what they valued in metaphysics was its assumption that truth involved more than cataloguing observations. Meaning and trends lay behind observable reality and part of the task of Science was to look for those larger if hidden realities, just as observing stars and planets and comets don't eliminate the need for the theory of relativity to explain larger interconnections and relationships between observed empirical realities in physics. As he puts it, "Construction and representation are their own moments of perception in connection with research."

And he writes:

Die Verteidigung der Wissenscaft gegen die Theologie mittels erkenntsnistheoretische und logischer Argumente war fortschrittlich im siebzehhnten Jahrhundert, die Philosophen machten sich zum Anwalt eines Faktors der neuen gesellschaftlichen Lebensweise.

[Defending Science against theology using perceptual-theoretical and logical arguments was progressive in the 17th century. [And in doing so] the philosophers made themselves into advocates of a factor of the new social way of life.]

He refers here to the development of Enlightenment ideas and modern science as both a result and a contributing cause to the transition from feudal to capitalist society. He continues in a stereotypically long German sentence:

In unseren Tage, in denen diese geschichtliche Form ihre Bedeutung für die Menschen längst geändert hat, immer noch zu meinen, das ihr zugehörige Fachwissen und der Betrieb seiner Herstellung sei die einzig legitime intellektuelle Betätigung, und was über sie hinausgehe, sei prinzipiell Theologie oder sonst ein transzendenter Glaube, oder die krasse Reaktion und Sinnwidrigkeit, zu meinen, der entscheindende Gegensatz habe sich nicht verschoben und sei nach wie vor und in derselben Schattierung Wissenschaft contra Metaphysik und Metaphysik contra Wissenschaft zutage gefördert ist, setzt eine unendlich einfache Ansicht der historischen Situation voraus.

[In our days, in which this social form has long since changed its meaning for humanity, to still think that the specialized knowledge to which it belongs and its establishment is the only legitimate intellectual activity, and that whatever goes beyond it is principally theology or else a transcendental faith or the crassest reaction and nonsense, to believe that the decisive contradiction has not shifted and is still now promoted as before in the same shade of science against metaphysics and metaphysics against science, assumes an incredibly simplistic view of the historical situation.]

Horkheimer saw the prime enemy of Science as the established order that seeks to distort it in service of existing social relations and prevent the limitations of the current order to be overcome in a better one. At one level, Horkheimer is referring here to the Marxist notion of the development of socialism as a higher form of society out of capitalism. But in a more immediate sense, he spoke of the overcoming of the grimmest forms of capitalism: National Socialism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, the Standestaat (clerical-fascist) regime in Austria.

He argues that the value-free pretensions of logical empiricism are themselves illusory:

Die zielsetzenden Mächte bedienen sich des Denkens, das auf jede bestimmende Rolle verzichtet hat. Und die Gelehrten, in deren allgemein gesunkener sozialer Geltung dieser Zustand einen genauen Ausdruck findet, bescheiden sich dabei und verspechen, sich an solche Ordnung der Dinge zu halten, indem sie den Verzicht, in den einzelnen Schritten der theoretischen Relexion auch zu wissen, wohin sie laufen soll, gehorsam als Sauberkeit, wissenschaftliche Strenge oder sonstwie hinstellen, ähnlich wie dei Bürger eines schlecten Staates ihre schweigende Duldung der Tyrannei als Treue und Loyalität.

[The powers who establish the goals are served by the thinking that has renounced that decisive role. And the scholars, in whose generally lowered social prestige one finds a precise expression of this condition, humble themselves thereby and promise to support such an order of thing, in that they renounce in their own writings of theoretical reflection even to know toward where they should run: obedience as cleanliness, postulating scientific rigor or however, just as the citizens of a bad state represent their silent tolerance of tyranny as fidelity and loyalty.]

