8 Critical theory: the frankfurt school contributions of Max Horkheimer

Shubhangi Vaidya

epgp books

 

1.  Introduction

 

Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) was one of the stalwarts of the Frankfurt School, whose distinctive intellectual contributions and leadership gave the School its unique character and made it a centre of intellectual inquiry and research spanning across the continents of Europe and North America. Horkheimer served as the Director of the Institute and Professor of Social Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in two spells, in.1930-1933 and again from 1949-1958. In the intervening period, he led the Institute in exile, mainly from the United States. (You have read in the introductory module how the rise of Nazism in Germany forced intellectuals especially Jewish ones, to flee the repressive regime). Horkheimer‘s writings during this difficult period were to lay the foundations of ‗critical theory‘ which the Frankfurt School is best known for.

 

Born on February 14, 1895 in a conservative, prosperous Jewish businessman‘s family, the young Max was expected to follow his father‘s footsteps and look after the family business. However, in 1919, he joined the University of Munich and a semester later, the Frankfurt University, where he studied philosophy and psychology. He was greatly influenced by the philosopher Hans Cornelius, under whose direction he eventually completed a doctorate in philosophy. After completing his ‗Habilitation‘ (post doctoral study) in 1925, he joined the University of Frankfurt as a ‗Privatdozent‘ or Lecturer. Thus, ended his career in business, and a new, brilliant future as an academic had begun. In 1926, Max married Rose Reikher, his father‘s personal secretary. She was several years older than him, hailed from a far less privileged class background and was not Jewish. Despite the unconventional nature of this union, the two remained together until Rose‘s death in 1969.

 

Horkheimer lectured extensively on social philosophy in the 18th and 19thcentury and became increasingly drawn to the ideas of Karl Marx.  He also became involved with the activities of the ‗Institut fur Socialforschung‘ (Institute of Social research) along with his close friend and associate Friedrich Pollock, who had also completed a doctorate on the ideas of Marx. As you have read in the introductory overview of Frankfurt School earlier, this newly fledged Institute was committed to research in Marxian theory and class issues under the directorship of Carl Grunberg. With Grunberg‘s untimely retirement, Horkheimer , who had earlier been appointed as a Professor in Social Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt also took charge of the Directorship of the Institute . He gave his inaugural lecture as Director of the Institute on January 24,1931.The lecture titled ‗The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an institute of Social Research‘, followed by a number of essays in the early 1930s, set out in detail the idea of ‗interdisciplinary social research‘ which was the goal of critical theory. Aimed at a balanced integration of philosophy and the social sciences, it attempted to bridge the gap between values or ultimate ends with the sphere of reality or concrete existence. As Wolin (2006) writes, philosophy, to its detriment, did not pay sufficient attention to the material or lived realities which alone would make ideals and values meaningful. On the other hand, the social sciences too wasted their energies in unreflectively chasing ‗facts‘. Their reliance on ‗positivism‘ and suspicion of ‗values‘ frequently resulted in the ‗data‘ they collected bearing little relevance to genuine human needs. Also, their ‗fetishization of expertise‘ was often ‗anti-democratic and abetted the forces of political technocracy‘ (Ibid.: 1). Horkheimer mounted a critique on positivism and the sciences for being overly specialized and focusing very narrowly on the technical details of their respective disciplines, thereby insulating themselves from the insights and findings of other researches and resources. This kind of ‗chaotic specialization‘ results in the inability to see the total picture and work for the betterment of society in a holistic manner. In his essay ‗Notes on Science and the Crisis‘ (1932), he observes that science fails to grasp its relationship with society which shapes its very existence and future directions (Marcuse 1932:8, cf SEP, p.9). There is no ‗view from nowhere‘; all empirical research is rooted in a particular historical and social context which must be properly understood in order that it be harnessed for the improvement of society, which ought to be its ultimate goal. In the various critiques of positivism undertaken by the Frankfurt School, the important point is made that positivism disconnects science from society by its emphasis on brute ‗facts‘ devoid of context, and thus destroys its potential for human emancipation.

