Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Preface lx
O Urizen Books, New Yok l97t General Introduction Paul Piccone xt
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, PartI Political Sociology and
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- Critique of Politics
copy, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
rl
i'
I
s-
"facticity" and "positivity" of existing sciences. Ac-
Kantianism sought to broaden the Kantian meaning of critique Phenomenology and Philosophy of Right than in the Kantian
by making history (cultural and social) the primary theme of tradition.
transcendental or critical self-reflection. From Dilthev and Given the theoretical sources of critical theory and its Marx-
r*,t ian political thrust, it is hardly surprising that its reception in the
historical reason." English-speaking world was not what it would have deserved.
To be sure, Kant left to prosterity several t ey essays on tristo.y
-
which examine the limits and possibilities of progress, but, as is
Still, critical theory has not been a total stranger to the English-
speaking world, at least since the late 1930s. Horkheimer and
evident frorn his theme, he was deeply swayed by the eighteenth- Adorno spent a crucial period of their lives in the U.S.,
century way of viewing these problems. The nineteenth century, relocating the Institute and the journal Zeitschrift fr
however, became an age of the highest conceivable degree of Sozialforschang, whose last volumes were published in English.
historical experience, learning, research and reflection; and any Neumann and Kirchheimer spent their last years in the U.S., and
new critical philosophy of history had to interpret the works of their reputations as great teachers influenced some American
Ranke, Taine, Michelet, Burckhardt, Droysen, etc. The political scientists. Fromm became a leading member of the
Hegelian critique of Kant-short of what the Neo-Kantians saw American Neo-Freudian school, and although he broke with the
as Hegel's speculative, "panlogical" sgss5ss-also had to be in- Institute, he has never given up the characteristic Frankfurt
tegrated. So in an age when natural science enjoyed its highest project of the Marx-Freud synthesis. Lowenthal and Marcuse,
prestige, one group of primarily Cerman (but also French and finally, continue the tradition of Frankfurt critical theory in
Italian) thinkers systematically attempted to replace nature by America into the present day, with the latter playing a key role
culture, science by history as the focus of philosophical concern, for the theoretically inclined minority of the New Left of the
an attitude also typical of the early mentors of the Institute's 1960s. Nor has the influence of critical theory on academia been
members: F{ans Cornelius, Martin Heidegger and Edmund totally negligible. During their stays in New York and Los
Husserl, as well as of the single most important Marxian in- Angeles, Adorno and Horkheimer had a conflict-ridden but
fluence on the Institute, Georg Lukcs. perhaps not fruitless relationship with American sociologists, as
demonstrated by the volume Mass Culture (with articles by
r)l
Lu Adorno and Lowenthal) that was published much later. Better
main source of critical theory was the Marxian known is the series of empirical and theoretical pro.jects on the
study of prejudice and the authoritarian personality which
brought Adorno and Horkheimer into working contact with a
number of scholars (Bruno Bettelheim, Morris Janowitz et al.)
whose intellectual development, however, has since taken dif-
ferent directions. More important were contacts with men like
Hans Gerth and Benjarnin Nelson who were to convey, in spite
of their reservations, something of the content and the spirit of
Kantian idea of categorical self-reflection and the demonstration critical theory to future generations of students. In this last
of the limits of the science criticized was surely incorporated in respect the work of such collaborators of the Institute as Mar-
Marx's concept, but so was Hegel's objection that Kant assumed cuse. Neumann, Kirchheimer, Gerhard Meyer and K.A. Witt-
General Inlroduction General Introduction \v
W a t_ Hg h_e
qq ?- _i\ ,L egj4.ruq li 94 C_ r i; i.;i .
c 4l lq t li s r.at i
-o
n 4li t y -
o r institutionalization was only possible through authoritarian
p: qn mI c_ l:g.tyl i9_tt _le
g-[,-l_ al -"tbe -.{U LQq
m_elt Bl c ri s i s o f the means; in the U.S. the lack of a powerful opposition was a ma-
-_qf
requires a-gglplete re-vsrsal jor factor in making for a peaceful and relatively smooth transi-
=9ye-rqdry-Udsf-e.I-e4g9_c_r_ely. fhig_c{siq
to prevent the tlon.
gl_t_._lgg_i-c- 91_gry-qimensionality so as very
slllg.n fIoT grinding to a halt through the reams _of Thus, t stitutional shift from entrgpq1gq-lal capttaligt
bureaucratic paperwork. q",N_9 w p eal greq4 q_qrattqlal iZa! oAq [ 9ep!4!gt_e_414!9Eb y
9.t. gyle-U.iye into iltle1;iy.e growth.'
The resulted from a
With the final collapse of any hope for the Marxist model in mass and otherness left
the 1970s, the changing function of critical theory should not over from previous social formations so as to create the condi-
come as a complete surprise. Late capitalism finds itself unable tions necessry for this restructuring of capitalism. Tayloriza-
to provide free space for the emancipatory tendencies which it tion, capital-intensive technology, the culture industry and con-
needs to guarantee its own continued world domination in a con- sumerism combined within a production system that was based
text characterized by a rapidly decaying "Communist" world on the autornobile and military expenditures, and this facilitated
and a Third World unable to successfully modernize. What,this io-n qt,$pltalist relations into all crelies l everv-
analysis entails as a precondition for a meaningful relaunching narlity as the te!dential fulfillment of the
of critical theory and a full understanding of its heritage is e_qt-which Horkheimer and Adorno un-
_ ttg!_wilbln a nervlqfiq_drzatio of twentieth-century justifiably dehistoricized and projected back onto the whole tra-
lfg ln
short, itrne4m -lgg_atiqg [!_e_ o-ne dirnensionality jectory of Western civilization from Odysseus to Hitler-
qweleness q f te t_rgLtig_n{. ph ?-: g. assumed the characteristics that Marcuse has so trenchantly
glllgpleryll.al glg ad , while locating lra{i- elirninated all remaining obstacles. i-
-d-
dpeisonalization asociated with
critical perspective__to deal
-4 yg! !q jReriod--i.e., the domination of the concept and of capital's
q-_e_.d-.e-v"g]-9ped
t. I
abstract instrumental reason-constitute the historical limit of
Already prefigured at the turn of the century when the crisis phase. The full triurnph of one-
ithis transitory rationalizing
of entrepreneurial capitalism seerned to have entered into its l^l r^ rL^ ^-.L^,.^+:^- ^f +L^ +l-^+
final phase, but fully institutionalized only after the 1929 crash, i q-qq.p.the glhlqs-lig!.of.t!e ryodql
-^l^l !lt[_.].
i
of one-dimensionality meant the ingre.asi1g, exten_sion of
Lhe age
point-of Ultimately da reversal of the logic of one-
o[q_c!-iy-e-,-c3p!-tg!_gve_ 9ye1y facel gf life-even to the ylfi-c-tr wa gr'tlv fcltitteA by the system's suc-
r g c o-q g_t tigg .g eI ? g t_e,r s t r u c t u r e a n d p er s ona li t y t o^ a-cc o r d w i t h
l t"U
internar
t-he equiemgqlq g[ q4tlgnali-zAqo-n.
n-e_ry
The first thirty years of this century are marked not only by
during,,i-8.l,f i#i#*,T[;H:ii:"'
meaningfully cha,[e,!ge_4.1bq sy!_eqf c44 allow harmless new
the blossoming of a variety of Marxist theories, but also by the
prefiguration of various successful and unsuccessful institutions _iqqlUUtiqlAl free space within which spontaneity and
generate much-needed control
of the coming weifare state. After pre-World War I progressive lgg_q-qlj_ty thrive, and can thus
legislation, scientific management, el{ lhq iqteg"I4tiq4 q[ e-ar-lier
mechanisms. .g.yjlsm's irnmediate response is to at-
C-qllg,Iqle such opposition. This explains the recent
tg11r1l ,gf 9p-p-gs-ition (essentially orgaized- Labor) have been phenornenon of counterbureaucratic bureaucracies that tend to
finally institutionalized during and after the New Deal, such
reproduce the very problems they are meant to solve. The con-
strictures as Prohibition and other overtly represeive projects
could be dropped. The new situation no longer required them to
tradiction remains that, for the planned society, fite
generate the new phase of capitalist rationalization. As a matter
of fact, they stood in its way. In certain European states, such cgMlqe bureaucratically plotted out. At best, it can only bc
xxil Generol Inlroduction General lntroduction
no's cultural criticism, and the anticipation of the much later critique pa4fs. an eve herS no f g. The Hungarian Georg Lukcs was
of politics in the works of Jrgen Habermas and Claus Offe. eventually (after 1930) forced to completely renounce his fundamen-
of the whole "criticalMarxist" or "WestemMarx- tal 1923 work, History and Class Consciousness.3 The German Karl
BrucibJe
ist" or "Hegelian Maxist" enteprise was t .KpCch was booted out of the German Communist party for his
defense of his 1923 work Marxism and Philosophy,n and the ltalian
9?)_g th9 ucges of the Russian Revollltion
(1917). The determinist, evolutionist, economistic social theory of qtoniq Gfaqlsgi was "protected" from the Communist Intemational
classical Social Democracy, the first political heir of Marx and En- only by Mussolini's prison where he wrote the so-called Prison
gels, was discredited by the generally conservative and even national- Notebooks.s As different as these theorists were intellectually and
ist behavior of most Social Democratic parties and unions during politically, SJ-lg-e{_!.y^o-._ipp_o-.t1!! :t lg9g.qi_!tsy__hg -_Lg"n
World War I. The Bolsheviks, whe-along with other groups-split ieISStUaLly-f .oqq_d9u1sr,{9_![e_!yI3U9!g$_ltlo!,primarilyincon-
off from the Second International during these events, erefore re- texts dominated by the revival q!.:G_-e-ffrgg-Eg-4Sm, and ,L.yete
mained unsullied by the compromise and surrender of Social Democ- dSg!ty9ly-_s"bep_p{ _uy,.!1,_g .Oc1obe1 Rev,olutlo_n ag$_ py_1h,e_varlors
racy. But they inherited the mantle of revolutionary orthodoxy not c9"Ull9jl.9,Ip9li1n9l_rll in whigh all !!rye had played glygtgl_pgl,tical
because of their purity, or even because of their superior theoretical rolEs. The new intellectual cast of mind helpefl them reconceptualize
and political "line," but because of the unexpected success of radical the political experience; all three theorists drew heavily on the hitherto
revolufion in Russia. With the exception of a few strategic but not badly known background of Marxism in German Idealism to work out
highly theoretical departures the Bolsheviks did not revise the "world
view" of l9th century Marxism, and with the partial exception of ,a
Lenin's State and Revolution d pgt iqto !-q_G.ra4ggils) the centrl concepts of
qulh-ollqi_animplications of one side of lhqt world view. iti9_q4ioq_-ertd,r_r_r9diili-qu)'
yr qqli.qipg!_frrg fqr w_orse things to come,
s. This "philosophy of
$p_gg_r_e_s_s!yqlggde-c-igsgt$-ar1:
i b:_mpyt4g _b-4qk toyard lhe l_E!h qerttury materialism praxis" represented t w_oq-ll l!@1q g-qll
Eggpe. The three major theorists of the first phase of the critical
Marxist enterprise did not exptlcitly g (y,Ih ttgp3::lqg_Sl-
c_eptioA of _BgssDj&l9lh__c-qttgry ltsory qt th9 mqre or less
q Marx himself
had analyzed. None of them
reified networks of relations-leaving finally no self to be preserved. critical theorists from the "End of Reason" to Marcuse's One-Dimen-
But as long as market rationality and parliaments were not replaced by sional Msn (1963) were to claim, the reality that replaced liberal
the manipulation of monopolistic competition and the terror of au-
.
thoritarian states, the remnants of new individUa-lity of the libqral era
tique of polilical economy , was ' 'one-dimensional. ' ' &_new cltlq4l
tgry_qlspgygr-e{ ilsglf i! I ltiqlgqe4 S-q-n"!gxt whq19 1tr-e -d_es-r-iLa!oq of
rygn e5lrng.n_q!9,(I -gy rqankfrt -t_lpryg) gy.l.l-r"tg was
justified
i@1 UdU a!_!y late_-cepl!41 iqr I 4I!e to thr,e4!en, parame -
or or even old bou rgeoil
-idedS Qtl_ gqry_Fy
ist social theory has either neglected or dealt with in a
-y9.llsq-qy_llo__traditional
-g
.lgS-bgjqel-gtticiglgy.'' If the other side of the commodity or money
on. The reduction was not unlike the fetish was the birth of the individual, the other side of the latter's
in authoritarian states, one of which decline was the "technological veil." !re_1o141, central plan which
corrld lesitimate itself bv a suitable version of Marxist theory' Hork- 1ep_rsgqnted-a lew si?99 o[ !eedqq,1qorlhg{ox Mqili-sry.el:yen il
_clili_c_ql !!gly_o{ thg l!3-0s, was lo}v p_rer-e.nJe Qy ltqtlsi,Sjlqg-eglhe
tool o-f a-ujh.o{ilgli?n p-qt{rS-q,.9.._t_\g_ly_:&4h. " Man's control over
[Il9 IaSl Llauss ul suust4rrtr4r Irrurvuu4rr-i nature, another classical Marxian desideratum originally uncontested
ano one oI Ine rasl (lelenses (.)r
ty. Not that he did not realize its many repressive and integrative{ by critical theory, was according to the Horkheimer of I 940 necessari-
functions. But he also saw another side. The relationships of motherl ly the stuff of the new ideology. e
, and child and the sexual relationship, before they are functionalized,
I are the refuge of sensitivity in a society dominated by economici
soon abandoning part of his position.24 Here we are especially interest- freedom of contracts; nationalizin
ed in the answer which the main line of critical theory in the 1940s itarlv sBFoinrg pr"i*;iffiaigrowrh as rhe key
(Horkheimer and Pollock) gave to the question about the very possi,
ec"."*" ;.1[-
rion; and guaranteeing the survival f the private,
monopolistic sector
bility of new post-capitalist and yet antagonistic social formations. through fiscal policy, government orders and direct
susidies.2e pol_
The position of the 1940s indicating that new "statist" social forma- lock was no! yespeaking of t
tions have already emerged (at least tendentially) in three different The changes repreGntea Uy
forms was attained only gradually. We have already reviewed the economic adaptation to the old social_economic
relations of produc_
social-philosophical summary of the shift in Horkheimer's work. Its
political-economic meaning, in many respects even more dramatic, is
best visible in the theoretical development of Friedrich Pollock. As
early as two Zeitschn/rafticlesof 1932and 1933, "DieGegenwrtige
surviving bits of orthodox Marx_
Lage des Kapitalismus und die Aussichten einer planwirtschaftlichen
Neuordnung" and "Bemerkungen zur Wirtschaftskrise,"zs Pollock
rejected all attempts to assimilate the current economic crisis ("the
Great Depression") to previous crises of the capitalist economy.
According to him, new structural elements within capitalist develop- consider the authoritarian framework essential for
this last solution.3o
ment-increasing centralization and monopolization, state interven- Again departing from his position of a year earlier,
he now argued that
tion (as yet planned and arbitrary) and vast increases in the use of capitalist planning would be suppofed by the leadershii
industrial technology-have definitely damaged the self-regulation of
of t"y
monopolies and the state bureaucracy, but only
initially by te middle
the capitalist market system. While this diagnosis indeed led Pollock classes. This rerative weakness of social base
required in polrock,s
to argue for the end of liberal capitalism based on the "automatic," cyes the authoritarian stafe. Thus
"self-regulating" market, the ascendancy of individual enterprise,
and parliamentary government,26 he had no doubt that the short-run
replacement would be only a renewed capitalism: merely a new
constellation on the ground of the existing system of social relations, rnd the first version of critical thory.
i e. monopoly capital ism. Pollock never considered this solution to be
.
The orthodoxy of the critical theory of the I 930s
was not based
a stable one. That his views were appropriately in flux is shown by a .n a de-emphasis of the ,.superstructural,,
spheres of politics and
comparison of the two articles in question. On the basis of the culture which would have been highly irresponsible in
the circum_
capitali in the-Soviet Union sfances of Nazi Germany. There were good
historical reasons
(which tii.Hu,rt-r,i-tt unlil 1936 ermany fundjr{ren_tally
at least
L---
Political Sociology and Critique oJ Politks Introduction 17
Comintern orthodoxy. In his eyes one crucial politically dynamic emergence and the possible future of "authoritarian states" in terms
aspect of liberal capitalism was now missing, not just in Germany but colored by an smre. As a result their
in other capitalist societies: the "subjective factor," the potential theory can be stion 3 aboverelating
agent of transformation, e revolutionary proletariat. The 1933 essay to the genesis
is perhaps the first to ground this basic belief, or rather fea, of critical
theory; among the causes for the decline of the revolutionary pro The Emergence of Nazi Germany and Soet Russia
letariat tgn oJ 9eEtsl[1d_, e$rcrued working as Authoritarian States
pq=tu as we'II aV
d-ptouction 33
methods In this respect
too, the ve for critical
theory.
In the essays of the 1940s reproduced below Pollock and Hork-
heimer clearly built their analysis of the authoritarian state on the
economic theory developed by the forrner in the I 930s. Yet they broke
with this theory in one fundarnental respect rich in new implications:
S-gleteS-the!qy993_t_qy9_i!_e.4) thc_ fine_l,qnqis_gt_qp_iteliqg_y.qre
anticapitalism q no,!,_q4]gqrg.9s to capital (i.e. the obsolete the period of its distant admiration for the Soviet Union, the 1930s. In
commercial capitalisrn associated with the Jews) and the fact until Marcuse's much later (1957) Soviet Marxisn no Frankfiit-
type anlysis of the Soviet Union was
thoritaian State," which we have alr
nythological co ty. Fascism for Adorno r.e&ases the-$b*L9e,iYi- cal watershed in the politics of critical theory precisely in relation to
the Soviet Union, was only a partial exception iu this contexJ. The
. The manipulation of fascist agitators, e-ffe-c_1g gn-ly essay certainly reveals the deep effect on criligql theory_ qt Soylg!
developments and of the parillel sg!!!cq1!o! qffhe working-class
. " The last phrase is used by movement in the West./'ut its theoretical claims about Bolshevism
Adorno also in relationship to the mass culture of late capitalist were rather well known, though not for that reason false. Horkheim-
cultural industries. lt^res--bi,s- belief that !he- sg,c!9-p.qyc_hological er's analysis of the continuity between bureaucratic working-class
m-anipulatio-n of fascism that is based on the utilization of tltqlgglion- organization and "integral statism" onlyiepeated argumenti often
al, is anti-cipaqqd and p{gp-3r".qd 'b: thq mass-cultural re,{uction_pf the drawn from Max Webdi. On tihe other hand the assumption of Hor-
/ last traces kheimer's imnianent critique (repeated by Marcuse in 1957) that the
_et gAg._igi! .Thus, socio-psychologically at least, Ador-
I no was able to present fascism as a general problem of late bourgeois admittedly most consistent form of the authoritarian state was because
society. ttg.g_]ry_th"_{og! gf his tendency to present the world of.the of its working-Class ideology the most open to liberating, cataclysmic
social change (based on a new council movement) derived from an z
)
w ithout hqpe.