There is a thin line between of the phenomenon of “inner immigration” during the Third Recih - which refers not to people moving around but to a withdrawal into personal life and unexpressed dissent – and the kind of “silent tolerance of tyranny” that Horkheimer discusses here. A similar situation could be seen among whites in the American Deep South during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

And Horkheimer writes of both neo-Romantic metaphysics and logical empiricism:

Das Bekenntnis, dass man damit nichts anzufangen wisse und sich an die Tatsachen halten solle, der Vorsatz der Wissenschaft, keinen wesentlichen Unterschied zu machen zwischen der Verschwörung brutaler Machthaber gegen jede menschliche Aspiration auf Glück und Freiheit und andererseits dem Kampfe dagegen, dies ganze Philosophie, die beides bloss auf den abstrakten Begriff des Gegebenen bringt und diese Haltung auch noch als Objektivität verherrlicht, ist auch den übelsten Gewalten noch willkommen.

[The confession that one thereby will not start learning something new and should just stick with the facts, the intention of Science to make not distinction between the conspiracy of brutal holders of power against every human aspiration for happiness and freedom, on the one hand, and the struggles against them, on the other, this whole philosophy that brings both into the abstract concept of given conditions and glorifying this stance as objectivity – that is also welcome to the most evil forces.]

For Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School, the purpose of Science is not only to provide technical mastery over nature, but also to provide thinking that allows people to understand the world and societies in which they are living. The then-contemporary existence of the Third Reich and its durability far beyond the relatively short time that the Frankfurt School thinkers including Horkheimer had tended to expect gives a particular pungency to arguments like this.

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, max horkheimer

Frankfurt School, 1937: Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse define "critical theory" (5)

Herbert Marcuse’s essay "Philosophie und kritische Theorie" in the 3/1937 number of the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung is available in an English translation by Jeremy Shapiro as "Philosophy and Critical Theory" in Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (1968). The English text of Negations is available online in an authorized SCRIBD edition from MayFly Books and is available as a text or PDF download. The translations here are mine from the original published text.

Marcuse points out the Marxism, which he here treats as the original form of "critical theory", was based on a materialist outlook, though it was not understood as "a philosophical system against other philosophical systems. Social theory is an economic, not a philosophical system."

Marcuse emphasizes that critical theory in his sense is based on the effort to apply Reason to existing social conditions, both in understanding them and seeking to alter them. In classical "bourgeois" (capitalist) thought, Reason included the idea of freedom. This is especially pronounced in Hegel's philosophy, whose influence is very visible and explicit in Marcuse's thinking.

Aside from his usual academic style of writing in this longer essays in the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung, he uses a notion here that makes this essay even less accessible to readers not familiar with it. He has a concept which he develops at length in Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941), that philosophy in the true sense ended with Hegel. As he puts it in the 1937 essay, "With the concept of Reason as Freedom, philosophy appeared to have reached its limits: what still remains, the realization of Reason, is no longer a task of philosophy."

But he was not entirely consistent in his career with how he used that particular notion. Because he was an academic philosopher himself. And he clearly considered that other "academic" philosophies like existentialism had continuing value in understanding the world and in illuminating practical tasks.

In this essay, he discusses how the understanding of the Subject in the philosophies of Descartes, Kant, Fichte and Hegel were based ultimately on a bourgeois (capitalist) understanding of property. As Marcuse puts it, the form of freedom conceived in their thought in reality comes down to "the freedom of a never ending, exhausting labor". But he also argues that German Idealism was not empty ideology; it always contained elements that challenged the existing order. Importantly for the conditions of 1937, Idealism opposed "the sacrifice of individuality in the service of false collectives". Its limitation is that its criticism of existing conditions remains in the sphere of ideas; it did not extend to the social relations of the material world.

His essay is largely devoted to elaborating these concepts. It's also clear that he is focusing in particular on the situation of people in the Western authoritarian states, Germany above all, in which the independent voices of the working class were being efficiently suppressed. Since critical theory relies on a Marxist concept of the working class as the indispensable agent of creating the post-capitalist society, the inability of the working class in countries like Germany to assert themselves effectively in politics presented a problem for critical theory that could not be surmounted in the immediately foreseeable future. Marcuse discusses some of the implications of that in this essay.