 

2.  What is theory? Critical Theory vs. Traditional theory 

 

In 1933, after the Nazi takeover, the Institute temporarily shifted to Geneva and thereafter in 1935 to New York  and  Columbia  University.  In  1937,  Horkheimer  published  what  has  been  described  as  the theories and critical social theories. While the first two categories were subsumed under ‗traditional‘ theories, critical social theory connoted that adopted by the Frankfurt School. Traditional theory focuses on coherency and on the strict distinction between theory and praxis. In tune with Cartesian principles, knowledge was treated as being grounded on propositions derived from self-evident truths. Facts were explained by the application of general laws, and by subsuming these particular facts into the universal, the law was either confirmed or disproved. The scientific conception of theory, therefore, refers to a set of logically linked propositions that correspond to empirical facts. The notion of ‗objectivity‘, on which the whole edifice of scientific thought rests implies that in order to be considered a scientific ‗truth‘, a fact must pass the test of empirical confirmation and verification. Knowledge, therefore is a ‗mirror‘ of reality. Horkheimer rejects the notion of ‗objective‘ knowledge by pointing out that the object of knowledge is embedded within a social and historical process. Summarizing his earlier critiques on science and positivism, it is emphasized that sciences do not recognize their presence in a larger social framework. Traditional theory fails to realize that it is the prevalent economic structure of society (capitalism) that actually shapes scientific work and not the mental processes of the ‗savant‘, as Horkheimer sarcastically addresses the scientist. The savant also turns a blind eye to the social suffering and oppression inherent in the social structure and the fact that science itself is part and parcel of this oppressive structure. Scientific method thus ends up as a rigid, mechanistic activity, a set of mathematical symbols are formulae bereft of a critical edge. Critical social theory, on the other hand, purposefully examines the manner in which a theory emerges out of a particular social and historical setting. It attempts to critique the inequities inherent in that setting through ‗immanent critique‘ and from the perspective of the oppressed. He notes that the critical theorist‘s real function is not merely to present the existing contradictions within society but also deploy critical theory as a force with which to stimulate change (p 215,cf SEP, p 13). It is the role of the critical theorist to help oppressed masses to articulate their sufferings and bring about change. However, issued a prescient warning about the power of the ‗commodity economy‘, which, after a period of progress and immense scientific and technological advancement, would eventually lead human beings to new depths of barbarism, as exemplified by the Nazis and their genocidal programme (p227,cf SEP p 15). Horkheimer‘s later work in the 1940s echoes this pessimism regarding the helplessness of rationality to stem the descent of humanity into the abyss of irrationality and barbarism.‗ideological manifesto‘ of the Frankfurt School, namely, the essay ‗Traditional and Critical Theory‘. Let us look at some of the propositions developed in this essay in greater detail. At the very outset, Horkheimer asks ‗What is theory?‘ He distinguishes broadly between social theories, scientific social

 

3.  Critique of Enlightenment Reason 

 

In 1938, Theodor Adorno joined the Institute in New York. Unlike the other scholars like Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Marcuse and others, he had remained in Germany hoping that the political crisis resulting from Nazism would quickly pass, but history proved him wrong. We shall read about him in greater detail in another module, but for now, suffice it to say that although he was a relative latecomer in the Institute, his name is associated with it in a fundamental way as one of the ‗animating spirits‘ of the Frankfurt School. Horkheimer was deeply impressed by Adorno‘s philosophical brilliance and together they collaborated on what was to be  the signature  text of the Frankfurt School, namely, ‗Dialectic of Enlightenment‘ (DE), written between 1941 and 1944 and published in 1947. As Richard Wolin says, the DE is not a ‗book‘ in the customary sense of the word, as its subtitle ‗Philosophical Fragments‘ indicates. It opens with a programmatic discussion of the Enlightenment, the period in the history of Europe characterized by the birth and flowering of science, ‗reason‘ and modernism. The central thesis of Horkheimer and Adorno is as follows: The Enlightenment seeks to undermine ‗myth‘, yet in so doing, it rigidifies into a new ‗myth‘, namely, the reduction of ‗reason‖ to the claims of ‗positive science‘. Thus it ends up perpetrating a new form of irrationality in the guise of rationality.  From this central thesis, two‗Excurses‘ follow: ‗The Odyssey or Myth and Enlightenment‘, and ‗Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality‘. Next is the path breaking chapter ‗The Culture Industry; Enlightenment as Mass Deception‘ and the last chapter ‗Elements of Anti-Semitism‘ in which the authors attempt to theorise about the deadly ideology of anti-Semitism propagated by the Nazis. The book concludes with ‗Notes and Drafts‘ on a wide range of topics which are as thought provoking and interesting today as they were half a century ago.