, eul!-u-re Ld]]-s!r-y. 4s. -completely
It is in this context especially that the emergence of the Soviet inadequate analyis of Soviet conditions ard of the nature of Soviet
form of the authoritarian state could never be assimilated to the Marxism as a pseudoscience of legitimation. Much more convincing
analysis of merely one type of social formation, the "authoritaian was Franz Neumann's suspicion in 195 l-rejected by Marcuse in
state" or "state capitalism". The first Frankfurt theorist to consider 1957-that the failure of "permanent revolution'' in its international
the transition to a fully authoritarian state in the Soviet Union was Otto context and the failure of democratic revolution intemally not only led
Kirchheimer. In 1933, several years before his association with the to the totalitarian politics of the Five-Year Plns l converted the
Institute, Kirchheimer investigated the consequences of both the ex- holders 6f political power into a new class'Thus a r'preparatory
cess of utopianism and the excess of party-oriented realpolitik for the dictatorship" became a permanent one.36 Unfortunately because of a 7)
hi
, popular democratic soviets, or councils. Revising an earliertt" and
( more favorable assessment of Soviet politics, the essay "Marxism, l , the older critical theory could never contribute much
\ Dictatorship, and the Organization of the Proletariat" criticized both to the analysis of the limits of this permanence.
_
the "primitive democratic dreams" of Lenin's State and Revolution Without the same sharpness of. political vision as Neumann and
and the authoritarian tendencies of Bolshevik organization. The latter Kirchhiiner, Horkheimer was neveitheless remarkable for dducing-
in particular, according to Kirchheimer, led to an identification of
party with bureaucratic state administration, destroying through the
acceptance of bureaucratic forms both intraparty democracy and the i understood that the reading_of Marx'g,critique of political economy as
earlier dynamic links to the underlying population. For a centralized
'i
lt positive theory f development_from market to planned economy-
and centralizing party in control of the bureaucratic state, however, anticipaies the collapse of liberal capitalism, 6ut of the "new society'' )
the loss of contact with their mass base could only mean terror. Here only its authbritaria form. ffis ws the political side of the f,amos
was a creative (though only implicit) application of the Marxian Frankfurt redefinition of Marxism as the critique of ideology.
-Further-
analysis of Jacobinism to the Soviet Union, more convincing than nrorc, to be mor piecise, even the negative critique of the capitalist
-Trotsky's uncertain juggling with the slogans of "Thermidor" and rrarket-oriented "anarchy of production" could easily imply the
,' "Bonapartism." The main line of critical theory represented by lcgitimation of the "abstract negation" of the authoritarian ce_trql
Hokheirner, did not, as we have said, pick up on these key themes in rlan.,This was the political meaning of another famous Frankfurt
Political Sociology and Critique ol Politics
Itr0ducton 1I
Neumann, the
wofking-class movement necessarily led to the authoritalian state.
.q y, which in his later
Instead he seemed fo believe that neither, in their classical form, were writings unmasks many totalitarian features of contemporary formal
sufficiently protected against deformations that anticipated the new democracies that increasingly replace liberal ideology and the demand
system of domination' And as !e sary pr.ic-4-l thgo-ty-!-o-b-9"!htlb99Ct- for a genuine public opinion b I
jcal ggggW, in 1940 (no matter how briefly) he saw council ellicreqcy. In Marcuse's latei work rhe stabiliry of state capitalist
communism as the analogous political corrective. The two found each systems is all the more fateful and impentrabl hen the technologi-
other in that brief moment when the main theorists of the Frankfurt cal vil (rather than liberal iAeotogy oi iilreodominarion) becomes rhe
principle of social integration. In other words when Marcuse came to
abandon all hope in democratic reform he was to draw (against all his
incliii) donclsis irhplyin t-mubh stiuctuial stability for
latecapitalism.TItamwamoaelSiief iETqs7n-drilf "
the Soviet Union, where he was able to juxtapose stteaiiilined,
i later neocapitalist social formations. Uureaurtic, self-reproducing domination with onty ttre supposedly
I iberalin tdriciei of ihe cntrai :il nd whatever still survives of
The Emergence, Structure and Dynamics of Neocapitalism Marxist ideology.,7,
The specific historical matrix for the-emerg alism (to
It will easily be seen that in the absence of a single posture and
use a neutral term for the democratic or man of "state
definition, the genesis of a version of'siaie Capitalism repiesented by
the New Deal was also conCeed diffrntly (s t'ciriiouti-'
"-aniputat1"1. Those theorists who concentrated on the
manipulated, closed, authoritarian features of the system (Horkheim-
cr, Adorno, Kirchheimer and the later Marcuse) focused on the
objectively necessary response of capitalism to crisis and the conquest
of the subjective factor by the political organizations of pluralist mass
no meafrs harmonious. Here one can no longer speak of theoretical democracy and by the culture industry (in a manner analogous to the
fascist "psychoanalysis in reverse"). The theorists who insisted on
the juridical-legal protection of civil rights and the survival of some
rcsidues of popular political participation under late capitalism
'(Neumann
and Pollock) pstutatd a w DeItyp of system ihd
achievemnt f the tlemocitic foice (uions, rbformiii partis etc.)
hattlinist th othei histfil altriil,-f-aiam.Tirurpiis--
inglylh cerning rhe
structure new social
l ormation. The theory postulating
lcd to (or perhaps already pres
thcory of
Dimensio
l)rovemen
Political Sociology and Critique of Politcs lntt tult'tion 23
tic outcome. when, however, key concepts like reification, the fetish
'of technology, the petrifaction of language and the mythological
lconsequehces of the
Enlighte
Itended so as to cover all of h
humanization of man the anim
in
be available in either Past' Pres
precise the locus of liberation then would be necessarily narrowed to
the staunchest, most self-reflective and self-critical forms of criticism
in autonomos art and critical philosophy.
In the context of the genesis of Frankfurt cultural critique this
'l:,, of Politics
oslraclsm.
tural indi-
!e features
:e, " These
{ppetite is
ned. The Notes
r ariety of
ch society
: appetlte,
rich is im-
rr. Ei,ery
niful. and
g bondage Political Sociology and Critique of Politics
p appetlte l. On Lenin's place in the philosophical spcctrum of the Sccond International rl1. A.
m from an Arato, "Between Antinonry and l\{yth: Mrxism and Phiiosoph Reconsidcred'in
Hobsbawm, Haupr et al. eds., A Histor ol Sotialist Tltought (Einaudi Ediore,
conserva- forthcoming in 1978).
On Cramsci lld C. Boggs, Cruntsti's Mur.rislt (Londrn: Pluto Prcss, 19761: Nl.
Vajda'sreviewof PrisonNotbotkstoTclts(St Louis,Springl9T3)XV;andspeciul
issue of Tlrs (St. Louis, Spring 1977) XXXI.
On Korsch lid the special issue of l'lls (Sl Louis, Wintcr 1975) XXVI.
Also cf. lhe rclerant articles in K. Klure und D. Houard cds, I/l L'nknovn
Dnansion (New York: Basic Books, l97l).
5a. For a presentation of the lasr two concepts, reification and mediation, see our
introduction to the next part "Eslheic Theorl und Cultural Criticisnl "
5b. On this problem cf our introducrion ro the lasr part of the anthology "A Critique ot
Methodologl .' '
7. Cf. Horkheimer, "Authority and rhe Family" (t936) in CriritaL Thcor and
t63
t64 Political Sociolog' ond Cririque of Politics
Notes t65
ll. Cf. "Authority and the Family." 23. For a summary of the
restricts the implications to
12. In I 934 his evaluation of Soviet development seemed to be positive indeed. cf. G revisionism. He does nol se
.'Poliical Economy and Critical Theory, " Telos (St. Louis, Summer l975 lnterpretation of Nazism. "
o Marramao,
xxlv. position, also nts in his desire to measure the main line of\
critical theory of political economy represented by some ,l
28. And yet both were in Pollock's description very unlikely, the first because the
cnlcrgence of the state as total capifal would reduce the existing ruling class to a
Iristorically unprecedented rentier status, and the second because of the low level of
cluss consciousness among the proletariat.
social formation was raised at exactly the same time, 2. Cf OrigenagoinstCelsus.Book4,ch.2-5(TheAntiniceneFarhers.ed Robertand
o the same political problcm, by three breahaways fronr l)onaldson, New York 1890, Vol IV, p -507).
zzi, Schachtman and Burnham and by Pollock and
amd (iv). 3. Cf. Aristotle, Politics,I 1260a 18.
(i) Bruno Rizzi, La Bureaucratisation clu Monde (Paris, 1939). 4. Kant, Idee :u einer ollgemeinen Oeschichte in telrbiirgerliclrcr Absicht, Ninth
|)r oposition.
(ii) James Burnham, Thc Manageriol Revolution (New York, t94l).
5. CottlobErnstSchulze, AenesidemusotleriiberdicFundameiltcderrond?nHerrn
(i) Max Schachtman, The Bureoucratic Revolution: The Rise ol thc Stalinist Statc Professor Reinhold in reno gcliefertan Elementarphilosophie Nebst einer verteidi-
(New York, 1962). ,qtrng des skeptiiismus gegen die Anmassrng der vernunltkririk li92.ln Neudrucke
rltr Kantgesellschaft, Berlin l9l l, p. 135.
(iv) Leon Trotsky, In Defense ol Marxism (New York, 1942).
6. Essa'Concerning Human Understantling, Book tV, ch. xvii, p. l.
34. Cf. e.g. Fromm, Escapc lrom Freedom ad Adorno, Gesammelte Schrifren
(Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1972, 1975) v. 8-9. Wc regret that in this pan we can 7. Cf E Zeller,SocroresandtheSocraticSchools,transl byReichel, London lg6g,
reproduce one essay only from this rich selection, rhe Adorno essay which is least l) I 25.
available to an English-speaking audience. But see also he Fromm essay in Part III of
this volume. fl. Cf LsEs.rais, edited Villey, Paris 193O, Vol II, ch. xii, p.491 ff.
35. Cf. Bruce Brcwn, Freud, Marx and thc Critique oJ Ever,day Ly'e (New York: 9. Dc Maistre, Etude sur l Souyeroinet, Oeuvres compltes, Lyon lg9l, Tome I,
Monthly Review, 1974); Russeli Jacoby, Social Amnesia (Boston: Beacon, 1975); y 367 77.
Michael Schneider, Neurosis and Civilization (New York: Seabury, 1975); Jay,
Diolectical Imagination chapter 3 On the methodological side of this issue cf . our Part ll). A. Mathiez, Contributions d l'Histoire religieuse de Io Reyolution FrctnEoise,
III below. l';rris 1907, p.32.
35a. Both essays are to be found in O. Kirchheimer, Polilics, Law ond SocialChonge ll. Lclter to D'Alembert, Feb.4, 1757, op cit., Vol. 39, p 167.
(New York: Columbia U. Press, 1969). Theearlieressay "TheSocialistandBolshevik
Theory of the State" ( I 928) applauded Lenin's discovery of the "primacy of politics" 12. l.crrer ro D'Alembert, Sept. 2, 1768, op cil., Vol. 46, p. ll2.
and also the syndicalist theory (or myth) that he saw latent in the Bolshevik stress on
councils. Even here Kirchheimer demystified the terms "soviet democracy" and I.l. []rnst Mach, Conributions rc the Anal..sis of thc Sensotion., transl. by C. M.
"soviet legality." \\ rlliuns, Chicago 1897, p. 20
36. Franz Neumann, The Dcmocratic and Authoritarian State, pp. 265-66. For l{. I G Fichte, The Science olEthics,rransl byA. E Kroeger, New york Ig97, p
Ncumann the ''new class" comes into being only when definable economically ln this l( ls
his analysis is similar to thosc of Rizzi, Burnham and Djilas among others. For a
recent,far more satisfaclory, political definition cf . Claude Lefort, "What is Burcau- 15. I G. Fichte, T Science ol Righf., rransl by A. E Kroeger, London lgg9, p
cracy," Telos XXII (Winter 1974-1915, St. Louis). lt,l
37. Forthisargumentcf.PartllbelowandespeciallyHorkheimer'sEclipseolReason 15. .lnthropologic in progmutischer Hinsicht, 61.
urd Adorno-Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
17. Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionr.. Article on .-Good" in The Works of
37a. Ct Marcuse, Soyiet Marxism (New York: Columbia U Press, 1958) and Onc- \',,ltrrire, New York 1901, Vol. V, p 264
Dimensionol Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
lll. llt.rrry Charles Lea, A Histor ol the lnquisition ol the Middlc Ages, New york
38. Cf . Franz Neumann, Behemoth,pp.22lff , and C. Marramao op. cit. Marramao, l() ". Vol, I, p 459.
because of his commitment to Marxist orthodoxy as the only possibility of dynamic
theorizing, suppresses the crisis theoretical aspects of Pollock's essay. ('lrrrngts In The Structure of Political Compromise
I St'e , for example, H- Kelsen, Vom Wesen untl Wer der Demokrutie,2d ed
39. Jrgen Habermas, Lagitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon, 1975 pp.24ff. rlr,rlrr. l()29),and,mrerecently,E.p.Herring,Thepoliticsof Democract,(Ncw
\,rrl', r.19,.
The End of Reason
l. Diologue d'Ephmirt, Ocuv'res compllrcs, Paris 1880, Carnier, Vol. 30, p 488. .' I llttkc, Collccted Works, -5th ed. (Boston, 1877), III,48-5 ff
182 Political Sociologl'and Cririqua of Polirics
34.RclbertABrady,..Po]iciesofNationalManufacturingSpitzenverbnde,''in
Political Science Quart('r1-r', LVI, p 537
35. Tha Thoughr antlChoracter ol William lctnts,ed' R' B' Pcrry, Boston 1935'
[I' p'
)65
39. Quoted in E Mims, The Mojority of tha Ptople' New York l94l' p 152'
40. See for cxample Oswald Spengler' Mun nnd Tc chnics, New York 1932'
p' 96f ''
i.Thc Anti_Inustrial Revolution," in Harpers, December 1941 , pp.
an<J Roy Hclton,
65ff.
41. In Naional Socialist Germany, the ideology of blootl and soil and the glorification
of the pcasant is an integral part of rhe impcrialistic robilization of industry and labor.
185
Esthetic Theory and Cultural Criticism lntrodtction 187
t86
vision of labor as the red thread of history that leads not only to the
powerful growth of obiective culture, but also to the corresponding
one-sidedness, deformation and overspecialization of individuals,
i.e., to the crisis of subjective culture. True "subjective culture" was
to Simmel the cultivation of the whole personality, and although this
ambiguous in his work, Simmel's restriction of the achievement of
ion to the great cultural "forms," art, philosophy, theologY,
historiography, and science, did imply the highly privileged and qotrg rg,._bgql-inthp_qerr_qy-qqq_e--of ljhi$j'_c_U!!u9_a+d
philosophically preferablenature of some human activities3, i'e', what
Marx more than fifty years before had called "mental work"' Thus,
.e. , the mode of "high" culture that in spite of its utopian anticipa-
nel systematically related culture in the narrow sense of intellec-
(i
odological remarks on the dependence of "superstructure" on the ment of cultur which is not at thJsame time a ocmentt
..basel' (and in particular the forms of consciousness on the contradic- '
barbaism.,
tory structure of a mode of production) have generally been inter-
preted by Marxists as reason enough to disregard the "epiphenome- 'l'hus wrote Walter Benjamin in a 1937 text reproduced below. But lest
,ra" of culture. However, much of Frankfurt cultural theory begins wc assign the argument to his lonely and idiosyncratic position within
with 's:
's al
(or without) the School, let us quote from Adorno iq. 1966;
and manual labor. In distinction to almost allbourgeois theories of the
r (including Simmel's), for Marx "the division of All post-Auschwitz culture, including its urgent critique, isgar-
pag9. I restoring itself after the thig that happened without
resistance in its own countryside, culture has tumed entirely into
the ideology it had been potentially-had been ever since it
presumed, in opposition to material-existence, to inspire that
cxistence with the light denied it by the separation of mind from
manual- 1ot,r/
lrc quotations represent what Adorno himself called
I t
r itiqy ol 9!!Ure, an_ attAck trem an imagingry.a
r
lrtsi e. Since for most Marxists and even for the sociology of
h o w c d ge the theoretic{..
r r I qqljryL_gl_ :gertqtal "
-key_-!o-_
rlrcrxrrnena- lies_tq__in_Vppgatirg the conflictslc_onqadiS1iA4S.gfuhe
,,, x itl-cconomiq 'lbe_sgll that supposedly slb-ordinate-s cu_lrur-e to the
wipe away the whole as if with a sponge . . . develop an affinity to In a 1937 article, Herbert Marcuse criticized the survival of affirma-
tive culture in the present (hoping for its revolutionary abolition). In
one Adorno usually practiced, '' e,' ' fq{:es the danger Iulother, he focused on the utopian contents of the affirmative culture
gl-&_r"!"C.1.r$gllg! _ir {r9 objec.f-adtiatzed.' Even the above lines ol the past.13 And much later, in his -Essay on Liberation (1969), he
from Negative Dialectics about Auschwitz and culture end, therefore, cirlled once again for the reintegration of culture and Iife through the,
with an ambiguous formulation: rrbolition of "art" and the estheticization of daily life and work, onlyl
to clairn still a few years later in Counterrevolution and Revolt 11972),1
Whoever pleads for the maintenance of this radically culpable lllc need to protect autonomous works even in the future. A.nd mosti'
and shabby culture becomes its accomplice, while the man who rnrportant, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, two close friends,
says no to culture is directly furthering the barbarism which our ('r)gaged in a set of controversies in the 1930s about art, mass culture
culture showed itself to be.c :rrrd politics in which Adorno used Benjamin against Benjamin and
llcnjamin, as we will see, could have used Adorno the sociologist
The dialectical critique of culture is forbidden either to celebrate rr1:,irinst Adorno the philosopher of art.
autonomous rnind or to hate th-q c_ritique
it; in In the context of such diversity, what is the justification for
.gy.:g-.gl{go1 participate."I0 While the main FranKurt theorists of
cuhure, Adomo, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Marcuse and I-owenthal
The .various. aswers which emerge from critical theory's con- nrations matured in the context of a dialogue characterized by the
i lr )r i
frontation with and involvement in culture had to negotiate not only r r rluiil anq co_{pplem_entary adequacy of their criti
Marx's attitude to the capitalist social formation was profoundly Max Weber;! qr".tion" uUout the specificit is I
t
192 Esthetic Theory 6 Cultural Criticism Iillr)duction t9.l
tion as the self-unfolding logic of history.'zo Furthermore, e in a formally rational context) Weber was able to focus on those
century communal modes of conduct, meanings, justification and norms of
pqsttiyiCm)qqrthe,-tri-s!-qtigCl-ly-!qleemerge4ceof i.nclgggialc-ap-ialism Protestantism that destroyed precisely the communal foundations of
Iife, and facilitated both the emergence of individuality and its integra-
tion in formally rational systems.22
diverse historical settings and contexts. Roman law Finally, one more concept of Weber's needs to be stressed, the
could rise t. u t'tgt". degree of formi-iystemailzation than the . For Weber the rationalization of the state, the
English common law of the period of the Industrial Revolution. tion in terms of the rational rule of law always
Biblical Jewish theology based on monotheism and the prohibition of trkes the hierarchical organizationzil form of bureaucracy.r3 But in the
images was moi "disenchanted" than all forms of Christianity until Irrlly rationaliZed modern world, bureaucracy does not remain within
at least Calvinism. Partly rational bureaucracies existed in China those original limits. With.the possible exception of the capitalist
thousands of years before modernization in the West. Nor were the rrrarket, bureaucracy reveals itself as the most efficient mode of
particular logics of these "rational" spheres identical except on the organization of all spheres of life from the state to the military, from
highest level of abstraction. is:-![y were_lfre somewllat rcligion to education, thus finally penetrating the cultural sphere
heter_ogene_ouq a{ q-e-lalively underde vqlqped sphere s of f ormal rea-
-
tsclf.,a u-
gglq[=d tgge-ther only in Western Europe? The "elective affini- ,O-
ty" of the spheres of commercial capitalism, early nation-state, early ,l v.
modern science, Roman law etc., i.e., the abstract presence in all of ( )rce bureaucratized, the modern state and its military arm can be
some mode of the same formal rationality, was a necessary, but not yet tlt'srroled and replaced only by enemies equally well organized. The
I\1rrxist go-glq of freedom and material wealth are therefore-ir-rc_gppat-
rlrle with-q4.e-enolhgr and with the proposed means of tgp_!93l
,,rs for_the -
,l, r line of the individual subiect were expertly brought together by
t it'org Lukcs at several points of his early career. Best known to the
inner-worldly ascetic ethics of Protestantism. Without the irrationally I r,rnkf urt theorists were the pre-Marxist Theory of the Novel (1914-
motivated,r yet staunchly rationalistic ethics of Calvinism, and
Puritanism in particular, the hallmark of Western modernity, ther
, ,,1 , rrltrrrc not only on the subjective side (as did Simmel) under the
I l,,,,,lirrg
of the crisis of the individual, but also on the objective side,
the movement from community (based on quasi-natural, irrational and , ,,rr tlrr' side
traditional norms) to society (based on the emergence of individuality | 'r"lrlt'rrrlrlic.l
!'