As he puts it, "Social relationships conceal the sense of truth: at the same time, they constitute the horizon of untruth that truth needs for its effectiveness." This the kind of Hegelian but materialist concept one finds frequently in Marcuse's work. Truth has to be realized in the material world. But that can only happen through the struggle of truth with untruth.

And he writes, "Critical theory is [also] critical of itself, of its own social agents," that is, the working class and the working-class parties, both Social Democrats and Communists.

And he explains that the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung is committed to dealing with various philosophical themes, such as rationalism vs. irrationalism, a major issue in analyzing fascist and Nazi philosophy and propaganda. And its goal is also to situate those philosophical themes in their material social contexts. "The bad materialism of philosophy will be overcome in the materialist theory", i.e., critical theory.

He stresses the importance of fantasy, of imaginative thinking, in understanding the current state of society and its future possibilities.

Marcuse closes his essay with reference to the shadow of Nazism and fascism that hung over the world in 1937. As he puts it, in the 19th century it was possible to see the development of capitalism into a form of barbarism. But what lay between the present and the realization of the more just and humane society envisioned by critical theory is "not just a piece of the 19th century, but rather authoritarian barbarism."

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, herbert marcuse, max horkheimer

Frankfurt School, 1937: Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse define "critical theory" (4)

The separate essays by Horkheimer and Marcuse in the 3/1937 number of the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung, both titled "Philosophie und kritische Theorie", are further elaborations of the definition of critical theory that Horkheimer made in "Traditionelle und kritische Theorie" (1-2/1937).

Horkheimer in this essay sketches the distinction between critical theory, on the one hand, and, on the other: the "vulgar materialism of bad praxis", by which he more specifically means the "volkish" philosophy and ideology associated with the Nazi movement and its active sympathizers; and, the idea that specialized academic/scientific thinking can be fully separated from value judgments. He opposes critical theory to the type of collectivity that the Nazi movement praised, the community of race and nation, which rejected the constructive aspects of liberal thought while retaining the basic capitalist economic structure that liberalism defends.

Horkheimer explains that critical theory has in common with German Idealism the idea that ideas shape reality, though critical theory understands that the specific context and limitations of present economic relationships also are a fundamental part of the formation of those ideas. Ideas interact with the given social reality in a dynamic relationship. But where German Idealists like Kant and Fichte understood the development of historical reality as ultimately spiritual/intellectual, critical theory understands that it is essentially a materialist process. Critical theory seeks to articulate the possibilities in current realities for "the rational organization of human activity." Critical theory, he writes, shares with Idealism the understanding that humanity has other options than "the accumulation of power and profit."

The goal of critical theory is not abstract or academic (though it's form certainly can be!); its goal is “not the increase of knowledge as such, but rather "the emancipation of humanity from enslaving conditions." He cites the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans as having this broad orientation, as well.

He claims that conventional economics has "lost its relationship to the fundamental relationships of the [current] epoch." Presumably he is here referring to the shift in economics from the focus on production relationships – which Marxist economics retained – to a focus on exchange, on prices and markets. The same issue of the journal contains an essay by Paul Sering on Alfred Marshall's neoclassical economics, which exemplifies that shift in emphasis. He cites the ultimate classical economist, Adam Smith, as a positive example of an economic analysis that pointed the way forward to a higher form of economic development, e.g., industrial capitalism.

