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Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason The Fear of Freedom Dialectic of Enlightenment Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action
Notable theorists
Max Horkheimer · Theodor Adorno Herbert Marcuse · Walter Benjamin Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas
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The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory,^[1] particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main. The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist parties. Meanwhile, many of these theorists experienced that traditional Marxist theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development.^[2]

Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind, thus sharing the same assumptions and being preoccupied with similar questions.^[3] In order to fill in the perceived omissions of traditional Marxism, they sought to draw answers from other schools of thought, hence using the insights of antipositivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and other disciplines.^[1] The school's main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber and Lukács.^[4]

Following Marx, they were concerned by the conditions which allowed for social change and the establishment of rational institutions.^[5] Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on dialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of reality.

Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided by Jürgen Habermas' work on communicative reason,^[6][7] linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity".^[8] More recently, critical theorists such as Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, claiming that he has undermined the aspirations for social change which originally gave purpose to critical theory's various projects—for example the problem of what reason should mean, the analysis and enlargement of "conditions of possibility" for social emancipation, and the critique of modern capitalism.^[9]

History[link]

The Institute for Social Research[link]

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It should be noted that the term "Frankfurt School" arose informally to describe the thinkers affiliated or merely associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research; it is not the title of any specific position or institution per se, and few of these theorists used the term themselves. The Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) was founded in 1923 by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist legal and political professor at the University of Vienna,^[10] as an adjunct of the University of Frankfurt; it was the first Marxist-oriented research center affiliated with a major German university.^[1] However, the school can trace its earliest roots back to Felix Weil, who was able to use money from his father's grain business to finance the Institut.

Weil was a young Marxist who had written his doctoral thesis on the practical problems of implementing socialism and was published by Karl Korsch. With the hope of bringing different trends of Marxism together, Weil organized a week-long symposium (the Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche) in 1922, a meeting attended by Georg Lukács, Karl Korsch, Karl August Wittfogel, Friedrich Pollock and others. The event was so successful that Weil set about erecting a building and funding salaries for a permanent institute. Weil negotiated with the Ministry of Education that the Director of the Institut would be a full professor from the state system, so that the Institut would have the status of a University institution.^[11]

Although György Lukács and Karl Korsch both attended the Arbeitswoche which had included a study of Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy, both were too committed to political activity and Party membership to join the Institut, although Korsch participated in publishing ventures for a number of years. The way Lukács was obliged to repudiate his History and Class Consciousness, published in 1923 and probably a major inspiration for the work of the Frankfurt School, was an indicator for others that independence from the Communist Party was necessary for genuine theoretical work.^[11]

The philosophical tradition now referred to as the "Frankfurt School" is perhaps particularly associated with Max Horkheimer (philosopher, sociologist and social psychologist), who took over as the institute's director in 1930 and recruited many of the school's most talented theorists, including Theodor W. Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, musicologist), Erich Fromm (psychoanalyst), and Herbert Marcuse (philosopher).^[1]

The German prewar context[link]

The political turmoil of Germany's troubled interwar years greatly affected the School's development. Its thinkers were particularly influenced by the failure of the working-class revolution in Western Europe (precisely where Marx had predicted that a communist revolution would take place) and by the rise of Nazism in such an economically and technologically advanced nation as Germany. This led many of them to take up the task of choosing what parts of Marx's thought might serve to clarify contemporary social conditions which Marx himself had never seen. Another key influence also came from the publication in the 1930s of Marx's Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology, which showed the continuity with Hegelianism that underlay Marx's thought.

As the growing influence of National Socialism became ever more threatening, its founders decided to prepare to move the Institute out of the country.^[12] Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Institute left Germany for Geneva, before moving to New York City in 1935, where it became affiliated with Columbia University. Its journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was accordingly renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. It was at this moment that much of its important work began to emerge, having gained a favorable reception within American and English academia. Horkheimer, Adorno and Pollock eventually resettled in West Germany in the early 1950s, although Marcuse, Lowenthal, Kirchheimer and others chose to remain in the United States. It was only in 1953 that the Institute was formally re-established in Frankfurt.^[13]

Theorists[link]

Which "theorists" may be included in what is now called the "Frankfurt School" will likely vary among different scholars. Indeed, the title of "school" can often be a misleading one, as the Institute's members did not always form a series of tightly woven, complementary projects. Some scholars have therefore limited their view of the Frankfurt School to Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Lowenthal and Pollock.^[5] However, most pre-war theorists can be considered as having shared a very similar paradigm. Although he was initially part of the School's inner circle, Jürgen Habermas is generally considered as the first to have diverged from Horkheimer's research program, thus giving rise to a new generation of critical theorists.