I 194 Eshetic Theor' and Culturol Criticism Introduction
l9-5
drama form, his theory of the novel that of the ancient epic and its human domination in capitalist production
[..capital fetish,,] as a
modern descendant, the novel. he relationship of "things" (
'ty, Ibor poer
to wage)
cr!!9s!-p_r9ieet.
. The l9l9 Marxist essay "Old and New
( Culture" draws the terse conclusion that Marx himself at times sus-
pected: culture has collapsed during the capitalist epoch. ButLukcs,
before he came to Marx, tried to be a bit more careful. He detected in
this context, for example, a decline from the beginnings of bourgeois exlg4d-_atlqelpfld_the caregory of commodity ftish/gm beynd the
society based on the "vifual communities," especially of early small rnerely economic-hence.ttlg nw term " reificatlon/'-uy
trnstating
town Protestantism, to th modern urban setting of bourgeois civiliza- it in terms of that rarionalization wncn w"u", Jlr;.r;;il;,','n:i
tion characterized by loneliness and anomie.( And in Theory of the l_si9res of modern capitalism. On the other hand, he tried to makel
Novelhe was able to present the modem novel as asymptomatic (and Weber's category of rationalization more dynamic
by identiffi.
internally crisis-ridden) yet still esthetic form of the period of the crisis commodity fetishism, under a developed capitalist ,yr,"_,
u. it;
of the individual. paradigmatic form and even more important as iis
hidden dyna-ic.
lhen sought to show that commodity fetishism moves
,ei
fn Theory of the Novel, the dominating motif is the contrast towa.d it, o*ir
between the idealized, harmonious, closed and limited organic com- sclf de-fetishization and serf-aborition. AII these intenrions
whichi
munities of ancient Greece and the reduction of the social world of
civil or bourgeois society (the site of the rise and crisis of individuali-
one would also expect from the broad movement described by Tnnies /.r' the subject only of revorutionary transfor
is a paradox of
as lhat from community to society. Irrankfurr theory thar of its theorists, T.W did more than
he is not merely describing the reification of the
wor t production, but that the fate of the atomized,
I
e.
tics facing class consciousness.
l
Culturul Critcism Itttroduction t99
t98 Esthetic Theort' anl
frozen
tive aspects (not the dynamic) of the critique of political economy are
unfolded rather as a general critique of sociology' It was through the
use of the " that Lukcs was
critique of political economy (and sociology)
able to distinguish the
from the sciences of political economy (and sociology)'
CUSS
icr
simi
hcst be understood in terms of this difference, one that we would like
t cxplie. Flere e illistrici-ouielvs, for the sake of the clearest
contrast, to Lukcs's 1923 position, ultimately grounded in the myth
of the proletari-at, and Adogro'i Jqte antinomic view, based on the
tlissolution of all Adorno, like Lukcs, always accept
notion that mediation must be grounded in the essential natu
ot the object itself.ot But where Lukcs (like the early Adorno)
context and are finally relate e social whole, the vision of which
strxd this object in the sense of a u'iI-ie, namic, socia iottity
'---"--o , _ .-. .1 .-
ory-the Proletariat-de-feti shi cornes to practical self-consciousnessi ievotutiary iheory, in i
lrlc Adomo the unity and identity of the object itself is in doubt. 0
themselves in itre piiict iecnitio
tlrc one han-cl, ilrno reproilues a ner taiic version of the hii;ori
full form of their self- r'rl materialist'lreffse that the relaiioship-f conomic base
in the theory' The theory (i'e' ' rrrrcrstructure is present in all "i6lgy"; on-th ottrer]d,
consciousness lKlassenbewusstsein)
irrsists that we can have knowledge of total society only in the form
theoretical mediation) discovers its reality (and that of its categories)
trricrology-i.e., through the intensive, critical examination of single,
in its being so recognized by its addressees. This is elegant Hegelian
lolrrlizdworks in art and philosophy. Mediation, then, in the form
theorizing, but it sounds rather hollow fifty years later' Adorno's
adoption of the concept of reification and mediation carries the burden
-I;l . i'i i;l i qin Iulrrrc-oriented transformation of the false whole of sociesr, is there-
til"utf a{v a "
the alreadY mentioned shift in irxc
' sPread bY the logic of adminis- fl (ly
ality under the form-qf-!9tish- Arkr
Ipossible irJentity of theoretical mediation and the practical self-media- t cpts in his 1937 essay "Affirmative Culturc": the f irst to the extcnt
ltion of the addressees of theory, and hoped only for a parallel and tlrrrt hc jixtaposes and confronts the true, ulcpian ancl the falsc,
iincomplete legitintating.. "affirmative"
mediation of micrological theory and those of its objects .Tqme{!,s.-gf at,. and rhe second to the
themselves incorporate the project of critique, i.e., autonomous ( \tcnt that h hpes to reolvc the contiadiction <f art by the rorill
ithat
;works of art. Where Lukcs in the manner of Hegel mediates reifica- rrri11 , sl.rlrtionary abolirion of socially nccessary illusion. opcning
I
i tion toward subject-object identity, Adorno's rne4iation
("through tlre ua1 lo a new cultur basetl r.n the unitl of arl and lifc. The sccond
I
ithe extremes") does not lead beyond antinomy, beyond unresolved rrrove especially firmly locates the critical theory of the 1930s
lcontradiction. The micrological analysis of antinomic objects in a t I re realm_of Lukcsian Marxi sm. For Lukcs, too, the di alectic
of truc
' common field
(''the eifremes of modem music, " for example) may '
unfold the idea behind each object until "the inherent consequence of ;
the object is transformed into thei r self -criticism, " but no overcoming
of the initial aritinomy is thereby achieved.* We must stress here that
Adomo from the early 1930s on insisted on the cognitive function of
great works of at.45 Beethoven's achievement, for example, is often ,
e. [n both art and theory, "the successful work . . . is not one i ,,1,it'ctivels' possiblc aspiration of empirical reality to the heights of
:^.,^L^-^--, t.,r^-^ |
tlrought. For Adorno, as we have seen, it is just this process of
which resolves objective contradiction in a spurious harmony, but one
,l s the idea of harmonY negati
( pure and uncomPromised.
\i s offer a better charac terizatio
iunderstanding. When he rnoves from critique to self-critiqrr-q, in the
..fgreat essay ty,"ae " too is able to
Jexpress the eory only negatively, by Adorno locates his own difficulty in defining ideology precisely
N the dialecti he thoroughly criticized rr tlre udministered world. He gives us at least three definitions, and
\
Esthetic Theor and Culturol Criticism
Introductiott 203
dialectic as against Hegel's "is obliged to be mindful of the duality of tlrt'ory. Many positions of the 1930s of Marcuse and Horkheimer
the moments." "The dialectical critic of culture" has no alternative t'srccially fall under what Adorno called transcendent critique.Tr rhe
but to "participate in culture and not participate."6 ;rttrlck of coqrse w-as primarily direcfed at orthodox historicar materi;l-
The consequences of Adorno's redefinition of cultural criticism
were momentous for the development of the very form'of his critical tl
theory. The demand to liberate the critical power of the works of ul
culture by the stringent combination of both transcendent and immar .'rrrcrstructure (hence
cultural phenomena) in the "last instance" the
nent critique is satisfied only by the analysis of those works that avoid
the fetishization of culture, by taking reflection into their very sti-
-Cltre-
f ie. TFe ttral Db s sible or- as c uttre- ciltique exist J c- r ritical thg![y_' in _t!9_]g0 reveals rhe name as o teim to
N lrrr xism (or Lukcsian Marxism) and ni its iastic .inrpiaii,o )
,r,, rrrrnrily negative, immanent dialectical critique. Horkheimer'
i-n7t.ans"endent" and often scientistic pretense of locating fun,c-l l',t rrf the -dift'erentia specilica of criticar versus traditionar theo.
tion of culture in a completely understood whole is forced to accept thel r,rrsists of tfi icogniiio; of rhe rhoi/i own inir ;tur;,
self
self-critique of culture ( lly art) on an , , ,r r cctioi in dte res
r ne preconoluon, nowever, ts rnar mgge_ry,gl _ l!99{- ,, t it,r of to ic relati
ks and crevices of a world torn mercilessly apart into its
-ihe
ipresntalionl'a' Hre lies special importance of presentirrg .r 'rrcd that critical theory receives present confirmation of its
interest
cultural theory in terms of the critical essay form which is best suited rr ,r luture liberated society in the fantasy (read: advanced
art) of the
to micrology.0s Its critical function affirms and preserves the cognitive Itl r'\c
d i men s ion of works of ar t. The p,arqllpl l,ltl,r
-qlgqyg_q[_aq!9g!no],orks,
hwvi, deiiyi ttr tritalizing and systematic illusion of critical lr ll
tllggrv irseif; irka 's
and Marcuse's versions of the critical Marxist enterprise. If behind the
curtain of mediation Hegelian theory discovered itself, and Lukcs's
version of Marxism discovered the proletariat whose proper clarss
consciousness the theory supposedly was, then it is Adorno's vie-,w
,,,rlltl ancl .. \
,',,,'r(lrg to sf/
Ir,rlol ()Pus, r_
ealgr which is today tgslllgtgd for. Adorno to .critical _q_-alld r r.rlt\ c cultu
_phi_]q.sepry., His last major works, Negative Dialectics and the post-
humously published Esthetic Theory, are best understood as them-
selves collections of essays and, at times, even aphorisms in 'the' ltr r
fJetztzeiten)in which the dialectic stands still lDialektik im Still' The < ical
standl, he had a ' 'conservative' ' attitude that has been best described thco_Iyald'\Ir'4.!e.lEelj44,-nls,ISl,ol wasclearlynoticed
as one of "rettende Kritik," a critique that saves or redeems.'8 For hy Adorno in his criticism of Benjamin in the 1930s. Nevertheless, t
Benjamin, this attitude, whicf'eoinided with both his theolgical I
sarne time a
in terms of might83 say which emerges from the work of Marx, Weber, and Lukcs, and of his f
esiaylllic_ impu!se,-8] Many in moved to rrbility to adopt this model to current needs and experiences. Marx,/
re-ogniie the critical spirit of moderni- Wcber and even the Lukcs of History and Class Consciousne.. saw
ty (the baroque, romanticism, Baudelaire and surrealism) which es- onty a unified epoch of civil society as against its historical back-
chewed the task of symbolic reconciliation in the medium of "beauti- rl
,..,..,-r ^- C..+'.-^ aacnatirrac rrrhilp flarlheimer nnnfrnnterl an
il
,'l cirril snrierv Thus in l94l
(,!_gllil,o_c_i9ry. hlyas
1941 he historicallv "thd
was able to locate h
cil of the individual" (as against a traditional Greek and
rrrcdieval background in which a harmony existed between individual
('
rll
i While such concepts of Lukcsian Marxism as "second nature" l)
x' fetishism and praxis had already had a strong effect on him in the rivos underthe Hork-
..irncr, Mar under-
strxrd fully that in the context of the destruction of community, of
han loneliness, industrial degradation of nature and economic crisis,
rrr
Stitlstand. " On the one hand, a dialectic at standstill brings to the thc wpakegef, gges 9f !.tI"9 ptg9nt 4r-9 espgc4lly-9.Pgsed-1o t!te--c!a5m
of dcmaggg!-c-l!9y9-me-[t.9 p.Iog!4lmilg thg f4\e. restoration of -natiqgal
corn_m_u-nity, the f4!q9 re-tyg 1o natue3nd 1!e yery real eld-9f gqo-[gm-
onqmy te
u r is !q _througtr "ttre glj ite1zgg-ql-9t_the ec .
r c' !
age were bankrupt and mortally dangerous. No one was more emphat_
ic on this point than Walter Benjamin.
rrrolrilization-gf--l_o-S1 t-raditions against gh
t e rlain_lr ngt in_q_ll e9p-e_cJ9,.Be-njp.r1ir_r yvn o[ on9 mir.q {it[ e,
1925 pre-Marxist volume The Origin of the German
I oue'nth-al, Hokhqir4eq and Adorno.
Tra 'sad play" as against tragedyl was next to Lukcs,s
Theory ol the Novelthe most important background text of Frankfurt
Kulturkritik.Its
t rrr Entzouberun_g-.-il_th.g..9glpg!-9f_gIt, a use that leads to the
I ^utrurKnttk. rts concept of allegory
alregory has been construed by the old
ilrt'rratizatio-i tt. "end of rt.; Best known in this context is
{ Lukacs, by Adorno and Habermas among others, as the key to the
It.'rrjurnin'--'Work of Art in ihe {gg of its Mechanical Reproducibili-_
\interpretation of modern art. For the moment, we are interested in ' ( 1936) but equally important for the sake of a many-sided picture
II
Benjamin's depiction of the historical context of the emergence of
as an anri-esrhetic principle within art irself. This cntext is
r rl llrc concept of the ar.rra are "The I
,Il.q:ry
rne
the "second
secono nature
nature" ot
lrlotil's in Baudelaire," (1939).* I
i
of ctvrl
civil society, tlrr l-
lbaroque, according ro Benjamin, in te
Idecay,
Gecay, qectlne
decline and cllslntegratron.
disintegration. The
also by implicarion those of rornanticism t*ni"E
"r'te "ltr.vl |.,.,,,,,.,.,,,,UttlaultlUllalluUytIltr5tIuBBltr
Esry.-"!el
for-. fll-suy
I
te
inherent in montage and is unable to identify with actors who ' 'play' ' 1S-
for an objeciii-apparatus. Benjamin, following Brecht, insists that rrhlc unconscious 9lq
these characteristics of
filry pryduce a d_i91an9-gd_ gstrangepegt_(Ver- ifl,
fremdungseffekr) on the part of the audience that leads to a critical-
active attitude toward whal ii seeil The audien iiiurt, aiifu rrrrrnitiSEiing ihei original accumulation of capital in the destruction
"9!{liyily 1rf c{1!gl_i,_ h lcnance to reject or to complete an
intrinsically unfinished work.e5
To the Benjamin of the "Work of Art" essay all art, all culture is llr
necessarily functionalized. The concept of function is presented in
I lli
terms of a secularization thesis rather than a Marxist class analysis. In I
;tl
the distant past cultic-religious functions predominated. The Iast form i nr ) lraces of human subjects, and unaccustomed to shared experience,
of cy! yf9 i; ! q p9uy l'arl which replaces religion !y !t lltt_"4_o - rrrotlcrn mn wiii oifinO tris gaze returned in traditional works or
gy of art. "[n the age of commodification ''exhibition value" " replaces
rrrrlrrrc itself.es f,* o'''lt, &
tt vlile in relationship to traditional works. But in the case of the The 1936 and 1939 treatments of aura ("Work of Art" v*.''.,UL., di.l
new means of mechanical reproduction political value or political
function predominates .n te urg-e-ncy of this newlitaii,oliei in itre
possitile a-lterq{yg qf- tas9is1p.9.!iti9_ig!o! 9f gI!_which uses the
remnants or traces of older, quasi-cultic values to beautify reactionary
politics. To Benjamin the only answer to the fascist challenge is that rrr t', nonauthoritarian ag:qs of-this t4{t-o-a-nd is nostalgic (at the
of art which unites arti ,,, t"urti a6o;lliliri.e. (2) The new means of reprodrction, theJ)
' r,
,nqve!qq[l_f e_r_glt:qo lr'\v rnedia, are evaluated in 1936 as more or less the causes of the
The alternative, so sharply posed in a primarily political essay that rlr't lirrc of the aura, whereas in 1939 they are interpreted only as parts
is intrinsically related to the somewhat earlier ' " ,l rur <>rrerall context that is generated by other social factors (e.g.
rep?6ed 6elow, nd also to Brecht's D_reig f-' ,[', lincof ieyoUslf [ .l)
tened in Benjarnin's more scholarly contemporary work. It is essential
rt( \(,ntcd a are the. I
to look at this more subtle side of his argument that was worked out tr,rlrin of whereas
p{mqiy,n_ t!,_._' !-916- "1Tr Storyteller'' and (after Adorno' s criti- tlrr' "storyteller" and "Some Motifs in Baudelaire" imply that the
'cisms to which we will later turn) the 1938 "Some Motifs in
tr,rrlilional communal context ofreceptin !,tB!e
Here the element of technologlcal determinlsm lmpllcil Ir r' GG;f-Ktr[,
rvorks of mocli-art re) in
in the above argument is relativized to the extent that these essays ,,rrtc o[ fantastic o elpgrTenlg g_f
thematize the substratum of aura that is lost: communicable experi- tlrr' loss of aura in I communica-
andcommunity.Bothessaysp"i{,!o_t[9_q9ggcq91g.f _Ce_nu_igg l, r.1 ttdanticiparion of
rr qualitatively diTfeilnilirry ori iaii ihe
:ience which rests on communication and to its replacement by r, rlrrr tion of ie presenf one to ruins. We would !ike to focus only on
.Jhere can be no communication without a shared struc- tlrl lrrsl point here. From the point of view of Benjamin's book on the _
of ry933!g,s ilq q_oll"gtiyg_lq9r-r-qry, but the movement from l,,rrrxluc, the theses of which are consciously incorporated into his I
einschaft to Gesellschaft that capitalism completes destroys the_ rrrrrr lr lrrlcr studies on Baudelaire, the attack on aura in the "Work of /
bases (ritual, ceremon, -fefin bf such '\ I I ' ' t'ssly is justif ied only by the fascist attempt to estheticize politigs
is experience in the strict sense lrr tlrt' nrcdium of symbol and beautiful illusion. From the same earlier
contents of the individual past combine with materials of the collective r' rl rr ( )l vicw the 1 936 essay can be faulted however for not recogniz-
l
past."cr To Benjamin in the absence of community the individual is trr' tlr;rl lllcgorical works which renounce the ideal of beauty, and
detached from a collective past. Furthermore t@g1!qq[gep-
2t2 E.shctic Theorr and Cttltttral Critcism :t-)
present inan the civil society that is characterized by the disintegration of tradition
present as ruin i supporting substantial experience. Paradoxically it is the experience
possible contexts of !ton. In fact, asAdorno o[ shock, so c th
was to show (and Be e new media themselves Ta.s l-Proust es
weakened traditions. However, not one, but two positive alternatives- eorrespondences emerge as unintended consequences of speech, of
emerge from this thesis. The first reach.s back to'Benjamin's own work, of strolling (the "flnerie" of the "flneur"), of literary or
tlrcoreticat5-ciivfi insiances-aT-hastihe-orrespondences.