He also separates critical theory from the Communist doctrine of the time that held to a rigid defense of the Soviet model. The criticism here is not so clear, in that he pointedly omits reference to the Soviet Union by name. But in the context of 1937, it's hard to see how it could refer to anything else. He discusses the concept of socialization of production, noting that the key thing about it from the standpoint of critical theory is not the legal form of the ownership but the actual individual and social outcomes it creates:

Das Unterstellen der industriellen Produktion unter die Kontrolle eines Staats ist ein geschichtliches Faktum, dessen Bedeutung im Sinn der kritischen Theorie jeweils erst zu analysieren ist. Ob es sich um Vergesellschaftung in ihrem Sinn handelt, inwiefern also darin ein höheres Prinzip zur Entfaltung kommt, hängt nicht etwa bloss von der Änderung bestimmter Eigentumsverhaltnisse, von der Steigerung der Produktivität in neuen Formen gesellschaftlicher Zusammenarbeit ab, sondern ebensosehr von Wesen und Entfaltung der Gesellschaft, in der sich all dies vollzieht. Es kommt darauf an, wie die neuen Verhältnisse der Produktion genau beschaffen sind. Auch wenn die durch individuelle Begabung und Leistungsfähigkeit bedingten „naturlichen Privilegien" zunächst noch fortbestehen, so dürfen jedesfalls keine neuen gesellschaftlichen Privilegien an ihre Stelle treten. In diesem vorläufigen Zustand darf die Ungleichheit nicht fixiert, sie muss vielmehr in steigendem Mass uberwunden werden. Das Problem, was und wie produziert wird, ob relativ feste Gruppen mit speziellen Interessen existieren, soziale Unterschiede festgehalten werden oder sich gar vertiefen, ferner die aktive Beziehung des einzelnen zur Regierung, das Verhältnis aller entscheidenden, die Individuen betreffenden Verwaltungsakte zu ihrem eigenen Wissen und Willen, die Abhängigkeit aller vom Menschen beherrschbaren Zustande von wirkliclier Übereinkunft, kurz, der Entwicklungsgrad der wesentlichen Momente realer Demokraties und Assoziation gehört mit zum Inhalt des Begriffs der Vergesellschaftung.

[The subordination of industrial production under the control of a state is an historical fact whose meaning in the sense of critical theory has yet to be analyzed. The question of whether this is socialization in the sense that it is also a higher principle of development, does not depend solely on the change of particular ownership relations and the increase of productivity under new form of social cooperation. It depends just as much on the essence and development of the society in which all this occurs. It depends upon how the new relations of product are specifically obtained. Even if the "natural privileges" related to individual ability and productivity are continued for the time being, at the minimum in any case no new social privileges should emerge in their place.

In this progressing situation the inequality should not become fixed, it must far more be overcome to an increasing extent. The problem, what is produced and how, whether relatively established groups with special interests exist, social difference held in place or even becoming deeper, further the active relationship of the individual to the government, the conduct of all decision-makers, the relationship of the administrative acts that touch the individual in his own knowledge and will, the dependence of all condition truly under the mastery of humanity on genuine agreements, in short, the level of development of the essential moments of real democracy and association, belong to the content of the concept of socializing society (Vergesellschaftung).]

In 1937, not only was the Soviet Union an active opponent of Hitler Germany in international politics. But anti-Communism was a major element of Nazi propaganda, both in Germany and in its international politics. Anyone focused on the menace Germany Nazism represented in the world would be cautious in how they articulated criticism of the USSR, so as not to facilitate having their words being misused.

Horkheimer goes on to address the situation in "totalitarian" states – clearly not including the USSR in the meaning of that description here – in which there was partial nationalization of private businesses. He points out that this form of nationalization does not constitute "socialization" in the sense critical theory understands it.