Early members of the Frankfurt School were: Max Horkheimer Theodor W. Adorno Herbert Marcuse Friedrich Pollock Erich Fromm Otto Kirchheimer Leo Löwenthal Franz Leopold Neumann People who were associated with the Institute or its theorists include: Siegfried Kracauer Alfred Sohn-Rethel Walter Benjamin

Later theorists with roots in Frankfurt School critical theory include: Jürgen Habermas Claus Offe Axel Honneth Oskar Negt Alfred Schmidt Albrecht Wellmer

Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg.

Theoretical work[link]

Critical foundations of social science[link]

Critical theory and the critique of ideology[link]

The Frankfurt School's work cannot be fully comprehended without equally understanding the aims and objectives of critical theory. Initially outlined by Max Horkheimer in his Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), critical theory may be defined as a self-conscious social critique that is aimed at change and emancipation through enlightenment, and does not cling dogmatically to its own doctrinal assumptions.^[14][15]

Horkheimer opposed it to "traditional theory", which refers to theory in the positivistic, scientistic, or purely observational mode – that is, which derives generalizations or "laws" about different aspects of the world. Drawing upon Max Weber, Horkheimer argued that the social sciences are different from the natural sciences, inasmuch as generalizations cannot be easily made from so-called experiences, because the understanding of a "social" experience itself is always fashioned by ideas that are in the researchers themselves. What the researcher does not realize is that he is caught in a historical context in which ideologies shape the thinking; thus theory would be conforming to the ideas in the mind of the researcher rather than the experience itself:

For Horkheimer, approaches to understanding in the social sciences cannot simply imitate those in the natural sciences. Although various theoretical approaches would come close to breaking out of the ideological constraints which restricted them, such as positivism, pragmatism, neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, Horkheimer would argue that they failed, because all were subject to a "logico-mathematical" prejudice which separates theoretical activity from actual life (meaning that all these schools sought to find a logic which would always remain true, independently of and without consideration for ongoing human activities). According to Horkheimer, the appropriate response to this dilemma is the development of a critical theory.^[17]

The problem, Horkheimer argued, is epistemological: we should not merely reconsider the scientist but the knowing individual in general.^[18] Unlike orthodox Marxism, which merely applies a ready-made "template" to both critique and action, critical theory seeks to be self-critical and rejects any pretensions to absolute truth. Critical theory defends the primacy of neither matter (materialism) nor consciousness (idealism), arguing that both epistemologies distort reality to the benefit, eventually, of some small group. What critical theory attempts to do is to place itself outside of philosophical strictures and the confines of existing structures. However, as a way of thinking and "recovering" humanity's self-knowledge, critical theory often looks to Marxism for its methods and tools.^[15]

Horkheimer maintained that critical theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time), just as it should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology. While critical theory must at all times be self-critical, Horkheimer insisted that a theory is only critical if it is explanatory. Critical theory must therefore combine practical and normative thinking in order to "explain what is wrong with current social reality, identify actors to change it, and provide clear norms for criticism and practical goals for the future."^[19] Whereas traditional theory can only mirror and explain reality as it presently is, critical theory's purpose is to change it; in Horkheimer's words the goal of critical theory is "the emancipation of human beings from the circumstances that enslave them".^[20]

Frankfurt School theorists were explicitly linking up with the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, where the term critique meant philosophical reflection on the limits of claims made for certain kinds of knowledge and a direct connection between such critique and the emphasis on moral autonomy – as opposed to traditionally deterministic and static theories of human action. In an intellectual context defined by dogmatic positivism and scientism on the one hand and dogmatic "scientific socialism" on the other, critical theorists intended to rehabilitate Marx's ideas through a philosophically critical approach.

Whereas both Marxist-Leninist and Social-Democratic orthodox thinkers viewed Marxism as a new kind of positive science, Frankfurt School theorists, such as Horkheimer, rather based their work on the epistemological base of Karl Marx's work, which presented itself as critique, as in Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. They thus emphasized that Marx was attempting to create a new kind of critical analysis oriented toward the unity of theory and revolutionary practice rather than a new kind of positive science. Critique, in this Marxian sense, meant taking the ideology of a society – e.g. the belief in individual freedom or free market under capitalism – and critiquing it by comparing it with the social reality of that very society – e.g. social inequality and exploitation. The methodology on which Frankfurt School theorists grounded this critique came to be what had before been established by Hegel and Marx, namely the dialectical method.