rrow called "dialectical images" are consciously pursued. The poet
llirudelaire, confronted with the disappearance of those experiential
nrlterials that historically supported poetry, raises the principle of this
rlisappearance, the transformation of perception by shock, to a new
becomes obsolete. The concept ol qf lggorr- in spite of Benjamin?s
historical focus-prepares the ground for three type_s of interpretatlon-
of modernism. First, and perhaps best known, is Lukcs's claim
's earl;'critique of
1I fetishize the frg--
possibility of the lnl. collective character of experience. It is this juxtaposition that is
defetishizing totalization (in Adorno's mediation) which points be- ( ir sti
tt [91
a crucial difference between Benjamin's and Adomo's esthetics. artistic production points in the same direction, if we keep Max's
Uenjni,i's-ires-i lyzing a oiki dfiil-ad ( uis-ri-s Adoin) description of capitalist production in miud.
in the directi f Ilie eonditions-of prcdueon and recepr'ron. Ttrc
formal characteristics of the work itself were less important to Benja-
min. It was of greater importance to him to insist on the liberating
possibilities of ttr'ortS Of itE patt and the future in rlationship to
iti;
the extent that E-njiif f-oiuied o-n th opn, fiagmentary wr[s of
)
colletiie moOes f production and reception. He was ready to surren- lhe avant-garde as a terrain of critique and action, Brecht was not an
dathe aiiiof the creative personality even where, as in the case of unlikely object of great interestr,Benjamin's interesi iBiehTwli
Baudelaire,-Kfl<, Pioust and himself, the works produced were open f acilitaied bv a-tt U1, trii interest in community, which unfortunately
and critical. In this context he welcomed those technologies that made came to be expreSdfa-tiirn t ih '-mei.-tThe problem was rhat
all individual genius obsolete, and even more the one author, Bertolt of a
ed the existence
Brecht, who attempted to raise this moment of the decline of aura at least a political
,
(along with other elements) to the formal principle of. a collective,
en works somehow
political art. sccmed plausible. The empirical difficulties with this self-recognition
T"he 1937 essay "The Author as Producer" reproduced below is
wcre eventually (as always) met by a preconstructed and administered
the best surmary dglensg pfBrectrt, but it is also
rolitical line. The discussion of the problem of community under the
remarklb-l foi ils instrumentalization of art in the lr
Soviet Union. To bd i B.llil !t9ks arliqtic autonomy not in
the name of administration but in the name of a collective, open,
ir .,
lt>
experimental, technically innovative political art form. Brecht's the- tleeisively rejectd Cmmniit ptitics.,6 I *ti,nett.l..i b. u
ater is a "dramatic laboratory" which uses all of its technical sophisti- nristake to assume his earlier acceptance of that politics was not one of
cation tolkt-the slf-education of audiences possible. The play, "an tlrc possible altematives to a mind seeking to work out a satisfactory
experimcntaft"*ii;-' fSte1s tw dialogues: on bteen the produc- rt'lutionship
ers of the play with the advanced technical means of communication,
and another between actor, author, technical personnel and the "re-
duced men of today."
;i::;lHl#
lrirnsclf. wledgeofMarxiantheory,doesnot'_
)
become coauthor, coact ( lll.fge /'
the Soviet films of the It would be a mistake to derive Benjamin's revolutionary roman-
protfips oFth."y,lalyE-.iitionship between work and audience.
trr rsnr from the LukcJoi the l92Os. "o If Benjamin derived his stress
In the 1930s this illusion could only legitimate the increasingly repres- ,,r r t hc subjc[ivity of the masses (sic) from Lukcs, he clearly omitted
sive culturl policies of the Soviet state, and Benjamin naively for a rlrt' | .uktsin requiremnt tht the reification of empirical conscious-
moment affirmed the right of this state to its interference witb artistic nt'ss nlust be "mediated. " Adomo's attack proceeds exactly from this
autonomy.08 This confusion of free collectivity with authority already \lru xist point of view. (On the other hand, Benjamin'9 l!{0 j_lTheggs
revealed the uneay'i of thos two elepenls of Brecht's plays ,,r tlrc Philosophy of History" will represent a break not only with
llrltht's, but also with Adorno-Horkheimer's early Marxism. The
,rr I I rr u s of Di at e ct li of Enl i ght e nme nt are asmuch Benjamin's follow-
r
groups: l. Adorno was very critical of Benjamin's "nondialectical" ownlate was violently
reception of Marxism. He oppofed Benjamin'i ofin titrnologicaliy of
rlraid too willingly
determinist reading of the relationship of culture and economic_ b-.a9e-, e()nsents industry. In
as well as the assumption that culture "copies" or "reflects'" the Atlorno's own view autonomous art, when it reflects on the contempo-
economic base directly. From almost the reverse point of view, trow- tttry crisis of cl)lnre-and nkelihe reduced fragments ol the preient
ever, Adorno felt that the concept of "dialectical image" had no ittt, its form principle, severs itself of all historical connection to , )
relationship to the existing social totality. Who is ihe iubject of th-e :rurhoritarian magic. To Adorno the autonomous works of the avant-
"d-ialecilcf imgtt h asked. Implicii in Adomo's argument is the 'rrrde meet both of Benjami demands: de-magicization lbut with-
position (abandoned in the 1940s) that the dialectical transitioin be- 'rrt rctlucing critical reas.nlislf i and advancd rechnique. They thus
yond bourgeois society is to be found in the point of view of the class rt'rrcsent a third term betweer, the modern culture industry and the
struggle and not in isolated individuals who dream, nor in an "ar- ,.rrr'rassed rrail
u-ltl-noilce thai Ailorn refses t apply in
chaicizing" collective"2 memory. 2. Adomo was extremely critical of tlti context a oncept of de-magicization to individual
what he took to be the anarchist romanticism of Benjamin and Brecht, ',1nthesis. But for a rxist the defense o eri. I
i.e., "the blind confidence in the spontaneous power of the proletariat I
in the historical process. " In rnaking this criticism Adorno mobilized t orlcxt
orlcxf Adorno uti
Arlornn rrfi oTT^-., concept
alles1y -^^i-^+ L^
^^^^+ against the
in the name of revolutionary intellectuals 's cri- t'sis of
tlt'sis thedetline
thedetline plif
p1f tne ailegoryslvia;
tique of "spontaneism" and the almost-li qcq of ,rrr( )nomous
works from the charge of magical residue. The use of the
Il{tory an-ilCtasiConsciousnss. He spoke of "the actual conscious- *n(cpt allowed Adorno, in the footsteps of Benjamin, to construe
ness of actual workers, who have absolutely no advantage ov(:r the ',,,rrc modernist works as critiques of the present. But he
'lr,,r fe_Lgulced
bourgeois except their interest in revolution, but otherwise bear dll the jirnrin' . Ador inally
I rating tlrosc tcch Brecht , con_
iyely, ,.rr lt.rt.d
cri unless es are
t
.
The rrl('gtirtcd in the most rigorous, advanced esthetic totality, as in the
ailficlt ra f fllms, moni tars, eTc., i-nl mere ddendu'm but , ,r',(' ol Kafka and Schnberg. In particular, distracted, segmented,
iFttrmmoificti f the fo.-s themlves, wlich develops lr,r,rncnted re y in
niod3 of
-reponse
on the [artT audiences and introject the commodi- rlrt "lictish in and
ty fetish into their psychic structure, reducing them to mere consLlmers l,'l,rlitrtion. rel tion- -
of cultural commodities. Passivity or totally manipulated and con- ,,1 tt t. to his critique of Benjamin and Brecht: the presence of some
trolled response is the aim. as i advertisement, and Adorno believes rrrl\,rt(ed elements (shock, montage, collective tecn_
{. tne aim is usuliy achived. Adorno's "Fetish Character in Mursic," rrrrlrl,i. reprodirtih) does not validate the ,. rn.s-l
)
which was meant, as we have sai, partly as a reply to'Benjamin's rrtr( l(' lrguinst Brecht ("On Commitment,.' below. will extend this
thesis on mechanical reproduction, explores both the objective and l'.ililrclt even in the case of an artist whose greatness he recognized.
ril
subjective sides of fhe culture industry andwedonothavetorepeatits
thesis. The essay rprents brilliant extension of Lukcs's concept
of reification i the dirciiln oT ihe tudy of cuitur,"0 and, th,rrefore
te mbilization of almost classical Marxist arguments versus Benja-
min. 'lte crltu-re-indusiiy inded represents for'Adro ihe tendency
I-wai the oufheb,ulgl_ ef art-bur it is a faise and manipula- r trlrrrr', Atlorno uhderstood the authoritarian implicatis of the
tive abolition in mass cqlturg/'' 4. Adorno accepted, defendled and r,lr( ('l)t .l "the masses" so rell that he refused to derive any clues
eventually extended Ben jam-rn's use of Weber's concept of de-rnagici- Itrrr $,,',1 is colleCtlvely or communally accessible, at least immedi_
zation or disenchantment in the realm of culture. But anticipafing his rtlt Iy
I
I
r,l
liltroducton 2t9
2t8 Esthetic Theor' and Culturol Criticism
slrrcd. "rm While the proper goal of autonomous art is the restoration of
krst esthetic capacities, art paradoxically is able to resist the reality
lhat destroys its potential audience only by even gre,ater _es-otericiza-
tion. This is the antinomy of modern art.
In Kantian laiiguage an antinomy is the duality between equally
ttcfcnsible but opposite theoreticai arguments. It is the concept of
rurlinomy that after all reunifies the projects of Adorno and Benjamin.
l both of -thii-cases the antinomy of culture blocked the way to
\ystematic philosophy. Forboth of them in the end only the essay form
rrlkrwed the maintenance of contradictions without spurious harmony
rrrrd yet in a common field. Whether to save the posture of uncom-
rromising critique even at the cost of privatization, or to save the
re lationship of at and theory to a mass audience even if critique is
rru tly compromised-this was the bad altemative which neither could
.,;rtisfactorily resolve. The opposition penetrates into the works of both
Arkrrno and Benjamin, and yet they are ultimately at its two poles. The
r.r ork of each is the oly corrective for that of the other. They are the_
' 'torn
halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add )
Illr."l2l
"the useless alone represents what at one point might become the Itl , yorr are simple incapable of perceiving it. Consciousness is not a
ul, the happy use : contact with things beyond the antithesis of use
usef
lyer irr l hierarchy, superimposed on perception; but all moments of
and uselessnis."'- Where reason has lost the capacity for e ertlrctic expeiinces are reciprocal."rD
self-
transcendence and even the capacity to perceive this as a loss' alterna-
tives have to be conceived from (what looks like) the outside.
Philosophically, this conclttsion also entails tl-"-filelgi:li::."t :f-1!,"--
Esrhetic Theor and Cultural Criticism Introduction 22i
ance is false in itself Iar sich]" .tttToOe sure, the meaning of "form"
is not always clear in either Adorno or Macuse: style, idion, tone,
strictly technical devices, or configuration in general all occur under
the heading "form. " Moreover, Adorno's correlations of formal and
stylistic levels with social meanings are often highly idiosyncratic,
lrowever suggestive. The seemingly self-evident nature of some of
the very lhcse correlations should instead be reason for suspicion, and should
have to use collective, general terms, thereby eliminating
itself become a topic for investigation. E.g., "Pale and faded is the
light over his [Stifter's] mature prose, as if it were allergic to the
lnppiness of color. "rr Whether these analogies hold is a matter for )
tliscussion. Yet, more often than not, they reveal striking formal and
cvcn terminological similaities between esthetic and social spheres
irrrd illustrate how form, i.e. subjective mediation, is at the same time
tlc "locus of social content."r3e
And whereas the fetishization of art would, on the whole, fall
rnclcr the general critique i ftidnism, it is precisely the fact that art is
cxcmpt qL_ol+&txis which permits ir to .,
lre u tria sure, society protects itself from
'\
r lrc ' 'subvrs[ve loteai'l-f art by creating a Epecil Sph-ei1r it In
wlich if is r[efqqajglqrpmouiffit so, iFefoie, socilfiirelev-
urt. While society can thus safely, and even justly, w_orship.at, this
lct ishization is also the social protecfion of such a qualitative enclave.
l'lc artist must not share in the fetishization, but must avail him/her-
,,t'll of i. The "Social of art, therefore, always 1
rrct'tls dual refelction: Frsichsein, and on its /
rt'llrtion to soceity."'4o ond the constraint of im- '
r rt'rliate application to the very reality it is to transcend. Marcuse fully
,rirccd when he called for a kind of "second [voluntary] alienation"]
l r o r l he " established relity. " trt Given the objectivity of the latter, its
common to art and reality, but in this counon universe, art would
' retain its transcendence."t4 Authentic art, i'e. qualitative transcend-
ence of experiences homogenized by the culture industry, is not tied to
(
a specific movement or social stratum. Proletarian art is not inherently
more progressive than any other: "if such transcendence is an essen- Eduard Fuchs:
tial quality of all art, it follows that the goals of the revolution may find
expression in bourgeois art, and in all forms of art'"ras Collector and Historian
Much more than Adorno, Marcuse was willing to specify what
the esthetic JenrlUitity would entail in terms of attitudes ard social
relationi. He phasird t. liberation of the senses and, at times,
plead f_or go_ncre [t-9P]91_{9t-s even in By Walter Benjamin
ph.es; anlogou a rnoment only) to see
suctr aniiCipaiion i a nmber'of movements of the 1960's. Via the
conceptilbi ms of objects or counterrealities, art can
try out new m ns to objects as well, including different
needs, drives, sensibilities.
Although .A.dorno clearly put more weight on consciousness and
theory as esthetic f unclions than ditl Marcusc. their views do convcrge
t rt :r tublished inZeitschrift fr Sozialforschung Vol. VI ( 1937)1,
on the rational status of imagination-a statis it had held since Aristo-
tle. Imaglnio piafes coniciously as the "covetous anticipation"
r It, r's so' doCuments Benjamin'.s particulor atfitude toward lhe pa st,
or creation of alternatives, not a,s var,iations,Brefinements. but in l', r : i tg o tt the spec ial detail to be p re se rved t'o r a p roj e c te d t'utu re.
t t
I )pposrt!g_r,t.
13. Cf. "Affirmative Culture" and "Philosophy and Critical Theory," both in
Esthetic Theory and Cultural Criticism
N'tgalions.
l. Cf . Horkheimer, "Authority and the Family" ( 1936) in CriricalTheory, pp. 52ff ;
Marcuse, "AffirmativeCulture" (1937) inNegations, pp.88ff Horkheimer'sessayis
perhaps the only Frankfurt treatise that ostensibly focuses on the more general concept 14. Karl Marx, Grundris.re trans, M Nicolaus (London: Penguin, 1973) pp. t58ff.;
. of culture. Yet almost imperceptibly, as he begins to discuss the role of culure in ,r 47lff
mediating power and domination, he shifrs to aconceptualization of "high culture" and
an intermediate category of belief system, institutionalized and psychically introjected
(pp. s9ff). 15. Grundrissc, p. 487.
2.Cf . Die Philosophic desGeldes 6th ed. (Berlin: DunckerandHumblot, 1958)and 16. Ibid., p. r58.
the vaious essays collected in On Individualit,and Social Forms, ed. D. Levine
(Chicago: U. of ChicagoPress, l97l) andinTheConflictof ModernCulture,ed.P. 17. For an analysis of Marx's concept of community we rely on the work of Lukacs's
Etzkorn (New Yok: Teachers College Press, 1968). On the development of Simmel's ',ru(lcnts, the "Budapest School," and especially on the writings of Agnes Heller,
culture concept cf A. Arato, "The Neo-Idealist Defense of Subjectivity," Ielos (St. I ( rcnc Feher, and Gyrgy Makus. Cf . for example A. Heller, "Towards a Marxian
Louis, Fall 19'74) XXl. I lreory of Value," Klresis (Fall 1972), "The Mxian Theory of Revolution," Telos
t I rrf l I 970) VI; Gyrgy Markus, "Human Essence and Histor y ," International lournal
346
318 Esthetic Thcor and CuLturul Criticism 319
21. Cf. Nelson, "Orient and Occident" p ll7ff. Weber stresses furthermore that -16. On this cf . the important (originally l9l9) essay io Historond Class Ctnstious-
irrational inspirations of the Prolestant ethic were themselves eventually sacrificed to ,r's: "The Changing of Function of Historical MatcriLlism "
de magicization.
.17. The lasl lwo sentences represent the lone of Lukcs's rcconstucled article of
l()12 md not lhe original of 1919. The original, written during the Hunganan
Soviet Republic, far harsher against orthodoxy and even Marx himself, expresses the
lrelicf that the tirne of the self-critique (not "revision") of historical materialisnr has
,u rived.
23. Cf. Cohen, op.cir., p. 71.
.lll.OnLukcs'sconceptofmediationinrelationtoHcgelcf Arato,"Lukcs'Theory
24. Cf Adorno, "Kultur and Verwaltung" in Gesommelrc SchriJten VIII (Frank- ,'l ltcification." p 29f: p 5lf.
furt/M: Suhrkarnp Y erlag, 1972).
.I). Cf Alfred Schmidt, "Die 'Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung', Ceschichre und
25. A Modern Drma Fejldsnek Trtnctc (The History of the Development of 'r ,enwrtige Bedeutung" in Zur ldee der Kritischen Theorie (Hanser Mnchen,
Modern Drama) (Budapest: Franklin, l9l1) cf. Arato, "The Search for the Revolu- l'r7-1), pp. 87- 107.
tionarySubject:ThePhilosophyandSocialTheoryoftheYoungLukcs, l9l0-1923"
unp. PhD dissertation (University of Chicago, 1975), pp. \37ff. .10. T W Adorno, Introduction to the So(iolog)'t[ Music, trans by E B. Ashron
tNtw York: Seabury, 1976), pp. 198 200.
26.Seechapter5of thel9ll S<.tulanrJFonnnowinEnglish(London: MerlinPress,
t974) .ll. TheodorW Adorno, Philosoph, of Modcrn Music, rrans by A C. Mitchell and
\\ \' Blomster (New York: Seabury, 1973),p.26.
27. Though many aspects of the concept of reification were present in Lukcs's pre-
Marxist work, here we wil focus only on the 1922 essay on the topic it Histor) and .t2. Ibid.
Class Consciousrss. For further details cf. Arato, "Lukcs' Theory of Reification,"
Ielos, (Spring \972) Xl.
,.1. Quoted by Crenz, op. cit., p. 53
28. Cf. Marx, Capilal I (New York: lnternational Publishers, 1967), p.7oft.
,11. PlilLosophy of Modern Music, pp 27-28.
29. In this context he utilzed Marx's analysis of manufacture and machinery in
Copital I as well as Weber's analysis of legal, bureaucratic domination. ,l. lrcrencFeher, "NegativePhilosophyof Music-P<sitiveResults," Nc,Gcnnon
t rtttlu( (Milwaukee, Winter 1975) IV.