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, herbert marcuse, max horkheimer

Frankfurt School, 1937: Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse define "critical theory" (3)

(This is a direct continuation of Part 2 of this series of posts.) Politicians and organizers trying to rally workers to the democratic and socialist causes couldn't have been pleased with arguments like this:

Aber auch die Situation des Proletariats bildet in dieser Gesellschaft keine Garantie der richtigen Erkenntnis. Wie sehr es die Sinnlosigkeit als Forbestehen und Vergrösserung der Not und des Unrechts an sich selbst erfährt, so verhindert doch die von oben noch geförderte Differenzierung seiner sozialen Struktur und die nur in ausgezeichneten Augenblicken durchbrochene Gegensatzlichkeit von persönlichem und klassenmässigem Interesse, dass diese Buwusstsein sich unmittlebar Geltung verschaffe. An der Oberfläche sieht vielmehr die Welt auch für das Proletariat anders aus. Eine Haltung, welche seine wahren Interessen und damit auch die der Gesellschaft im ganzen nicht auch ihm selbst entgegenzusetzen imstande wäre, sondern ihre Richtschnur von Gedanken un Stimmungen der Massen hernähme, geriete selbst in sklavische Abhängigkeit vom Bestehenden.

[But the situation of the working class does not constitute a guarantee of the correct perception in this society. However much they {the working class} experience themselves of the senselessness as the continuation and sharpening of need and injustice, nevertheless the differentiation of their social structure imposed from above and the fact that only in exceptional moments does the contradictoriness of personal and class interest break through prevent this directly effective {class} consciousness from intensifying. On the surface, even for the working class the world appears differently. An attitude that is unwilling to defend their {the working class'} true interests and thereby also that of society as a whole even against the working class itself, but rather takes takes its guidelines from the thoughts and attitudes of the masses, itself gets into a slavish dependence on existing conditions.]

This is a statement of a particular twist on Marxist assumptions – which were theoretically shared by Social Democratic and Communist parties at the time – that actually states a common political marketing problem in terms that sound exotic today, even for those who consider themselves on the left side of the political spectrum: people don't always vote for the policies that are in their own best interests. The Frankfurt School was concerned in particular with the prospects for the coming to power of left parties which considered themselves as parties of the working class. Their more immediate concern was the overthrow of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, whose only internal possibility their saw as coming from a socialist revolution against not only the Hitler government but against capitalism as such. In traditional Marxist thought, the coming to power of the working class meant the coming to power of the majority, which is to say the triumph of democracy, which would lead to a much better society that would eventually do away with existing class divisions and therefore would act in the ultimate best interests of society as a whole. But the working class could achieve this only by pursuing its objective ("true", "genuine") class interest in the shorter term.

Such formulations as that just quoted could be used to justify cynicism or to write off the writer using them as a hopeless academic elitist. But what he says there is fundamentally no different from what anyone who tries to convince someone else to change their opinion on a topic.

And, once again, despite the general language he uses, he’s drawing heavily on the experience of the fascist and Nazi dictatorships:

Unter den Verhältnissen des Monopolkapitalismus und der Ohnmacht der Arbeiter vor den Unterdrückungsapparaten der autoritären Staaten ist die Wahrheit zu bewunderungswärdigen kleinen Gruppen geflüchtet, die, unter dem Terror dezimiert, für die Schärfung der Theorie wenig Zeit haben. Die Scharlatane profitieren davon, und der allgemeine intellktuelle Zustand der grossen Massen geht rapide zurück.

[Under the conditions of monopoly capitalism and the powerlessness of the worker before the suppressive apparatuses of the authoritarian states, the truth has fled to amazingly small group which, decimated by {state} terror, have little time for the sharpening of theory. Charlatans profit from that and the general intellectual condition of the great masses is receding rapidly.]

In a couple of places, Horkheimer expresses what seems to be criticism of the particular development of the socialist system in the USSR (pp. 290-1 in the original). But it is worded very generally and without specific reference to the Soviet Union. His concerns in this essay are directed primarily toward the capitalist countries, especially to Nazi Germany.