Dialectical method[link]

The Institute also attempted to reformulate dialectics as a concrete method. The use of such a dialectical method can be traced back to the philosophy of Hegel, who conceived dialectic as the tendency of a notion to pass over into its own negation as the result of conflict between its inherent contradictory aspects.^[21] In opposition to previous modes of thought, which viewed things in abstraction, each by itself and as though endowed with fixed properties, Hegelian dialectic has the ability to consider ideas according to their movement and change in time, as well as according to their interrelations and interactions.^[21]

History, according to Hegel, proceeds and evolves in a dialectical manner: the present embodies the rational sublation, or "synthesis", of past contradictions. History may thus be seen as an intelligible process (which Hegel referred to as Weltgeist) which is moving towards a specific condition—the rational realization of human freedom.^[22] However, considerations about the future were of no interest to Hegel,^[23][24] for whom philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in hindsight. The study of history is thus limited to the description of past and present realities.^[22] Hence for Hegel and his successors, dialectics inevitably lead to the approval of the status quo—indeed, Hegel's philosophy served as a justification for Christian theology and the Prussian state.

This was fiercely criticized by Marx and the Young Hegelians, who claimed that Hegel had gone too far in defending his abstract conception of "absolute Reason" and had failed to notice the "real" —i.e. undesirable and irrational— life conditions of the working class. By turning Hegel's idealist dialectics upside-down, Marx advanced his own theory of dialectical materialism, arguing that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."^[25] Marx's theory follows a materialist law of history and space,^[26] where the development of the productive forces is seen as the primary motive force for historical change, and according to which the social and material contradictions inherent to capitalism will inevitably lead to its negation, thereby replacing capitalism with a new rational form of society: communism.^[27]

Marx thus extensively relied on a form of dialectical analysis. This method—to know the truth by uncovering the contradictions in presently predominant ideas and, by extension, in the social relations to which they are linked—exposes the underlying struggle between opposing forces. For Marx, it is only by becoming aware of the dialectic of such opposing forces, in a struggle for power, that individuals can liberate themselves and change the existing social order.^[28]

For their part, Frankfurt School theorists quickly came to realize that a dialectical method could only be adopted if it could be applied to itself—that is to say, if they adopted a self-correcting method—a dialectical method that would enable them to correct previous false dialectical interpretations. Accordingly, critical theory rejected the dogmatic historicism and materialism of orthodox Marxism.^[29] Indeed, the material tensions and class struggles of which Marx spoke were no longer seen by Frankfurt School theorists as having the same revolutionary potential within contemporary Western societies—an observation which indicated that Marx's dialectical interpretations and predictions were either incomplete or incorrect.

Contrary to orthodox Marxist praxis, which solely seeks to implement an unchangeable and narrow idea of "communism" into practice, critical theorists held that praxis and theory, following the dialectical method, should be interdependent and should mutually influence each other. When Marx famously stated in his Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it", his real idea was that philosophy's only validity was in how it informed action. Frankfurt School theorists would correct this by claiming that when action fails, then the theory guiding it must be reviewed. In short, socialist philosophical thought must be given the ability to criticize itself and "overcome" its own errors. While theory must inform praxis, praxis must also have a chance to inform theory.

Early influences[link]

The intellectual influences on and theoretical focus of the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theorists can be summarized as follows:

Responding to the intensification of alienation and irrationality in an advanced capitalist society, critical theory is a comprehensive, ideology-critical, historically self-reflective body of theory aiming simultaneously to explain domination and point to the possibilities of bringing about a rational, humane, and free society. Frankfurt School critical theorists developed numerous theories of the economic, political, cultural, and psychological domination structures of advanced industrial civilization.

The Institute made major contributions in two areas relating to the possibility of human subjects to be rational, i.e. individuals who could act rationally to take charge of their own society and their own history. The first consisted of social phenomena previously considered in Marxism as part of the "superstructure" or as ideology: personality, family and authority structures (one of the earliest works published bore the title Studies of Authority and the Family), and the realm of aesthetics and mass culture. Studies saw a common concern here in the ability of capitalism to destroy the preconditions of critical, revolutionary political consciousness. This meant arriving at a sophisticated awareness of the depth dimension in which social oppression sustains itself. It also meant the beginning of critical theory's recognition of ideology as part of the foundations of social structure.