30. History and Class Cr.tnsciousncss, p.88. ,lt. ,\'ltgatitc Dialectics, part fII, chapter 2 (on Hegel).
tll. l or the various meanings of critique of ideology in Marx, cf. Jean Cohen's
35. Cf H. Paetzoldt, Neo-Marxistische Aesthetik (Dusseldorf : Schwann Verla, l, ,r tlrt orr in! (New School) unpublished dissertation, "The Crisis of Class Analysis in
1974) v.1., p.149. I,'1, ( itl)itliSm."
Notes 35t
350 Esthetic Theor' and Cultural Criticisn
67. Prisms, p. 3l f. and see alsoJrgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston:
51. "Ideology" in Aspects of Sociology, pp. 188-189. Beacon Press, 1913), p.241.
55. "Ideology" in Aspects of Sociolog, pp. 190-191. Also cf. Prisms, p. 34.
73. Cf. Horkheimer, "Traditional and Critical Theory."
56. Cl. Prisms, p. 31, where Adomo interprets our (l) under (3).
74. Cf. Macuse, "Philosophy and Critical Theory" io Negations.
57. The world explored by social science was seen by Adorno as fundamentally
undynamic because he identified it in advance as the administered world of contempo. l30ff. On this point cf. the important
rary bureaucracy and the culture industry. l()72 essay by oder rettende Kritik-Der Aktualill
61. Prisms, pp.27-28. 77. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie, p. 374. Marcuse's mosr radical revision of this
t icular position of his yis-d- vis autonomous arr took place after the publication of this
r;rr
@. Ibid., pp.30-31. 7ll. Cf . Habermas, "Bewusstmachende oder Rertende Kritik," p. 312, where on the
l',rrrs of Benjamin's definition of criticism in his early book on the baroque Habermas
s r r tos: "critique exercises mortification only in order to transpose that which is worthy
65. Ibid., p.28. ,l knowledge from the medium of the beautiful into the medium of the true-and
tlrcrcby to save it. " Habermas compaes Macuse's and Benjamin's notions of critique
rrr rlctail, op. cil., pp.305-311.
66. Ibid. , p. 33
Estlrctic Thrcr and Cultural Criicism 3s3
Telos(St Louis,Fall 1975)XXV Thesecondchapter,onBenjamin'searlyesthetics, ,rrrtl lhe Regrcssion of Listening" ( l9-j8) reproduced below, was in part composed as an
n 1977 in International JournaL ol Sociology.
is forthcoming ,Ir\wcr to Benjamin's "Work of Art" essay
81. Arendt, op. cit., p. 45; Habermas, op. cir., p. 312. t)5. ILluminatiotrs, pp, 228 230; pp. 238-240
83. Arendt, op. cit., pp. 4-5 and especially her ranslaion of a short section of tl7. Charlc.s Baudcluirc, p I 13
Benjamin's essay on Goethe's Wahlverwandschalten.
t,H. Ibid , p. 1.18
Prisms, pp. 231-233
tltl. Cf . Illuminatiotts, p. 231 .
88. On this point cf. two 1936 essays of Hokheimer: "Authority and Family" in rrrrrlrlutcrintcrprctationofLukcs Thecontmonlink:thcconceptofmcdirtiondrawn
Criticttl Thcor and "Egoismus und Freihcitsbcwegung" in Krilsche Theorie der tr,'|t Ili:tor) and Cluss Contciousness.
Gcsellschalt, volun.rc II
lll.! ('l Thcor and Prottcc, p 241. In his later essay on Benjamin, Habcrmas
Marcuse, "The Struggle Against Liberalism."
,r, 'L rl not Bcnjantin's thcorctical contribLrlions lo undclstanding utodernisnt but his
r,,1, rrrrlive critical attitude toward works of the past
91. Jameson, Narxisttt and Fornt, p.7l ltt/r ( lttrfus Buudelairc, p 159; pp ll0-176.
ll5. Theodor W Adomo, "Funktionalismus heute" Ohn Leitbiltl Purva Acsthe ti-
,,/. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967) p 124
nt in "historical materialism"' I 16. Theodor W Adorno, "Erpressle Vershnung" it Nocn ur Literatur,Yol. ll, p
til
ll0, Cf . Paetzoldt, ttP. cit., P 149'
ll7.'fheodorW Adorno, "OhneLeitbild" inOhneLeitbild ParvuAesthetica,p 18.
llf . Cf . "Letters to Walter Benjamin"' l.!11. Theodor W. Adorno, Acsthctische Thcorie, p.493.
115. Cf. Paetzoldt, op. ct',pp t75ff; Habermas' "Bewusstmachende oder rettendo It r. Ibid.
Kritik," pP 3l7ff
I Il. lbid., p 264
116. Habermas, oP. cit , PP 320-321
I I t5. I lcrbert Marcuse, Counlarrevoluion and Rcvolt (Boston: Beacon Press, I972), p.
117. Adorno, "Letlers," PP' 70ff' l(l\
l18. Ct. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis' pp' 85-86' I to. lbid , p. 87.
I
123. Theodor W. Adorno, Mi ni ma Moralia (London : New Lef t Books, l 974), No. 4 l .
143. Ct Hcrbcrt Marcuse, Ens und Civili"rtion (New York: Vintage, I962), p 159 8. Nietzsche wrole as early as 1874: "Finally.. there results the generally ac-
claimed 'popularization' . . . in sciencc. This is thc nottrious tailoring of science's coal
lor the figure of a 'mixed public,' io use a tailor-like activity for a tailor-like Cerman
144. Herbcrt Marcuse, Coutucrrctolution und Ret'olt, p ll2 (sic !).' ' Friedrich N ietzsche, "Vom Nurzen und Nchteil der Historie f r das l-eben, "
Un;eitgemiisse Bcrrachrungen. I (Leipzig,1893), p. 168.
145. tbid ,p t21
9. "A cultural historian who takes his task seriously must always write for the
146. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Morulia, p l.40. n)rsses," Erotischc Kunst, 2, Part One, Preface.
10. C. Korn, "Proletariaf und Klassik," Die Ncut Zt'i, 26:2 (Stuttgart, 1908),414-
Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian )17.
l. Quoted in Custav Mayer, Friedrich Engels, Yol 2, Fricdrith Engels und der
Aulsrieg der Arbeiterbewegung in Europa (Berlin), pp- 450-45 I ll. SeeAugustBebel,DieFrauunddcrSoialismus (Stuttgart, l89l),pp 117-179,
lnd pp. 333-336, on lhe changes in housekeeping through lechnoogy, pp. 200 201 on
woman as lnventor.
2. This thought appears in the earliest studies on Feuerbach and is expressed by Marx
as follows: "There is no history of politics, of law, of sciencc . . of ar1, of religion,
etc" Marx-EngcLsArchit',l,Ed.DavidRiazanov(FrankfurtamMain, t928),301, 12. Quoted in D. Bach, "John Ruskin," Die Neue Zeit, l8: 1 (Stuttgart, 1 900), 728
l -1. This deceptive element found characteristic expression in Alfred Weber's welcom-
3. lt is the dialectical construct (Konstruktirn) which distinguishes that which is our rr rg uddress to the sociological conven tionof I 9l 2: ' 'Cultu re comes into exislence only
original concern in historical cxpcrience from thc pieced together findings of actuality. u'hcn life has become a structure which stands above its necessities and usefulness."
"That which is original (ursprngLith) never identifies itself in the naked, obvious I his concept of culture contains seeds of barbarism which have, in the meantime,
existence o[ the factual. The rhythm of the original opens itself solely to a doublc rerminated Culture appears as something "which is superfluous for the continued
insight This insight . . concerns the pre- and post history of the original " Walter ( \islence of life bul is felt to be precisely the reason for which life is there." In short,
Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Berlin, 1928), p 32. ( ullure exists after the fashion of an art work "which perhaps brings about lhe confusion
ol cntirc modes of Iiving and life principles, and which may have dissolving and
rlcstructive effects, but which we shall feel to be higher than everything healthy and
4. Erotischc Kunst, l, p. 70 I rr ing which it destroys. ' ' Twenty five years af ter this was said, ' 'cultural states' ' have
rt cn il as an honor to resemble such art works, even to be such art works. Alf red Weber,
5. Gavarni, p. l-3.
' 'I )cr soziologische Kulturbegriff
," Verhondlungcn dcs tweiten deutsthen Soiiologen
r,t.qt's: Schrilten der deutschen Cesellscltofr lr Soziologie, l: I (Tbingen, I9l3), I l-
tl
. Fuchs's major works have been coUectcd and published by Albert Langen of
Munich as Harrl',rk These includc: Illustrierte Sittengeschichte vom Minelalter blt
.ur Gegen*'ort, Vol I: Rnaissance, Yol 2: Die galante Zei, Yol 3: Das brgcr. l{. Franz
liche Zeitaltcr, also supplementary Vols l-3 (here cited as Sittrngeschichte): Ge. l()(r.
schichte der crotischen Kunst, Yol. l'. Das zeitgeschichtliche Problem, Vol.2: Dal
individuelleProblem,PartOne,Yol 3:Dasindiv'iduelleProblem,PartTwo(herecitctl 15. Erotisthe Kunst, l, 125 Constanr reference to contcmporary art belongs to the
Karikalur der europischen VLker, Yol. l: Vom Altertu
as Erotische Kunst); Die
rrrosl inrporlart impulses of Fuchs the collector Contemporary arl, too, comes tohinr
2: Vom Jahre 1818 bis zum Vorabend des Welrkrieges (hcll
bis :um lahre 1848, Yo1.
l'.il lially through the great creations of the past His incomparable knowledge of older
cited as Korikaur); Honor Daumier: Holzschnitte und Lithographien, Yol. li i,rrerture epens Fuchs to ar early recognition of thc works of a Toulousc-Lautrec,
Hol:schnitte, Vols. 2-4; Lithographien (hcre cited s Daumier); Der MalerDaumiet; lltirrtfield and a George Crosz. His passion for Daumier leads him to fhe w'ork of
Garurni; Die Grosscn Meister dcr Erotik; Tang-Plasrik chinesische Grab-Keramik dOt \ogt, whose conception of Don Quixote appears before his eyes as lhe onl) one
7 -10. lahrhunderts: Dochreiter und t,er*'andte chinesische Keramik des 15.-lt "l(
rrlreh could hold its own beside Daumier His studies in ceramics gives him all lhe
Jahrhunderts. Aparl from these works, Fuchs dedicated special works to the caricatul .rrrtlrority to sponsor an Emil Pottner. All his life Fuchs had friendly rclatrons with
of u'ornan. of the Jews uld o[ the World War. ( r(,rtive artists. Thus, it is not surprising that his manner of addressing works of art
r Urqspod5 n]ore to the v"ays of an artist than those of a historian.
7. A. Max, "Zur Frage der Organisation dcs Proletariats tlcr lntelligenz," Dit
Zeit, l3 I (Stuttgarl, 1895),645 l(,. l'he master of iconographic reprcsentarion might be Emile Mle. His rescach is
368 Estltttic Thcor' and Cttltural Criicism
371
372 A Critique of Methodology
Introduction jl3
"pseudo-sciences"2 to bypass empirical evidence in favor of sup-
existential questions, the scientistice claim to universal truth (or at
posed "essences" beyond all appearances, andemphatically support-
least to the proper method to attain it) necessarily involved existential
ed "the activity of science of incorporating events into more general
decisions; by becoming a model for ..rational" living, scientism and
contexts and comprising them under rules" as a "legitimate and
its technological rationality tended to become a total life-form, at the
useful business. Resistance against it in the name of freedom is a fight
expense of any other. Was there, perhaps, an ideological thrust to
against windmills. ' ', Horkheimer's insistence on ' 'unconditional em-
scientism after all? Its often merely formal concerns seemed to render
pirical stringency"o and the investigations of the Institute bear witness
that question irrelevant. critical theorists were not convinced. They
to their unwavering alliance with the sciences. Rather than retreat
took a close look at what they summarily grouped as . .positivisms' ,_
from them, critical theorists emphasized the need to keep abreast of
the most advanced positions in the vaious disciplines-both to use le of Carnap,
and to criticize them effectively. logical atom-
Yet "science and its intelpretation are two different things,"s beneath their
Horkheimer contended. In a series of seminal articles and reviews in
To be sure, critical theorists shared the distrust of mere metaphy_
the Zeitschrit, Horkheimer and Macuse challenged certain claims of
sics with logical positivists; what made the latter suspect, however, is
the contemporary philosophy of science (such as the programmatic
that they summarily dismissed as metaphysical anything transcending
universalism of a "unified science," or the tendential reduction of
their own approach. "Certainly science and metaphysics cannot b
science and philosophy to questions of methodology), some of the
considered equal branches of knowledge. To a large extent, science
self-images and supposed social functions of the scientific communi-
ty, certain political claims raised in the name of scientific progress
and, last but not least, the identification of scientific and technological
rationality with reason in general. To the extent that certain tacit
presuppositions in these concepts of science re-emerged as substan-
tive assertions of particular social theories (and even in entire research
programs), they equally criticized the practice of the established social
r,ethodological, substantive, linguistic or whatever as final and valid
sciences.
a priori-i.e. exempt from historical modification-a viewpoinr or
But Horkheimer also repeatedly stressed that critical theory was
principle from which all else is derivative, itself seemed such a
not an alternative to "traditional"c theory and science; these werethp
rnetaphysical premise. such a "transhistorical and thus overextended
raw material, so to speak, of a critical science, its craftlike pre-
concept of truth seemed to derive from the idea ..of a pure non_
liminaries. "However intense the interaction between critical theory
c.ntingent infinite mind/reason, i.e. in the last analysis the idea of
and the special sciences-whose progress must remain the take-off ( iod. "r2 "Moreover,
point for critical theory . . . ---critical theory nowhere aims at the inge by opposing all achievements of thought which
lrrrve played crucial roles in human history with those it dicrees
increase of knowledge as such."? If there is any legitimacy to tho to
lr:rve been important, true and authentic, [logical empiricism] quite
claim of science being an aspect of autonomous reason, any science in
lrrlls out of its [self-declared] role as a tautology and itself turns out to
their view must also be its own metascience-it must know why it is
a subjective judgment."r: Logical empiricists, Horkheimer
lre . . .
doing what it is doing.
For "scientific procedure is never itself a
t hurged, "posit all forms of being as constanr [the same]. And yet this
guarantee of truth,"t and the progress of science, therefore, not
rsscrtion that the correct form of all knowledge is identical with
necessarily identical with human progress. (Such, however, wero
precisely the assumptions put forth by much of the contemporary rlrysics, and that physics is the great unified science under which all
sciences are to be subsumed-this assertion posits certain struc-
philosophy of science-into which philosophy in general seemed to 'rlcr
turcs as unchangeable and thus represents a judgment a prior!.,,u
get increasingly absorbed.) Despite assertions by Russell, Wittgen-
Srre h a "pro-metaphysical position absolves the given
stein, Husserl et al. that science has little to offer for the solution of wo.id by
rrt'tring it to a meaningful structure of being which is "on_
said to exist
371 A Cririque of Methodolog l iltt ou( tion 375
merely of its resuJts; nor could it be made moreprogressiveby simply ehallenge this aim; they just refused to exempt "control" from the
changing its current application, as the advocates of "partisan sci- slatus of a value.
ence" an,C "science for the people" were demanding. By not reffoct- For them, the idea of the value-freedom of the sciences was an
.ing on their paradigmatic premises, and analytic categoies, scie s rxlension of the "objectivistic illusion" that there can be perception
often take their clues frorn pre-rational, pre-scientific definitiqrs of rr ithout a perspective from which perception takes place. For scien-
their.objects. Social scientists especially tend to investigate trrnr, values seemed added, superimposed on facts rather than being
without considering whom these are problems for. (Art rrrrnifest in the (rarely conscious choice of) objecrdefinitions in the
thought process rewarded with the label of a scholarly virtue.) In our lrrst place. As Adorno was to remark later, "the [very] concept of
time, Horkheimer complained, thinking is endangered not so much by rirlue is already an expression of a situation in which the conscious-
the wiong paths it may pursue as by its being prematurely cut short. To lt ss of the objectivity of reason is eroding."'?o "Extemal" stardards
the extent that an unreflexive science serves any social order, mapag' lr,rvc to order what is falling apart. When we ignore the value-choice
ing lfs problems and crises and thus helping to stabilize that order:lt is ,I our perspective in determining the kinds of facts we deal with, the
a mere ''handmaiden" 16 of the powers tha be-the very powers that , rtommunication of that perspective makes it and the facts appear
have a vested interest in repressing the emergence of alternative or rrrrlcrendent of one another. The belief in the value-neutrality of one's
better orders; and to that extent, science "passively participates in the ,r,rroach, the assumption of a suspended perspective, simply means
common injustfu:s."'' Moreover, since scientific knowledge hEs the ,,rt' has no categories with which to recognize that perspective.
form of he Prob \\ rthout a theory to articulate and account for it, it becomes,literally,
rrr rsible. That values and decisions can be other than conscious,
science into thi
forrp-i the sub , i tt'rn?l or imposed, recognizable as explicit tenets one may accept or
"problem" untouched. r, t'cf , thot values may be built-in screens of perception and rules of
With scierrtism and its complementary technological ratio ty ,,,',,,ciation, did not commonly occur to the advocates of value-
having become the prevalent ideology of the time, Horkheimer con' lrr't'tlom.
cluded that "in as far as we can rightly speak of a crisis in science, that Thus, formal logic and naive empirlbism seemed to constitute a
crisis is inseparable from the general crisis. The historical process ha l,crlcct working alliaBce: determined.not to inquire into their own
imposed chains on science as a force of production, and these show in ,rx'ral/ideological genesis and funcon, both insisted on an ultimate
the various sectors of science, in their content and form, in theif l',',rr of knowledge. Rules of inference or facts were irreducibles,
subject matter and method."te Certain problems cannot appear a rr,'rt' simply givens and thus premises (not proper objects) of investi-
scientific problems within the scientistic paradigm-which thul t',rrr()n. For critical theorists, on the other hand, there were no sch
awards cognitive respectability only to problems accessible to what lr rlrlrrgs as absolute premisesof any kind: like any conception, premises
to be the one and only valid method-quite evidently a rather unscien' \\'crc human productb, usually the latest notion of an ultimate truth
tific value decision. "It is not the victory of saivnce that is tho rrlntll thus became paradigmatic, i.e. the basis of further thought
r l r,r vv|ish it, as a f undament, remained exempt) . Rules of inference
distinguishing mark of our nineteenth century, but the victory
se ientific method over science. ' 're Nietzsche had indicted the arbitrary
tlr,'rr rrppear as functions of a reified truth. Yet, "the implicit genesis
cognitive restriction. The "technical" value is built itlfo the ,,1 Lrgic" itself "lies in social behavior," Adorno asserted. "Ac-
r rrrl* to Durkheim, the forms of logical propositions are shaped by
of scientific knowle@ge (and thus the very methods of attaining it),
,,,n r,rl experiences, such as generational and property relations."2l
The aim of science to produce technically useable knowledge delimill
desirable/permissible/prohibitive "methodical" relations to objectl llrr'. tontingency is not recognized as such: for strategic reasons,
insight we express in the concept of an "approach" to them, l,,rr trr u lrr interests always pretend to be universal ones--often persua-
-an
Introduction i77
i76 A Critique ol Methodology
takes sense data as his final reference point anyway, but processed
sively, even to themselves. That the interest should be repressed il
very much part of that interest, Habermas was to comment later! 'Jata, mediated through language and perceptual/conceptual
categories. Logical positivists seemed perfectly unaware despite Witt-
Analogously, the emgiig[st -'
genstein that, "following the progress in ethnology and psychology,
facts were, after all, prqglucts of
the constitutive function of language for sense data has been demon-
perception; that we only know "
strated. . . . The given is not just expressed through language, but
unconscious) theories and methods ae the mediatrors: screens an{
lormed as well. "2? For all their proclaimed skepticism, logical positiv-
collating rules for iaw data actively shaping them into paiticulat
ists doubted everything except the position from which they doubted.,
objects, facts or events. As Dewey knew, 'ito find out what is givenil'
Rather than examine the intersubjective "protocol language" and its
an inquiry which taxes reflection at the uttermost. "22 (Marcuse onco
contingency, they simply and naively used it, and accepted as a
r
noted that Greek skepticism had risen with doubts about sense percep.