 

Reason flourished in and through Enlightenment, but, argues the authors, its development was contradictory. On the one hand it brought about enormous progress in critical thought, and on the other, a dehumanizing rationalization of human society wherein people were enslaved by the progress of technology. Human beings were thus alienated from both themselves and the world in which they lived. The Marxian understanding of ‗alienation‘ and Weber‘s conception of bureaucracy‘s ‗iron cage‘ also address a similar predicament. The Enlightenment thus was the original point from which the malaise of the present times could be traced, including the horrors of Nazi science which deployed the most sophisticated technology to undertake a most barbaric act, the genocide of a whole section of humanity.

 

In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant‘ (Horkheimer and Adorno,1972: 1,cf Calhoun,2000:522). A critical engagement with the Enlightenment required understanding and analyzing how reason itself could be deployed to undermine human freedom and enslave society. Social and cultural forces such as science, capital, systems of political power etc had gained a life of their own, independent of the human subjects who had created them in the first place, and these forces were instrumental in social stability and change. However, the antidote is not to give up reason for irrationality, as this would result in even more horrific consequences to humankind. At this point it is important to clarify the distinction made by Horkheimer between ‗subjective‘ and ‗objective‘ reason, which finds fuller expression in his book ‗The Eclipse of Reason‘, also published in 1947. Subjective or instrumental reason is rooted in self-interest and self –preservation and primarily focuses on the means to achieve a goal. Objective reason on the other hand is concerned with ends rather than means, it attempts to root truth and meaning within a comprehensive totality. For instance, capitalism is so completely rooted in self-interest and individualism that it becomes ultimately destructive and inimical to the very goals it sought to achieve. Similarly, in the drive to conquer Nature by any means, humans have forgotten about environmental and ecological systems and succeeded in causing them such damage that results in all manner of natural disasters and calamities. Horkheimer and Adorno attempt to show how myth and Enlightenment are inextricably linked through their discussion of the Greek epic ‗Odyssey‘ in which the hero, Odysseus orders and dominates the ‗mythic‘ through rational control. Similarly, science also becomes ‗myth‘ when the abstract categories created by humans themselves become reified and come to dominate and control us, and make us unable to question or challenge them. In the second Excursus of DE, the authors move from domination of external nature to the domination of ‗inner nature‘, that is human instincts and drives. Freud‘s theory of libido and the concept of inner drives had a major impact on Horkheimer, who used these ideas extensively in some of his earlier essays. Using the example of the erotic writings of the Marquis de Sade, they attempt to show how the pursuit of pleasure becomes more important than pleasure itself. Thus the intimate inner world of pleasure, fulfillment and happiness are also not exempt from the dominance and control of instrumental reason. Our inner natures, our sense of self thus become reduced to a set on instrumental functions, devoid of autonomy.