In his concluding paragraph, Horkheimer argues that critical theory represented in the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung summarizes the social and theoretical goals of critical theory this way:

Allgemeine Kriterien für die kritische Theorie als ganzes gibt es nicht; denn sie beruhen immer auf der Wiederholung von Ereignissen und somit auf der Existenz einer sich selbst reproducierenden Totalität. Ebensowenig existiert eine gesellschaftliche Klasse, an deren Zustimmung man sich halten könnte. Das Bewusstsein jeder Schicht vermag unter den gegenwärtigen Verhältnissen ideologisch beengt und korrumpiert zu werden, wie sehr sie ihrer Lage nach auch zur Wahrheit bestimmt sei. Die kritische Theorie hat bei aller Einsichtigkeit der einzelnen Schritte und der Übereinstimmung ihrer Elemente mit den fortgeschrittensten traditionellen Theorien keine spezifische Instanz für sich als das mit ihr selbst verknüpfte Interesse an der Aufhebung der Klassenherrschaft. Diese negative Formulierung ist, auf einen abstrakten Ausdruck gebracht, der materialistische Inhalt des idealistischen Begriffs der Vernunft. In einer geschichtlichen Periode wie dieser ist die wahre Theorie nicht so sehr affirmativ als kritisch, ebenso wie das ihr gemässe Handeln auch nicht ,,produktiv" sein kann. An der Existenz des kritischen Verhaltens, das freilich Elemente der traditionellen Theorien und dieser vergehenden Kultur überhaupt in sich einschliesst, hangt heute die Zukunft der Humanität. Eine Wissenschaft, die in eingebildeter Selbständigkeit die Gestaltung der Praxis, der sie dient und zugehort, bloss als ihr Jenseits betrachtet und sich bei der Trennung von Denken und Handeln bescheidet, hat auf die Humanität schon verzichtet. Selbst zu bestimmen, was sie leisten, wozu sie dienen soll, und zwar nicht bloss in einzelnen Stücken, sondern in ihrer Totalität, ist das auszeichnende Merkmal der denkerischen Tätigkeit. Ihre eigene Beschaffenheit treibt sie daher zur geschichtlichen Veränderung. Unter dem lauten Ruf von sozialem Geist und Volksgemeinschaft vertieft sich heute der Gegensatz von Individuum und Gesellschaft mit jedem Tag. Die Selbstbestimmung der Wissenschaft wird mehr und mehr abstrakt. Der Konformismus des Denkens, das Beharren darauf, es sei ein fester Beruf, ein in sich abgeschlossenes Reich innerhalb des gesellschaftlichen Ganzen, gibt das eigene Wesen des Denkens preis.

[There are no general criteria for critical theory. Because they always touch on the repetition of experiences and thereby on the existence of a totality which reproduces itself. Just as little does there exist a social class on whose agreement {with critical theory} one can depend. The consciousness of every stratum may be ideologically cramped and corrupted under the present conditions, however much {critical theory} may be decidedly true in terms of their situation.

Critical theory, with all the insight it provides for individual steps and its agreement of its elements with the most progressive traditional theories, has no specific instance for itself besides its own basic interest in the lifting of class domination. {This is an elaborate way of saying no political party represents the particular viewpoint of critical theory as Horkheimer is defining it.} This negative formulation is, to use an abstract expression, the materialist content of the idealist concept of Reason.

In an historical period such as this one, true theory is not so much affirmative as critical, even while that of its appropriate implementation also cannot be "productive". On the existence of the critical conduct, which obviously contains in itself elements of traditional theory and certainly of its culture which is passing away, today depends the future of humanity. A science {a type of knowledge} that treats the practice which belongs to it and serves it as simply another world from itself, and which contents itself with the division of thinking and acting, has already given up on humanity.

To decide for itself what it can manage, and certainly not just simply in individual piece but rather in its totality, is the distinctive characteristic of thoughtful action. Its own qualities drive it to change history. Today, under the loud cry [in Nazi ideology] of social Spirit and People's Community, the contradiction between the individual and society is intensifying ever day.

The self-definition of knowledge is becoming more and more abstract. The conformity of thought, the insistence on a defined calling, a defined kingdom in itself within the social whole, surrenders the very essence of thought.]

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, herbert marcuse, max horkheimer