"fortunate circumstance" (Camap) that a shaed descriptive language
tion. Undaunted by positivistic and " realistic" claims that the worl{
cxrsts.
is simply everything that is the case (in the early Wittgenstein
However, fhe uncritical acceptance of a widely shared form of
famous formulation), critical theorists insisted that what is the caso,
rnediation does not indicate that it is not a mediator. On the contrary,
the supposed facts, are themselves only "something conditional."r
its universality only hides that very function through its monopoly. (A
Positivists of the Vienna circle defended themselves by pro
nonistic "unified sc-ience" seeined thb ltirirat gbal of logical
rclaiming that, in such criticism, "problems of appropriate descriptiol
rxrsiti:is.) such delimi what kind of data are perceivid at
' are confused with questions of fact, which leads to seemingly ontolog ^"iutori
all. If they constitute the "facts," then other facts are literal,ly imper-
,ical problems."2a Yet, this argument only shifted the actual questioni ceptible as long as is mediator prev4ils-the more universal it is, re
, where do the descriptive categories come
from, and how are facll
fewer new or alternative "facts" will emerge. The shared observation
'- accessible without such categories? For "the origins andconditionsOl
language does not guarantee but may even prevent access to facts: The
, knowledge are not at the same time the origins and conditions of th lrclief in witchcraft was fought with the same means of a strictly
'r ryv6l6t,"zs and their problematic historical relation cannot bf
rationalistic philosophy. Yet in view of the great quantity of protocol
eliminated by methodological fiat. The consequence of such an at.
statements which intersubjectively confirmed the existence/observa-
/ tempf was pinpointed later by Adomo: "an object gets investigated by
tion of witches, the empiricists should not even have been able to insist
r a research tool which, through its own formulation, decides what th
that witchcraft was unlikely,2t Horkheimer mocked.
object is: a simple circle."26 The dubious claim, Cartesian in origi
Traditional empiricism in this respect was not half as naive as its
was that facts somehow were "there," patiently waiting to be
nrodern successors, Lockeand'
up, "discovered"; and that perceptual perspectives are basi ;,
distortions which had better be abandoned in favor of the neutral
l{ume, through the and sense/
cvidence the find hy at least
universal tools-methods which simply render facts as they are,
e ontains this dynamic element: it refers to a knowing subject"" (just
sich.
irs Leibniz, on the other-the rationalist-side, had insisted on a
Even Popper (who did not become their major target and
rltbsla4liqidgals). Once this active subject was exposed as historical,
tagonist till much later-cf. Part II of this work) occasionally
it should have been obvious that the perceptual filters were historical,
ceded that facts were products of theories (or a joint product
trxr. The facts given to us by the senses are socially preforrtied intwo z'
language and reality)-which should mean that facts really have
ways: throug the historical chaacter of the perceived object, and
.,, - cognitive status of hypotheses. Yet, Popper still insists on the pos
.
through the historical character of the perceiving organ.3o
''t ; ity of "basic statements," evidently frgetfiil ofhis stringent cril This "subject" is, of course, not an idiosyncratic individual
] of Camap's equivalent "protocol statements." Carnaphadconter trying to generalize. When Horkheimer speaks of a "general su$ec-
that simple observational statements could take the place of sense
tivity on which individual cognition nd the
as evidence if these could be agreed on intersubjectively. This, 1
e<lllective subjectivity of an entire cu sness.
course, merely shifts-and begs-the question. For no one /
l:very culture carries its implicit "th packy'
A Critique ol Merhodolog' Itttt,rltrcliott 379
378
ages sense stimuli, and we would not even perceive these sense stimuli
rlrt rrethods designed to test thern. A method is simply a question,
I lrrlcrmas was to argue later, and surely no method will yield informa-
trorr which it does not ask for (through its very formulation). What we
,, r'k are explanations for whatever appears problematic to our "ideals
,l rrltural order" (Toulmin); the natural/normal does not need expla-
The social oonstruction of realiy' as we would now say' is what rrrtion. (By the same token, the history of scientific theories can be
positivists of necessity had to exclude; admitting it would have cost ,, problem-history of humanity.) Methods/questions are thus
t'rr as the
(their method its claim to independence and universality. As Schtz ,r'.tlcpendent on the cultural paradigm as are "satisfactory" explana-
it somewhat later: rrons; for "the objects and manner of perception, the questions and the
was to put
rrrr'irning of explanation testify to hurnan activity."'Explanation is a j
All forms of naturalism and logical empiricism simply take for I'r;rgmatic concept, and it is the varying situational ideals of a naturall
granted this socialreality. . . . Intersubjectivity''' andlanguage ,rtle r, not a choice among the various nomological laws operative in
re simply presupposed as the unclarified foundation of these ,rr vent (the classic positivist version), which decide what constitutes
theories. They aisume, as it were, that the social scientist has ,r "satisfactory" explanation in a given case.
already solved his fr.rndan-lental problems, beforc scientific in- Methodologies are either relative (adequate) to predefined object
quiry starts.33 ,l,ris, and thus share their transcendental organization, or they
urst claim to be universal, in which case the question of their
,rr['cuac] is undecidable and irrelevant. In either case, their validity
r,urnot be determined regardless of their relation to their subject
I
'l\ rr;rllcr. Like explanation, validity is a pragmatic idea; its relation to
tlrt' notion of currency seems no accident.
of the latter. Hybrid concepts such as "natural law," or the obvious
lcgal (or religious) origin of the concept of "cause" are only the mosl Iln' Sociolog' of Knowledge and Ps1:choanalysis
blatant examples.
Here lay one of the reasons for critical theorists to reject the To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it,
notion that hypotheses-if not "deducai"-vvse but random seren- l,rrt is in it. (Theodor W. Adomo)
dipitous hunches of the private scientist. The paradigmatic reasons for
accepring a hypothesis as valid might not be that different frorn those In the history of philosophy we repeatedly find epistemological
formulating it in the first place. The very expression of an "educated , ,rt('gories turning into moral ones. (Theodor W. Adorno)
guess" suggests the operation of a subterranean logic of experience-
a kind of p-re-th_eoretical cultural competence-which alerts us to In the sphere of history, the concepts of "true" or "false" do not ,
some featurs^ffid pbssibilities of experience rather than to others, and til\t apply to a consciousness, a form of thought, or a theory; they
provides certain mocles of
organizing that experience rather than rrl)l)ly as well to a concrete situation-and the organization of Iife to
. praised esting at rrlrieh it belongs. (Herbert Marcuse)
I hypothe imPortan
\ trit is present The critic of culture must assume that he has the culture whichl
through enerates' , rlture itself lacks. (Theodor W. Adorno)
the future, and our "desirous anticipations"36 may be cognitive sign-
,, posts pointing to the fact that their factuality has become "conceiv- Critical theory's concern with tuediating subjeotity w3s-not
''..
able" for us. lirtrited to the sciences, of course (though the illusion of value-
Just as our theoretical concepts are substantive hypotheses, so arc r('ut'ality made them a particularly tempting-and fruitful-field
380 A Cririque ol Methodolog' lntroduct.n 38t
in which to demonstrate the operation of tacit consensus and presuP- tics about a reality per se , or to the Katian notion of cognitive forms
positions). Concerned with the emergence or ' 'production" of knolvl- valid a priori.)
iaqe, ana orientations for politicalieasons, Horiheimer very eaifi This "general subjectivity upon which individual knowledge
gaie primicy to the relations between base and superitructure, so (lcpends,"42 described by Kant as timeless and fixed,
is literally
ellcied by'Marx himelf.'The investigations were to be empirical irrvisible in its form as "common sense"; as a condition and form of
and methodical, to detect the actual " ic links" between "mind k.owledge, it rarely becomes an object of knowledge. yet rhese self-
cvident axioms of everyday practice constitute the most important
tute, he outlined the changed focus in his inaugural speech : to put ' '8 tlimension of an ideology: universally shared, these frameworks of
comprehensive empirical research apparatus into the service of prob. ,ur knowledge do not appear as relative orcontingent. Because of this
lems of social philosophy," the central one being "the connection rrniversality, they do in fact constitute the spirit, the truth of a group,
between the economic life of society, the psychic development of ,o matter how historically relative and limited this spirit (and group) ,
individuals, and the changes in cultural spheres . . . including not only rrctually is. while these tacit and allegedly formed axioms, this iru.ni-
'
the intellectual content of the sciences, art and religion, but of law, r'ork, literally delimits what can be seen and what is conceivable, it
more s, lS,gl
.,f pgu_!i"_:pl! lo.-9" I !p94 I L 9!"t-9l3i.Ury!]|,_ll r in use of that age or group, and thus
-etc."3'ql(It went without saying that such a comprehensive projecl i up. In this sense, an ideolog is sim-
necessitated an interdisciplinary approach, simply because the naturo I reference group.
of the "objects" in which the various spheres overlapped demanded From Bacon throuh d'Holbach to Daniel Bell, ideologies have
hcen mostly seen as distortions of and barriers to an actuar truth. The
t r itical concept of ideology (and myth) emphasizes their truth as well
rs their concealing function (i.e. concealing their contingency).
In one
,,l his earliest works, Horkheimer had praised Vico for his insight
' 'that the
oldest legends must have "o,
contained political truths. Tobe ,r
philoroph". *arffiiRather thn merely systematize the suh etbv
"ul"
stane of knowledge, Kart focused on the conditions of knowinS, ;l enc,
,
That there were not only distortions of truth (as Bacon had suggestc( .I have
with his notion of "idols") but conditions of truth, i.e. regulativl rlr borh
ideas and categorial forrns through which, and only through whicht t rrr[y and represent the current truth and, at the same time, concea] it
we perceive sense data as paicular objects or events-this discovof l'|y concealing the active social and historical dimension behind the
had been one of Kant's chief merits. In principle, we never see ol nu.rrral faEade of factuality. (Likewise, Marcuse had chided the r
know objects as they really are, but only as they are "constituted'l ,rt udemic sociology of knowledge for concerning itself only with the
I
through these filtering and ordering forms. untruths but not with the truths of forms of consciousness.) I
Traditional theories on the whole, critical theorists pointed oull It would be difficult to comprehend this argument without the
tended to repeat Kant's mistake about these subjective conditions , ,ncomitant Hegelian concept of reason. Not a timeless human
facul-
knowledge: in its "hypostasis as form" of knowledge t hovering over the vicissitudes of history and the object world,
containing no substantive assertions, the collective r('uson, in this version, is a historical function, the dawning stage of
forgets "how and whereby it was constituted."ar (Kant, though, ,rrvareness, the cu onceptualization of the way
simply preserved a "truth" of an age prior to his own. He attributed lrrullans experienc for instance, are objectifica_
the "subjective" forms of knowledge the immutability tradi rrols of reason in mpts of humans to deal with
ascribed the objects themselves. After Kant, however, this nai tlrt',selves in object form. of course, gods are false consciousness,
was no longer justifiable, and critical theorists chided the objecti lrrr their "truth" is not in their manifest content. As anthropomorph-
illusion of recent positivism, which regressed to pre-Kantian ce r',rrr, they allow confrontation with human attributes. which necessi-
A Criri,luc LI Mcthodolog' I t tt rodu( lion
382
tates "reasons" for favoring these attributes rather than others; whil0 A consistently non-a priori approach must distrust any f irst, f inal
they are false consciousness, they also therefore contain this eman' or immutable principles, be they subslantive, structural , frrnral or
cipatory truth. (Neo-romantic ideologies are wrong and stupid in thcit tcleological.a' Much to the chagrin of morg orthQdox \{ax.ists, this
explicit content, but have their "truth" content in theirkeen reaction rrcriented critical theorists from fetishizing even the econonric base or
to alienating and authoritarian forms of Iife.) The latest stage of such .rny social objectivity, and even the critique of political econom)/ as a
"rcason" always tends to appear absolute, universal, and naturtl tlrcory; to them, it remained a fon of historical reason., "A grcat lrLrth
\vants to be criticized, not idolized," Nietzsche had proclaimed, ancl
simply because it does not yet include awareness of its own limits and
lre was fondly cited by critical theorisls who insisted that the "influ-
functions; such awarencss would mean that this consciousness ot
reason had moved on to a higher stage of self-awareness: that it had t'nce of social development on the structure of the theory is part of thc
recognized its particular form as one ,nol rlz rnode of conceptualizing tlrcory's substantive content..'48 The function of a theory was \,cr)
expcrience and observation. rrruch part of the validity of its truth claim:
ln retrospect, we can always recognizc previous forms of reastln
as limited-but to call them false impiies they were u Civen the evolution of productive forces in antiquity, even the
t3l!," nraterialist philosophcrs were forced in the face of suffering to
detours. The "working.rcason," or "working of an agc o
elaborate techniques of an interior life; peace of soul is the only
culture cannot just have been false as long as it.was a nccessary slag(l.
rcsort in the miilsl of distress w'hen all external nreans fail. B
For-al ts ieliological subtritum, inil conc"pt of "necessary ili contrast, the materialism of the early tlourgeois era ainted at
sions" transcends the simple-minded notion of truth as existing dcveloping the knowledge of nature and at altuining ne\\ po\\e r\
there, rcady-madc (already "coined, " as Hegel used to say), patiently of mastery over nature and man. The misery of thc present,
waiting to be discovered if we could just make up our minds to however, is linked to the structure of societ,; social theorl ,
"falsc" notions and approaches. "Such Truth is more disastrous therefore, constitutes the content of contemporar), mater ial ism.''l
error and ignorance because it paralyzes the forces with which
'works toward enlightennrent and knowledge,"ot Nietzsche had
I o r,, 1fs notion of the tinreliness of 4lhcor) ulay appear absurd; aftcr
complained. Truth might be more usefully conceptualized as a f
,rll, we have learned t!4 !!9 e-xplanatory ranqe/power o[ a theory
of production- for in this manner it includes its dcveloprnent
r rr'r crses as it eliminatetli,e ,n.l spice inclices.\Yet, if thc cate gorics
function as part of its substance. A "ready" truth would entail
,rrrtl concepts of a theory are the form of (historical) reason, athcor),
ontolog of the world as fixed and final, and thus entail a fatali
,,ur be true only by being "self-reflexive": by nraking its catcgclrial
ideology. (tsy contrast, for instance, even Fichte's "false" ideali
trrrcthodological etc.) premises part of thc objects it investigates. A
insis{ence on the activa fan'.;cendental subject lrade it possiblc
tlrr'ory is not simply true or false; a consciousness is not simpl cclrrcct
historicize the constitution problem; consequently, at that time it
,, lrrlse. Such judgment requires an analysis of what people could or
the only way to conceptualize consciousness as praxis, and praxis
lt,ttl to think, given the terms in and under which they were experienc-
the categorial constitution of the world-e.g. through labor.)
rrrl', lhe world. Likewise, the distinction between rational and irratiorr-
people can perceive their ctlnsciousne5s as contingent, i.e. that
,rl rr ould require that we be in possession of a timeless rcason, Adrrno
can turn into enlightenrnent, was one of the central contentions
', rirrted out. Given increasingly narrow definitions of reason through-
Dialectic af Enlightenmenf . "Ho\Never socially conditioned
,'rrt ccen1 history, increasingly larger areas of cclgnitive activitics
thinking of the individuals may be. . . . it renrains the thought
\\ ( rL' labeled irrational. From Descartes to Kant and modern positiv-
inclividuals who are not merely thc products of collective
r,t,. the irrational areas supposedly inaccessible to rational analysis
but llso make these processes the object of their thought,"6
lr,rrt' grown along with the refinernent of the "rational method."5t'
heimer still asserted at the end of his life. That the viewpoint f
\\ lrrrtcver ilid not fit it, was exiled into the realnof irrational "deci
which this is done is promptly mythified/fetishized in turn, was
,r'rr " At the final point, Popper has called even the decision for
othcr side of thc dialectic: (the vcry act of) libcration reverts
, rt rcc lackingrational grounds: it isnrotivated n.rerely by "bclief .";.
heteronomy again, enlightenment into myth.
384 A Critique ol Merhodolog' lntroduction 385
Instead of dividing the world ontologically along methodological status-equal monads. The reduction of qualitative differences to func-
lines, critical theorists, who distrusted any form of prima t ional quantitative relations reduced these relations to the level of their
philosophia, tied these ontologies themselves to social conditions cotrlmon denominator, which is often an external criterion. People
which necessitated and in tum were shaped by them: and things become "equivalents" to the precise extent that they'
hecome-formally----equals in reference to this shared principle. (The
There are connections between the forms of judgment and the
vcry concept of something "qualitative" has become absorbed into
that of "function," Brecht once remarked, in one of Adorno's favo-
rite formultins.) Thinking in terms of unity already contains the'
tcndency to think in terms of equivalents, Adorno and Horkheimer
were to suggest in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and thus provides a
theory maintains: it need not be so; humans can change realify, lcrtile ground for the ascent of exchange rationality. By way of the
and the necessary conditions for such change already exist's' roduction of individual differences, a totalizing tendency asserts it-
sclf . And to the extent that this tendency (e.g. in terms of society as a
In this sense forms of judgment delimit "natural" and possible forms nrarket, in terms of growing bureaucratization etc.) becomes accepted
of action as well. No matter how we hide from the formative impact of rrs fsrn ofprogress and rationalization, this specific historical form
such substantive yet seemingly just formal premises by relying merely of relations of exchange between social and natural "equivalents"
on quantitative measurement, these measurements will be no moro ( omes to appear as more and more "nafural"-the more so the more
precise and reliable (and neutral) than the concepts and categories they rniversal it becomes; and by excluding altematives, it also becomes
measure. Least visible of all are the comprehensive experiential mod' sclf-legitimating. "Rationalization," the very form of human self-
els of which certain divisions or forms of inference are but specific tlefinition through or for something else ("heteronomy") seems no
examples-which may be isolated and even revised while the overall lrnger a metaphysical but a rafional demand.
modei remains intact. Critical theorists offered numerous examples of This mechanistic reconceptualization of social and natural reali-
such models, each considered true and all-encompassing in its time-
and thus not even considered as a model but simply as the structure of
reality.
l[
Irur
l#i,'i,i',i];*"ilii$;:ll,::
of aidrifti;E inafrcifiild'of extemal
For all ifs questionable chronolology, Franz Borkenau's Ttt rurd internal variables (e.g. their "interest").