 

4.  Other Works 

 

One of the most widely read and discussed chapters in DE is the one on the ‗culture industry‘, which is as relevant and thought provoking today as it was at the time DE was first published. The ‗traditional‘ forms of art like painting, theatre, the opera, classical music etc. were fast supplanted by the ‗mass‘ media which were a part and parcel of the age of mass production under capitalism. Photography, radio, television, film, popular music and other forms of mass culture were experienced first hand by the early Frankfurt School intellectuals who migrated to America in the 1930s, including Horkheimer himself. During this period, the Frankfurt school developed a critical interdisciplinary approach to studying culture in which they considered the political economy, textual and literary analysis and social and ideological dimensions of what they termed the ‗culture industry‘. The term connotes the commodification, massification and standardization of culture, which was like any other ‗commodity‘ mass-produced by the engines of industrial capitalism. However, it had the additional responsibility of providing ideological legitimacy to the capitalist system and socializing individuals to conform and fit into the society. Horkheimer and Adorno argued that this system of cultural production dominated by the media of mass communication was controlled by commercial interests and advertising which functioned to strengthen the roots of consumerism and capitalism. Even though their approach is criticized by some writers as being reductive and stressing only on the manipulative and totalizing dimensions of mass media, it none the less sensitized generations of scholars to look at culture and communication in a more politically informed and analytical manner.

 

The chapter on anti-Semitism also is an example of viewing an issue from multiple theoretical perspectives. They approach it from various perspectives including the politico-historical, economic, religious, psychoanalytical and anthropological ones. From the critical theory perspective, they attempt to explain anti-semitism in terms of the decline of reason and the trend towards conformity and stereotypical thinking, which form the basis of the ‗authoritarian personality‘.

 

Douglas Kellner (see the link http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html) reads DE as a deconstructive text which takes apart the Enlightenment, reason, bourgeouis concepts, positivism and social theory and anticipates postmodern theory. It epitomizes a society under transition and its open ended, fragmentary and complex character lends itself to multiple interpretations. The ‗multiperspectival‘ analyses of various social phenomena also underscore the openness of critical theory as compared to the narrow, blinkered approach of sciences and social sciences to which the Frankfurt School sought to provide a corrective. It is no surprise, therefore, that DE has earned itself a canonical status as the most important text of the Frankfurt School. Wolin (2006) writes that the DE signifies the passage of critical Theory from Marx to Nietzsche. The ills of modern society can no longer be remedied from within, rather, modernity itself is viewed as a degenerate social form echoing the views of Nietzsche. Wolin points out that by embracing a Nietzschean perspective on reason, wherein reason is domination, they simultaneously reject the possibility of reflexivity and self-knowledge as the key to emancipation, thereby subverting both Marx and Freud, whose formulations of class consciousness and ego autonomy, respectively, underscored the importance of self awareness and knowledge as the key to the good life and the good society (Ibid: 6). However, as earlier mentioned, in ‗Eclipse of Reason‘ Horkheimer does distinguish between the subjective reason that is associated with domination and ‗objective‘ reason that adjudicates between means and ends, and thus prevents the human race from sliding into unchecked nihilism. As long as this capacity remains intact, human beings will be able to articulate meaningful ideals and goals.

 

DE raises a fundamental question: Is it possible for society to liberate itself from the ultimately destructive march of ‗instrumental reason‘? Are all avenues for finding in reason the possibility of any liberative critique of society closed? There is much pessimism in both, DE and ‗Eclipse of Reason‘, but at the same time there are also hints that critical theory can stimulate positive social change. Horkheimer does not present any concrete program of action because he believes that first and foremost, thought must be corrected, that reason must be freed from the clutches of instrumentality. Reason must therefore be correctly deployed without falling into the trap of formalism and static scientific concepts. Some scholars argue that the unusual literary style of DE is also an attempt to escape the rigid grid traditional texts; the parallels with post modernism are inescapable. Horkheimer also suggests in ‗Eclipse‘ that human beings can escape from the homogenizing and totalizing forces of society through individual action, non- conformism and welding together of a solidarity based on the experience of shared suffering  and empathy.