Transition lrom the Feudal to the Bourgeois World View is an Mannheim too had pointed to the orientational (rather than de-
inspired study of the fundamental shifts in the "categories of naturul ,,t riptive) nature of "scientific interpretations. " At times, he suggest-
and social science"" during that period. It attempts a detailed do' ctl that the scientific obsession with laws and order might signal
monstration of the interrelations between the social, economic' legal, rcstiges of religious and jurisdictive models or forms of conscious-
theological, psychological etc. conceptions, and of the possibiliticr n('sc-not unlike Adorno and Horkheimer who were to call causality,' .
for further conceptualizations they opened, and thus of the ground' l()r' instance, "the latest secularization of the creative principle." 1
work they laid for later developments. The interesting-and unor' I vcn positivists like Russell and Popper had spelled out attitudinal
thodox-thesis was that a world view and images.of nature depen$ qt rrrrplications of certain theories (other than their own, of course). But
both the conditions of pioduciiot and the general concepts. fil tlrcy all were content to suggest correlations between social and
'' mechanical-niathematical " world view emerging during tliat transl' t ognitive factors (as both were "naturally" separate spheres, with
tional period, in the wake of changes in the spheres ofproduction and rrrrlcpendent identities), rather than to explain reasons for these group-
circulation, brought with it the general trend toward leveling and rrrgs and correlations in the first place: for instance, what groupings
isolating units, toward defining the constituents of reality (both sociul r rttli fsfifi given certain material conditions and forms of conscious-
and natural, since both served as models for each other) in ternts Of rrt'ss ard psychology, or what kinds of psychology, cognition, and
A Cririquc of Merhodolog It ttt ( )ducliotl 387
thus of human praxis appeared conceivable or "natural" under given rperfect research techniques but one of principle. Why certain forms
rr r
actual problem'6 (e.g. divisions into high and mass culture, individuul ,lrller.enf forrns of gratification, to be dynamic responses and neces-
and society, theory and practice, love and hate, etc.). \,/r r' fortrrrs of historical behavior. Given the psychostructure pro-
Insofar as orthodox Marxism and bourgeois sociology lacked I rlrrt t'tJ by different socio-economic conditions, class-specific needs,
systematic theory of the necessary mediations between subjectiv! ,,rrlliq1s, pressures and possibilities can hardly be considered an-
consciousness and objective conditions, this failure was not one of tl rr, rrological constants. Through these psychoslructures, social con-
Introduction
358 A Critique ot
rrrlcs, goals and values which themselves seem neither produced, nor
nrrdifiable, by reason.
Increasingly, "thought has renounced its claim to be critical ad
rosit goals at the same time."5e Its reduction to "mere calculation"
rl)irrt from normative decisions e.g. on goals (which thus come to
rrl)l)car as "irrational" decisions), bears little relation to either the
urtcnt or method of that ancestry positivists claimed; Montesquieu,
I ocke, the Encyclopedists e/ al . had held reason
_
r
frne
rrrsl ituti
rrr',, htrt
3n A Critique ol Merhodology
irrlcrvene and reverse the tide; but they also saw clearly that th,g,q,glf;i
ason was occurring no of its conuptiofi, but
immanent logic as " of enlightenment,"
Since part of its liberating function had been to ask any agency to
legitimate its authority, reason finally had to turn that challenge
ngainst itself . It had to declare its own authority ard substantive claims
nrt of the very myths it had helped dissolve-so that it alone might
lcign. The dual contemporary mode of instrumental and formalized
rrrbjective rationality blocks any rational perspective from which it
t'ould be seen as a specific and one-sided form of reason. It indicts as
Irutional any perspective from which alternatives (to itself) are at all
lonceivable. The very capacity to both perceive this limitation and
llrus conceive alternatives is diminishing, and with it the autonomy to
tlccide, which presupposes the visibility of altematives.
Reason had once been able to claim that things could be different
hy pointing to its own existence as an altemative mode and order of
lring. Like art, like fantasy, its residual forms today, it overshoots
rculity. The true is the whole, Hegel had said, and that includes "real"
xrssibilities and their realization as part of reality.o If reason grasps
the truth of a situation, its true identity in this sense, then any concrete
ituation always falls short of its true identity. (When we speak of the
lrrrth o/ something, we always assume there is more than meets the
eyc, than can be expressed by statements corresponding to observ-
uhlcs.)
The idea of reason in this sertse; as a "piojct," dat's back into
Wcstem antiqity, e.g. Anaxagoras, whose suggestion of a
"1s"-1|s idea of an order in nature which replaced the older
urrinristic world view-implied the possibility of such discrepancy.
'l'lrc existing order is not perfect, is not in accordance ("identical")
with its idea, but has tobe brought to its identity, to its "whole truth. "
'[o focus not only on what is there but on what could (arid perhaps
rhould) be is the function of substantive reason. It, st ppgsed to
llrc dominance of instrumental
rilt(l refines what is. Since Aristotle, fantasy has been constitutive
Inredient of;69gs94. To the extent that this cognitive faculty goes
hcyond the status quo, it is critical of it (its limitations and the reasons
hrr it): cri 70
foreshadowing Habermas's famous dictum that propositional \ ()r))nron denominator which, to critical therrists, made negligible all
hinges on the intention of a true socrcty. ,rtlrcr differences between idealism, positivism and ontologies of any
The "new logic" of logical positivism, against which cr k illd , and even certain forms of materialism : the pretense-no matter
theorists were directing most of their polemic, seemed the lrow well concealed-that we have an ultimate and unchangeable
manifestation of this reductive tendency, although only represen t ritcrion for what is rational and meaningful, a first or final principle,
of a general trend of the time. A self-declared tautology, or "theory ,rn Archimedean fixed point from which to order empirical phenome-
deduction," it collapses the complex philosophical concept of I rrr. not itself empirical or historical. "In order to limit itself as finite,
into that of syntactic or methodological (formal) "correctness. " .. rr'irson must have access to the infinite on behalf of which the specific
fact that a judgment can be correct and nevertheless without truth, lnlr itation is performed. "76 That anyone could claim such access, they
been a crux of formal logic from time immemorial,"Marcuse (l()ubted; short of it, the standards of knowledge were historical/em-
ed logical positivists.T3 Reducrng reason to mere acumen, e rirical products (facts) subject to the same analysis as the object of
and "trained incompetence," positivism nevertheless avails itself L nowledge. Standards of objectivity are as historical as the facts they
the traditional prestige of science-which itself dates back, t o151i11s. For qualitative and substantive objectivity, methodologics
to the days of its critical, liberatory thrust. In earlierdays, necded to be "self-reflexive," i.e. having the premises and standards
reason constructed visions of a reasonable world and demanded ,rl an investigation as part of the object under investigation.
forts to realize those visions. In the recent reduction of reason (slill Often critical of Dewey's instrumentalism, they felt closer to him
value) to "technical" knowledge and information, the impticit IIrrn to logical positivists because of his attempt at "a material logic in
tive is a technical relation to the world. Other attitudes are l rlrc sense . . . that the matters of logic (the objects with which logical
"irrational. " If critical-substantive reason once aimed at becomi tlrought deals) are drawn consistently into the arena of investigation,
total life form, it was a liberating demand. Instrumental reason .rrl the logical "forms" are discussed exclusively in their constitutive
species of the genus: its instrumental knowledge enablecl , orrucction with this material."77 By contrast, the "new logic" u,hich
beings to "make their own destiny." But reason, reduced to taskS , ritical theorists attacked "is called formal. Little is said in these
technical control, must be indifferent to what is to be controlled rrrilings of how the form is to be explained without reference lo lhe
whaf porpose. The idea of a ' 'reasonable goal " (or of a rational ( or)tcnt. . . Proudly this logic declares that nowhere does it increase
or correction of goals) cannot be accommodated within that concepl ,,rrlrstantire knowledge."78 Nevertheless, it clain-red to be thc logic of
reason -7a rrrlerence in substantive research; it remained aptzzhng issue how
The reversal is complete, not only of ends and means, bul t,rrrtologies were lo permit understanding. Form is always thal of its
subject and object. The most subjective aspect, the perspective, , ontcnt, Hegel had explained; but despite the admission (c.g by
way of looking at things, formalized as method, something absl l(rrsse l1) that symbolic logic is little nrore than a shorlha-nd, littlc is said
and spiritual , has become the standard of objectivity; whereas , , ,rl)()ut what it is a shorthand for. To critical theorists, theconccpts of
ing reason," the historically grown objective logic of a given l,rf icl ps5ilivisnr are not concepts of anything, the arc not substau
is made to appear accidental. "Objective means the non trre. and thus not a form of knowledge at all.
aspect of things, their unquestioned impression , the fagade made up If methodological and syntactical standards are to bc cognitivc
classified data; and they call subjective anything that breaches ',t.urrlards as well, then n.rethod and (ourconceptualization o[) nratcrial
facade..."7s. In the fear of revealing their points of referencc l,rr rtluce and crystallize each other. Cognitive categories ure not se par-
contingent and derivative, logical positivists could not accept a .rl,l ron, what they are categorics of; if onc changes, so docs lhc
ing material and social reality as the corrective of objective ,,tlrcr. There is no such thing as "pure' knowledge, nor a purc
Be it methodological or syntactical , the positivistic criterion of , .ltritirre method. "Rather, knowledgc conres to us through a nct
ing was a spiritual, not material one-which, in the eyes of crit rror k of biases, intuitions, innervations, sclf-correction\. anticipu-
theorists, identified positivism as a variant of idealism. Here lay tr('n\ and cxaggcrations-in shorl , through thc tightll-worcn and
196 A Cririquc ol Merhodokt
IiltrodLt(ti0tl 397
torical importance is in relation to the idea [of a realistic utopia] all this rcalization of such objects (this process being their only reality,
will be made clear only when the idea is brought to realization."s0 l\'larcuse proposed), their identity (i.e. their truth) was necessarily a
2) The most famous-and more serious-misunderstanding is rrratter of gradation, just as this truth had a necessary temporal dimen-
Kierkegaard's misreading of Hegel's triad describing the movemenl ',ron (as Aristotle had also insisted). Bloch, at one point, even spoke of
of historical reality: thesis-antithesis-synthesis-a simplistic formali- 'gradations of reality" in this respect. Although we experience
zation with which Hegel himself was rather unhappy and which rr()mentary stages of this process only, there is no need, although an
Kierkegaard misunderstood as a compromise, a kind of middle ground rrrderstandable pressure, to reify this stage. In view of these reifica-
between thesis and antithesis. Aided probably by Hegel's use of thc trons, theory must strive to "dissolve the rigidity of the object fixated
terms Vermittlung (mediation) and Versiihnung (reconciliation), rrr the here and now, dissolve it into a field of the possible and the
Kierkegaard overlooked that "mediation takes place in and through rt rtl . "83
the extremes"a: 1of the thesis and antithesis) and not as a simple give Repeatedly, like the great philosophical traditions rhey invoked,
and take befween the two. The new synthesis, therefore, is (nothing sr itical theorists warned ag4inst the "practice of defining" statiaally
but) the new working constellation of the thesis and antithesis, a new rrrr illusory, isolated essense (of which operational definitions are then
"working reality," so to speak. This new synthesis in turn can lrrl mere extensions) abstrapted from the ongoing historical process-
become a thesis which engenders its own new antithesis which may tlrough it be only the process of conceptual appropriation. To check
again lead to a new synthesis and so on. tlrc arbitrariness of these definitions, Horkheimer advised that we
3) Probably the most widespread'misunderstandihg, commonly '.1ould think of substantive opposites to clarify our working assump-
foun.I among "traditional" logicians, refers to what is meanttlr tho tr())s, rather than mere formal ones: e.g. instead of thecontradiction
so<alled "dalectipal contradiction" itsslf (i.e. thesis-antithesis), 'l straight vs. non-straight, the contradiction of straight vs. curved,
The traditional objection ''that two contradictory nevef
staf ements can ',trrright vs. interrupted, straight vs. zigzag; instead of matter/non-
be true together"s'z overextends the applicability of the principle of tho ilr:rl[er, matlerI mind, matter/anti-matter, etc., which arc empirical
excluded third. No one ever denied the validity of this principle within rrt tations. Which is the operative negation is likewise an empirical
forrnal logic. But, like Hegel, the critical theorists took seriously tho ,rrcstion and thus subject to continuous shifts. No single definition
postulate of traditional Iogic that its rules do not necessarily coincido rl, ,t's justice to these overlapping empirical md perceptual modalities;
with those of empirical reality. Dialectical logic which, according to rr( ) sum of them is omnipresent in each single context. Every predicate
Hegel, was to follow the movement of reality, was more comprehen. r', rr hypothesis deduced from our "working reason." A mere defini-
sivc and could include traditional logic as one way of organizin rrorr sds6". predicates o one frame of reference, i.e. one modality,
reality, albeit one whose arbitrariness was not checked by any neces. ,rrrrl thus does not define the (multimodal) object at all, it's "truth."
sary relation of its inherent structure to its referents. r \rr interesting exarnple of such a dialectical opposition-where the
The dialectical contradictions within empirical reality, the antith. tr r rt' s the whole-is the Copenhagen quantum interpretation asserting
i
eses wrl ich "negate" the theses, are rrot a matter of the absolut0 tlr;rt certain elementary particles are simultaneously matter and waves,
existcnce or non-existence of a predicate; the dialectical contradicti<m rr llrat it is impossible to measure the speed and location of these
of "a" is not "non-a" but "b," "c," "d," and so on-which, ln l,,rrlicles at the same time-the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle.
their attempt at self-assertion and self-realization, are all fighting f llrt sc discoveries refer back, as Heisenberg suggested, to the con-
the same historical space. Instead of assuming a complete package '.r I ut ive function of perspective as an integral feature of the object.)
r
predicates as either belonging or not belonging to the object, instead ol In the final analysis, lhe difference is between a forma'l (andthus
assuming pure qualities as the fixed identity of n object, criticgl
'rrscntially quantitative) concept of contradiction and a substantive
theorists assumed multiple modalities for any historical object, differ '
rtc
-a distinction philosophers of scieirce like Hempel readily adrnit.
ent parts of which are activated, repressed or created in different and lftrw form can be discussed without reference to e content of which
overlapping constellations. Moreover, in the process of histor ll r\ the form, remained mysterious to critical fhorists. But far from
'[r'" 400 A Critique ol Methotl<tlolY
Introduction 40t
into a working alliance. But the different components, in turn, de- r rrgisse, objectivity being what is experienced-lead Hegel to his
velop alliances with other such packages, which changes their internal l,rnous dictum that form is always that of its content. Form is a
composition, makes them non-identical with their own (previous) '\ronym (Inbegriff) of mediation, Adomo formulated. It explains
identity and so on. A dialectical unity is a unity (i.e. pattern) of rrlr'subjectivity cannot be a substance by jtself (but is the
form in
"opposites" and not the result of short-circuiting the tensio!, as ulrich we experience objects), and thus why the twe-subjectivity
contemporary, official Dialectical Materialism is wont to do. $l- ,rrrrl objectivity-are not separable like two substances but are
lapsed into the concept of an all-defining matter in motion as the rrrornents"/aspects of one and the same process.
substratum of reality (of which consciousness is but one manihsta- Rather than try ro eliminate the inevitable subjectivity opera$ve
tion), dialectic in this version appears exiled into an all-defining.,gnd ilt (,rr)' perspective or approach, therefore, we should ..bring this
fetishized objectivity-and is us effectively dissolved. No dialeolh ,rrbcctivity back to its objectivity,"e3 Adorno demanded, i.e. be seff_
without subjectivity; as negative, as the non-identical, as transcend- rcllcxive in our procedures. Methodologically, we should be inside
ence by definition, subjectivity is the motor of history. ,rrrrl outside the object simultaneously. The open-endedness of this
Nor is the dialectical relation a matter of mere interaction, iger- , ,,'rritive process (knowledge as growing consciousness) is an imper-
depende often haphazardly used to paraphrase the process, 1, , ti.n only if we use as a standard a closed system of informational
-terms relation cannot be described in terms of fixed
"The subject-object rrruts whos substantive irrelevance is the price paid for intemal
realities which are conceptually transparent and which move toward , ,,5 js[ggy.q
each other. "8e Rather, "dialectic is methodically the mutual negation Not how systematic a theory is indicates its maturity and quality
and production of the subjective and objective moments"m in'Sc r r , tr rrditional theory would have it) but ''what it includes and what. it
formation of concepts. yrt ludes." "The inconclusive dialectic does not lose the stamp of
As Adomo suggested, subjectivity is the form of the objegivc, trrrl . . . the critical and relativizing trait necessarily belongs to
the how (not the what) ol reality. As distinct from the objective ,,,,rrilion."es In other words, only dialectical reason is capable of
aspects, individual identity consists only of the act of transcendgncc ll'rrrg its own meta-reasen. "Dialectical logic does not suspend the
of these aspects, i.e. the activity of negation. Just like reason (as its rrlr: of understanding [Verstand]. Dialectical logic, having as ifs
"agent"), therefore, subjectivity is neither exclusively transcend I ,,1'1r t I the forms of movement of the progress of knowledge,
includes
(as Fichte would claim), nor exclusively empiricl (as Dialectical tl,, r ollapse and restructuring of fixed systems and categories as part
Materialism would have it), nor a little of both, but it is both andrboth ,,t rr\ proper object domain."%
simultaneously. Our language, which distinguishes between "I" and l inally, bound up with the dialectic of subject and object is that
"me" is deceptive in this respect: not only the Cartesian object, thc ,,1 tlrt'ory and praxis, commonly misunderstood as the ..application"
"me" is empirical, but the "I" itself is too. The empirical knowl. ,,1 tlrt lheory. To apply a theory, however, presupposes the very gap
edge, i.e. what is "conceivable," delimits what the individual (tho tlr, ,rrrlication pretends to bridge. If , in fact, every new insight about
"sutrject") can, or even must do. "In Hegel, the productive activily , ,,lriect literally changes the identity of the object and thus
our
of the mind also and simultaneously appropriates its own product, jusl ,,lrrrr(le , expectation and action toward it, theory would be
adequate to
as the product appropriates [shapes] the subject. "er "Just as, in Kanl'l r,,rlrt\ precisely in the sense that Hegel had postulated: it would
terms, nothing is constituted without the subjective conditions of ,rrr,ly' follow the movcment of reality itself-as constituted by us_
reason as the constituting agent, no such agent or mental condition ,rr,,l rrould thus be the (our) consciousness of that reality, including
are even possible (so Hegel . . . adds) unless they be agents or condi, ,'rrr (lxrtenti?l) constitutive role it it. Such a theory would not need
tions of real individuals-who (as parts of the general) are themselvct ,r r | [ls. " This theory/consciousness as
r
reality already delimits
something more than just subjective."" The various experientiul t[, ,gg of possible, desirable relations that may obtain toward our
categories (including subjectivity) are thus formed through the vcry r r' ,rrron. At the same time, such delimitation, once conscious, means
object world they are fo order and explain. This reciprocity of form tlr rt rr t' have already transcended this stage, reaching a new perspec-
and content-subjectivity being the categories/planes of possiblc tr ' lront which our activity appears as a delimitation_a new
404 A Critique ol MethodologY lntroduction 40-l
not visible through a methodical screen built for past facts, is simply
stage of insight, of objectifications (of our subjectivity) etc' Thir
not "there" for them. Consequently, such central Marxian categories
famous dialectic of limits cannot know the concept of an application
the idea of praxis already contains the constitutive unity of subject and ls latency and tendency must remain opaque: "as far as empiricism is
object; in an applied theory, they must remain separate: an isolated concerned, tendency refers to probable behavior."rm In traditional
subject applies an idea as it sees fit to an equally isolated object theories there is little attempt, therefore, to construct logical utopias
( i e. tentative logical extensions of existing possibilities , whose exis-
domain-their relation remains arbitrary throughout' .
disciplines were auxiliary and preliminary stages-although t \t(nf that rational investigation of the world has: the more the v,orld
necessity was emphasized time and again by the Frankfurtians, ltt t t)fie s tf onsparent, the more the secure orders disappear and the
I
I
they needed to have their function defined by what Merleau- t,tt )t'c the need for secure orders increases. Even-and in t'act
might have called a practical philosophy of history, or what ,'tttciall,-among the most relentless rationalists, we find the
I has called an experimental anthropology. The American soci t t'tt(liness to bracket out and maintain certain areas allegedly
Robert S. Lynd, a one-time member of the Institute, cited thi tnttt t'essible tO reason.