 

5. Conclusion 

 

Horkheimer returned to Europe in April 1948, after the end of World War II, and lectured in a number of European cities including Frankfurt. In July 1949 he resumed his duties as Professor at the University of Frankfurt and reestablished the Institute thereafter. He busied himself with administrative duties and his literary output was mainly confined to lectures and essays. He retired in 1958 and moved to the Swiss town of Montagnola. The idea of human suffering and compassion as the seedbed for action and change can be seen in his later work. His 1961 essay ‗The German Jews‘ ends with the following words:

 

The decisive point—and the real task of education without which neither the Jewish nor the Christian nor the German cause is helped—is that men should become sensitive not to injustice against the Jews but to any and all persecution, and that something in them should rebel when any individual is not treated as a rational being‘ (p 118, cf SEP p 22).

 

Horkheimer passed away on July 7 1973 at the age of 73. His life and work were steeped in a deep humanism that sought to unite theory with praxis by reflecting and engaging with the reality of human oppression and suffering, and by reconceptualising the domain of philosophy not as an arcane, esoteric one, divorced from the reality of the human condition, but rather, as a vibrant, reflective enterprise that should work to make the world a better place to live in.

 

6.  Summary 

 

A few important points learnt in this chapter are summarised as follows :

  • Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) was one of the stalwarts of the Frankfurt School, whose writings lay the foundations of critical theory‘ which the Frankfurt School is best known for.
  • He asked What is theory?‘ and distinguished between social theories, scientific social theories and critical social theories. While the first two categories were subsumed under traditional‘ theories, critical social theory connoted that adopted by the Frankfurt School.
  • Horkheimer rejects the notion of objective‘ knowledge by pointing out that the object of knowledge is embedded within a social and historical process. Traditional theory fails to realize that it is the prevalent economic structure of society (capitalism) that actually shapes scientific work and not the mental processes of the scientist.
  • Scientific method is a rigid, mechanistic activity, a set of mathematical symbols and formulae bereft of a critical edge. Critical social theory, on the other hand, purposefully examines the manner in which a theory emerges out of a particular social and historical setting.
  • Horkheimer‘s later work in the 1940s echoes this pessimism regarding the helplessness of rationality to stem the descent of humanity into the abyss of irrationality and barbarism.
  • The central thesis of Horkheimer and Adorno is as follows: The Enlightenment seeks to undermine myth‘, yet in so doing, it rigidifies into a new myth‘, namely, the reduction of reason‖ to the claims of positive science‘.
  • A critical engagement with the Enlightenment required understanding and analyzing how reason itself could be deployed to undermine human freedom and enslave society. However, the antidote is not to give up reason for irrationality, as this would result in even more horrific consequences to humankind.
  • He differentiates between  subjective‘ and  objective‘ reason, which finds fuller expression in his book The Eclipse of Reason‘ (1947). Subjective or instrumental reason is rooted in self-interest and self –preservation and primarily focuses on the means to achieve a goal. Objective reason on the other hand is concerned with ends rather than means, it attempts to root truth and meaning within a comprehensive totality.
  • Freud‘s theory of libido and the concept of inner drives had a major impact on Horkheimer,
  • Horkheimer and Adorno argued that this system of cultural production dominated by the media of mass communication was controlled by commercial interests and advertising which functioned to strengthen the roots of consumerism and capitalism
  • The multiperspectival‘ analyses of various social phenomena also underscore the openness of critical theory as compared to the narrow, blinkered approach of sciences and social sciences to which the Frankfurt School sought to provide a corrective.
  • Horkheimer does distinguish between the subjective reason that is associated with domination and objective‘ reason that adjudicates between means and ends, and thus prevents the human race from sliding into unchecked nihilism. As long as this capacity remains intact, human beings will be able to articulate meaningful ideals and goals.
  • Reason must therefore be correctly deployed without falling into the trap of formalism and static scientific concern
  • Horkheimer also suggests in ‗Eclipse‘ that human beings can escape from the homogenizing and totalizing forces  of  society  through  individual  action,  non-conformism  and  welding  together  of solidarity based on the experience of shared suffering and empathy.
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7.  References