I proach as an exernplary program for the sciences: it should not bc
only concern to ask whether a hypothesis is true, possible or reali I lrt' philosophic thought of recent decades, shot through with contra-
we should, perhaps, also ask the other way around: "what sofl r lrr tions, has also been divided on the problem of truth. Two opposing
earth"r6 would it have to be in which this hypothesis (e.g. rrl unreconciled views exist side by side in public life and, not
describing possible situation) would be realistic. Only history
a rrrlretuently, in the behavior of the same individual. According to
verify such hypotheses-by realizing them. ,n( , cognition never has more than limited validity. This is rooted in
, ,l t'cl ive f act as well as in the knower. Every thing and every relation
'
rrl llrinss changes with time, and thus every judgment as to real
107
Notes
e.
(uch concem with relevance to
r.-fetishize some Marxian assertions as timeless truths----exactly e charge he leveled
aEZinst Marcuse.)
Notes Critical theorists did differeniate certain forms and functions of the mind however.
"romantic critique th
one of these forms ce,
peitse of e critical the
quiet disappearance of the very dimensions of reason in charge of conceiving and
conslructing concfele altematives.
Critique of Methodologr Moreover, Coletti's misreading of the rather sophisticated analyses of the collapse
of the superstructure into the base in technological societies (certainly contestable in
parts) reveals his critique as a piece of propaganda as much as the company into which
Nole:
he puts critical theorists: Bergson, Heidegger, Jaspers-not accidentally precisely the
niques
men critical theorisls sharply criticized for the very points which Coletti levels against
chorcg
them. Even a cursory reading of Horkheimer's and Marcuse's essays of the thirties, as
sense.
well as of Adorno's Husserl critique could have prevented Coletti's blunder.
fields of investigation, such as philosophy of science, sociology of science, and so on-
as if one could do science without the "luxury" of a metascience.
The merhodological concerns of critical theory, aiming ultimately at a kind rl 2. Max Horkheimer, Davn and Decline .Translaed by Michael Shaw Afterword by
socio-epistemology, hardly signal a recent retreat in the wake of political resignationt Eike Cebhadt. New York: The Seabury Press, 1978, p. 98.
for instance in the sense of Popper's acquiescence to social role divisions and hlr
subsequent advice to philosophers to make their contribution to politics "with thr 3. Max Horkheimer, "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics," inCriticalTheor'(New
weaponsof acriticolmethods." ConiecturesandRet'utations(N.Y.:HarperandRow York: Herder and Herder, 1972), p. 150.
196
ogical matters, there was rhuch less individual difference lha 4. Max Horkheimer, "Preface" to Zeitschrifr t'r Sozialorschung, Vol. I, No. l/2,
Inst than on political or esthetic onesi the generic "critical 'lr p. l.
largely representative, therefore, of an informalconsensusarticuMed,forthemosPltl
by Horkheimer and Marduse. For reasons of delineating he shared concerns, $r, 5. Max Horkheimer, "The Latest Ataack," pp. 183f.
therefore cut across the lines of individuals and essays.
6. "Traditional theory" was the inclusive term Hokheimer used for all "uncritical"
that in Adorno's and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, aswcllll
L It is true theories,especiallythevariantsofpositivism Cf.hisprogrammaticessay"Traditional
in Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man,lhere are passages which lend themselvor l0 and Critical Theory," in Critical Theor'.
9. Dropped.
10. Because "logical empiricism" was concerned almost exclusively with matters
of formal logic and methodology, Horkheimer called the term a misnomer.
15.lbitl., p. 182.
36. Thcodor W Adorno, M inimu ll[oralio (London: Ncw Left Bo<ks, 197 4), p )23.
16.Ibid., p. 164.
37. Max Horkheimer, first part of "Philosophie und Kritische Theorie" (Part,l by
r7.lbid. , p. tst . Herberl Marcuse), in Zcitschrilt, Vol. VI, p. 625.
18. Max Horkheimer, "Notes on Science and the Crisis," io Criical Theory , p.9.lt 38. Max Horkheimer, "Die gegenwrtige Lage der Sozialphilosophio und dic Auf-
is clear, Horkheimer wrote, "that neither the achievemenls of science per se, nor th gabcn cines Instituts fr Sozialforschung," in Sozictlphilosophische Studiair (Frank[urt
improvement of industrial methods, are immediately identical with human progress. ll am Main: Fischer-Athcnium, 1972), p. 42.
is obvious that human beings can emotionally and mentally impoverish regardleSs of lhO
progress of science and inustry." "The Social Function of Phitosophy," in Crititl 39.Ibid , p. 43
Theor', p. 259.
40. In the I9-50s, Horkheimer stillproposed a "Kantian sociology "-testimony to thc
19. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Aus dem Nachlass der Achtzigerjahre," in Werke ,Y ol.1ll, impact thc Kantian question rctaincd as a ke clement of the critical approach.
e<titec.l by Karl Schleckta (Mnchen; Hanser, 1966), p. 814.
41. Theodor W Adorno, "Subject and Object," in this volunre.
20. Theo<lor W Adorno, "Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie," in Kr)lncr Zeitschrilt lilr
So:iologie und Soialpslthologie, March, 1961 , p 91. 42.Max Horkhermer, "Traditional and Critical Theory," p 203.
21. Theodor W. Adorno, Zur Metakritik der Erke nntnistheori (Stuttgart: Kohlhutt' 43. Max Horkheimer, Anlngc dcr brgcrLithcn Gcscltichrsphiloxtphic (Frankfurt
mer, 1956), p. 86. l97l), p 78; Horkheimer hcre quotcs Vico hinrscll.
am lr{ain: Fischer,
22. Johnl)ewey, Srudies in Logicol Theor \Chicago: Universily ofChicago Prcrr, 4.Ibid., p. s6.
I903), p 61.
45. Friedrich Nietzsche, ''Aus dcrn Nachlass dcr Achtzigcrjahre," p 8l.l
23. Theodor W. Adorno, "soziologie und empirischc Forschung," in ErnstTopitrelt
cd., Logik der Sozial isscnschutr (Kln/Berlin: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, l97), I, 46. Max Hokheinrer, Noti;cn 1950 bis 1969 utttl Dmmtrung, cdited by Wcrncr
523. Brcde (Frankfurl am Main: Fischcr, 1914), p 219.
24. Moritz Schlick, "Uber den Begriff der Ganzhcit," in Logik , p 222.
47. The concomitanr assumption of an ahistorical human nature-a projection of thc
experienccd immutability and repetitiveness of the ph1 sical universe thc dcclararion ol a
25. Max Horkhcimer, "Maerialism and Metaphysics," in Critical Thcor, p 4l
cerlain slage of conrciousness as being reason per se seemed unequivocally rcgressivc
.'Soziologie" to critical theorists, as it curbed-in rhe self-image of humans u,ho accepted it- thc
26. Theodor W. Adorno, p 514
polential, and even the wiJJingness, to transcend and remake their situation
Vulgar Marxist teleologics which insistcd on thc universal applicability o1 thc
27. Max Horkheimer, "The f .atcst Atrack," p l5lt in Critk.uL Tfuor.
categories of the Crititluc of Politit'ul Econom' were another favorite target along thcse
lines (Evenhistorical nlatcrialismitself wouldceasetobethe "correct" theorl,,criticol
2B.lbid , p t14. theorists insisted: its catcgories would become hopefully irrelevant in the now
society, obsolete because realizetl.)
29.lbid , p. t42.
48. Max Horkheimer, "Traditional and Critical Thcory," in Crititul Thutrt ,p 138.
30. "Traditional and Critical Theory," p 200
Cf Paul Lazarsfeld's t1'pical nristake which C Wright Mills uas to share in seeing
Adorno's diatribes against certain kinds of "mindless empiricism"-as an anti-cntpir-
3l.lbid , p 203
ical attitude pcr se But Adomo distinguished which critiquc was needcd in which
context: confronted with the lask of content analysis which did not qucsiion, let alone
32. Horkheimer praised Husserl for instancc, for exposing "the philosophical colttl' explain the origin and relcvrnce of its own categories, Adorno chided this naive brand oI
quenccs of regarding thc purc corporeal things of physics as abstracted frotlt ttll
empiricism for simply employing these reifications instead of investigating lhem In
subjective perspectivc ... just as if they were concrete realities in themselves." "'l'lll
Cermany, after thc Aurericin cxilc, he defended American-style empiricism against
Latest Artack," p 146, [ootnote 15.
entrenched idealist traditions. And when hard empirical research swayed Cermany, he
anempted aSain to prcvent this (or any particular) approach from assuming a monopxrly
33. Alfred Schitz, Collectcd Papcrs (Den Haag, 1962), Vol l, p. 53.
onresearch Lazarsfeld'sownadmissionthathemaynothaveunderstoodwhatcritical
theory was all about, or even what the "dialectical melhod" was, casts a curious light
34, Max Horkheirner, "On the Problcm of Truth" on his resentful suggestion that it may merely be the "hypnolic effect" of Adorno's
languagc "which might . - explain some o[ thc attraclions his publications have today
35. Zcirschrit't, Vol, Vlll, p. 227
for many young Cerman students " Paul Lazarsfeld, QuuLitativ'e Anulsis (Boston:
5t6 A Cririque o! Methodolog 5t7
57. Herber Marcuse, "Philosophy and Critical Theory," p' 136' 69. Herbert Marcuse, "Philosophy and Critical Theory," p. 154.
79. Theodor W. Adorno, Minimo Moralia, p. 8O. 103. Theodor W- Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic ol Enlightcnment, p. 4l
104. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. l13.
80. Max Horkheimer, "Traditional and Critical Theory," pp. 2l9f .
f05. Cf. Charles Bolton, "Is Sociology a Behaviorial Science?" in Pacific Sociologi-
81. Theodor W. Adorno, "Aspekte," p 20. cal Revien', No 6 (Spring, 1963), p. 6. Quoted from L. T. Reynolds and J. M.
Reynolds, The Sociolog'of Socktlog, (New York: McKay, 1970), p. 122: "'lheaim
82. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Relutations, p.316. of control implies, almost by delinition, an effort to restrict and, ideally, to eliminate
ahernalives of the subject A social science which takes control as a major criterion for
83. Theodor W. Adorno, "Soziologie und empirische Forschung," p. 512. scientific success thercby has a built-in bias to focus atlention upon those so-called
independent variables which human subjects are leasr likely to be ablc to conveil nto
84. Max Horkheimer, "The Social Function of Philosophy," p. 255. alternatives. If evidencc to dafe meu'rs anything, we can say that this focus leads to a
concenfration upon biochemical, unconscious, pre-social and non rational influences
85. Herbert Marcuse, "Review of lhe Internotional Enc'clopedio," p. 228. ad a studied ignoring ol the pror:esses which make human beings as cognitive, self-
conscious, creative, act-construcfing creaturcs."
8. Theodor W. Adorno, "Subject and Ob.ject," in this volume. 106. Robert S. Lynd, Ktnn'ledge t'or What? (Princeton: Princcton University Press,
t970), p.204.
87. Theodor W. Adorno, "Aspekte," p. 16.
8E. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Seabury Press, I973), p. 5. On the Problem Of Truth
89. Max Horkheimer, "Materialism and Metaphysics," p. 29. l. Ch. Sigwart, Logit',Freiburg im Breisgau 1889, vol l, p. lll.
90. Theodor W. Adorno, "Aspekte," p. 22. 2. Kant Prolegomcna #13, Nore III, Akademie-Ausgabe, vol. lY, p 293.
91. Ernst Bloch, Subjekt Objekt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1962), p. 42. 3. Husserl, "Formale und transzendentale Logik" in Juhrbuch fr Philosophic und
phiinomenologische Forschung, vol. X, Halle 1929, p 241 .
92. Theodor W. Adorno, "Aspekte," p. 21.
4. Cf. "Materialismus und Meraphysik," p. 6l ff.
93. Theodor W. Adomo, "Subject and Object," in rhis volume.
5.J. S. Bixler, ReligioninthePhilosoph'olWilliamJames, Bosron 1926, p. 126ft.
94. Cf . Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Crnbridge: Cambridge Universily
Press, 1974), p. 255: "Philosophers have set up ideals of 'logical' necessity, 'logical' 6. Witliam James, Human Immortality, Boston and New York 1898, p.27.
validity, and 'logical' possibility which can be applied to arguments outside the narrow,
analytic field only at the preliminary, consistency-checking stage----or else by an 7. F. C. S. Schiller, Ritldles on the Sphinx, London 1891, p. 295.
illogical extension. Substantial arguments in natural science, ethics and elsewherc,
have been severely handled and judged by philosophers, solely on the grounds of nol 8. Hegel, preface to Phnomenologie des Geistes, vol 2, p. 47.
being (what they never pretended to be) analytic; and eir quite genuine meris havo
been accounted negligible as compared with that initial and inevitable sin." 9. Op. cir., p. 73
95. Max Horkheimer, "On the Problem of Truth," in this volume. 10. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Aesthetik in vol. 12, p. 146 tf.
96. Ibid. ll. Op. cir., p. 147.
97.Max Horkheimer, "The Latest Attack," p. 144. 12. Trendelenburg, Logischc Unrersuchungan, Leipzig 1870, vol. I, p. 42 tf .
9E. Ibid., p 16l. 13. Cf. Hegef, Vorlesungen bcr die Philosophie dcr Ceschichte in ibid., vol. Il, p.
447.
99. Ibid., p. 149.
14. Hegef, Phdnomenologie dcs Geistes in vol 2, p 300.
l). Max Horkheimer, "Traditional and Critical Theory," p- 219.
15. Hegel, Enzglopridie, #60.
101. Max Horkheimer, "The Lates Attack," p. 162.
16. Cf. Hegel, Wissenschat't tlcr Logik in vol. 5, p. 27.
102. Max Horkheimer, "Zum Problem der Voraussage in den Sozialwissenschaftcn,"
in Kritische Theorie, Vol. I, p. I I l. 17. Husserl, Formcle und Tronscendentula Logik, supra, p. 140.
Bibliogroph s29
Max Horkheimer ( 1895- 1971), a philosopher by rraining, became the second direcror
Biographical Notes of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in 1931. He, if anyone, was the
founder of critical theory His major works are the essays of the 1930s defining the
aims, scope and method of critical theory (cf the selection Critical Theor,,New
York: Herder and Herde r, 1972) utd two books published in 1947 on what he later
called the critique of instrumenal reason (cf. Eclipse of Reason, New York:
Seabury, 1974; and a second work written with Theodor W Adorno, Dialectic of
Enlightenment, New York: Herder and Herder,1972).
Otto Kirchheimer (1905-1965) was a co-worker of the Institute for Social Research
from 1934 to 1942 However, his political background, left Social Democracy,
differed from that of most critical theorists His major interest before, during and
after his collaboration with Horkheimer and others was relatively constant: the
Theodor W. Adorno (1903 1969) studied both philosophy and composition (thelatter relationship of politics to constitutional and criminal law. Two major books by
with Alban Berg). He eventually became co-director of the Franl<furt Institute for Kirchheimer, Pr nishment and Social Structure (1939) auld Political Justice (1961)
Social Research, which he joined in 193 I (officially in 1938). His inlerests rangcd are available in English, as is the importantessay volume, Polirjcs, Law andSocial
from empirical s<rial research and sociology of art to the meta-theory of dialectics Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).
and philosophical esthetics. Nevertheless, the bulk of his life work, presented in
essay form, is located at the fluid boundary between sociology and philosophy ol
culture. The major works of Adorno available in English ae Minima Moralia Leo Lowenthal (born in l9??) is a veteran of the Institute and one of its few surviving
(London: New trft Books, 1974), Negative Dialectics (New York: Seabury, members (together wih Macuse and Fromm). He teaches in the sociology
1973) Philosophy of Modern Music (New York: Seabury, 19'73), Prisms (Lo- department of the University of California, Berkeley His major works in English
don: Neville Spearman, 1969), and Introduction to the Sociolog o/Mnsic (New are'. Literature and lhe Image oJ Man (1957), Literafure, Popular Culture, ond
York: Seabury, 1976). Society (1961), Prophets of Deceit (with Norbert Guterman, 1949, and Culture
and Social Behaulor (with Seymour M. Lipset).
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), a victim of European fascism, has now come into his Herbert Marcuse (bom in 1898) is the best-known crilical theorist outside Germany.
own as one of the century's most important literary critics as well as akey neo' His clea and courageous association with New Left politics made him into
Marxist theorist of culture. Never an official member of the Institute, he was most something of a public figure in the 1960s in West Cermany, the U.S. and France.
imporlant for Adomo in particula as an older friend, a theoretical predecessor and Marcuse joined Horkheimer's Institute in i933 with a political background in
a <lebating partner. Three Benjamin volumes are available in English, Illuminu extreme left Social Democracy (till l9l9) afier a period of study with Husserl and
lins (New York: Schocken, 1969), Understanding Brect (London: New Lclt Heidegger. Most of Marcuse's major articles of the 1930s ae available under the
Books, 1973) ad Chorles Baudelaire (London: New lrft Books, 1973) A titles Negations (Boston: Beacon, 1968) and Studies in Critical Philosophy
further volume of essays is scheduled to be published in 1978 by Harcourt Brcc (Boston: Beacon, 1972). His best known books are Reason and Revolution (New
Jovanovich, but much of his work, including the book on the tragic plays of thc York: Oxford, l94l), Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon, l95l), Soviet
baroque (coming from New Left Books), still remain unpublished in English. Marxism (New York: Columbia, 1958) and One-Dimensionol Man (Boston:
Beacon, 1964).
Erich Fromm (bom in 1900) is a psychoanalyst and philosopher Brought up in a
religious Jewish milieu, he was one of e pioneers of aFreud-Marxsynthesis Ilc Frederick Pollock (1894-1970) a political economist, was a close friend of Max
eventually associated himself with the "revisionist" wing of psychoanalysis zurtl Horkheimer. His major works dealt with the political, social and economic
the "humanist" interpretation of Marx. He is still a member of the Freuditrr consequences of the replacement of maket by planning Among these were Die
Washington Psychoanalytic Association, a member of the FranKurt Institute frorrr Planwirtschaltlichen Versuche in der Sowjetunion, 1917-1922 (1929) and the
the early 1930s, and contributor to rc Zeitschrit't fr Socialforschung beginning essays of the 1930s and 1940s now collected under the tfle, Die Stadien des
with its first issue and also to the important Studies on Authority and the Famil Kopitalismus (Munich: Beck Verlag, I 975). Pollock's best-known work after the
(1936); his connection to the Institute lasted until 1939. Major works in Englislt: war is The Economic and Social Consequences of Automation (Oxford: Oxford
The Dogma of Christ (1963), The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (197O), Escape [nnt University Press, 1957).
528