Critique of Western civilization[link]

[edit] Dialectic of Enlightenment and Minima Moralia

The second phase of Frankfurt School critical theory centres principally on two works: Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) and Adorno's Minima Moralia (1951). The authors wrote both works during the Institute's exile in America. While retaining much of a Marxian analysis, in these works critical theory shifted its emphasis. The critique of capitalism turned into a critique of Western civilization as a whole. Indeed, the Dialectic of Enlightenment uses the Odyssey as a paradigm for the analysis of bourgeois consciousness. Horkheimer and Adorno already present in these works many themes that have come to dominate the social thought of recent years; indeed, their exposition of the domination of nature as a central characteristic of instrumental rationality in Western civilization was made long before ecology and environmentalism had become popular concerns.

The analysis of reason now goes one stage further. The rationality of Western civilization appears as a fusion of domination and of technological rationality, bringing all of external and internal nature under the power of the human subject. In the process, however, the subject itself gets swallowed up, and no social force analogous to the proletariat can be identified that will enable the subject to emancipate itself. Hence the subtitle of Minima Moralia: "Reflections from Damaged Life". In Adorno's words,

Consequently, at a time when it appears that reality itself has become the basis for ideology, the greatest contribution that critical theory can make is to explore the dialectical contradictions of individual subjective experience on the one hand, and to preserve the truth of theory on the other. Even dialectical progress is put into doubt: "its truth or untruth is not inherent in the method itself, but in its intention in the historical process." This intention must be oriented toward integral freedom and happiness: "the only philosophy which can be responsibly practiced in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption". Adorno goes on to distance himself from the "optimism" of orthodox Marxism: "beside the demand thus placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption [i.e. human emancipation] itself hardly matters."^[31]

From a sociological point of view, both Horkheimer's and Adorno's works contain a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence which gave rise to the "pessimism" of the new critical theory over the possibility of human emancipation and freedom.^[32] This ambivalence was rooted, of course, in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, in particular, the rise of National Socialism, state capitalism, and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional Marxist sociology.^[33] For Adorno and Horkheimer, state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production" and "material productive forces of society"—a tension which, according to traditional Marxist theory, constituted the primary contradiction within capitalism. The previously "free" market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and "irrevocable" private property of Marx's epoch have gradually been replaced by the centralized state planning and socialized ownership of the means of production in contemporary Western societies.^[34] The dialectic through which Marx predicted the emancipation of modern society is thus suppressed, effectively being subjugated to a positivist rationality of domination.

Of this second "phase" of the Frankfurt School, philosopher and critical theorist Nikolas Kompridis writes that:

Kompridis claims that this "sceptical cul-de-sac" was arrived at with "a lot of help from the once unspeakable and unprecedented barbarity of European fascism," and could not be gotten out of without "some well-marked [exit or] Ausgang, showing the way out of the ever-recurring nightmare in which Enlightenment hopes and Holocaust horrors are fatally entangled." However, this Ausgang, according to Kompridis, would not come until later – purportedly in the form of Jürgen Habermas' work on the intersubjective bases of communicative rationality.^[35]

Philosophy of modern music[link]

Adorno, a trained musician, wrote The Philosophy of Modern Music (1949), in which he, in essence, polemicizes against beauty itself ― because it has become part of the ideology of advanced capitalist society^{[page needed]} and the false consciousness that contributes to social domination. It hence contributes to the present sustainability of capitalism by rendering it "aesthetically pleasing" and "agreeable". Only avant-garde art and music may preserve the truth by capturing the reality of human suffering. Hence:

This view of modern art as producing truth only through the negation of traditional aesthetic form and traditional norms of beauty because they have become ideological is characteristic of Adorno and of the Frankfurt School generally. It has been criticized by those who do not share its conception of modern society as a false totality that renders obsolete traditional conceptions and images of beauty and harmony.

Critical theory and domination[link]

Negative dialectics[link]

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With the growth of advanced industrial society during the Cold War era, critical theorists recognized that the path of capitalism and history had changed decisively, that the modes of oppression operated differently, and that the industrial working class no longer remained the determinate negation of capitalism. This led to the attempt to root the dialectic in an absolute method of negativity, as in Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (1964) and Adorno's Negative Dialectics (1966). During this period the Institute of Social Research re-settled in Frankfurt (although many of its associates remained in the United States) with the task not merely of continuing its research but of becoming a leading force in the sociological education and democratization of West Germany. This led to a certain systematization of the Institute's entire accumulation of empirical research and theoretical analysis.

During this period, Frankfurt School critical theory particularly influenced some segments of the left wing and leftist thought, particularly the New Left. Herbert Marcuse has occasionally been described as the theorist or intellectual progenitor of the New Left. Their critique of technology, totality, teleology and (occasionally) civilization is an influence on anarcho-primitivism. Their work also heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies.

More importantly, however, the Frankfurt School attempted to define the fate of reason in the new historical period. While Marcuse did so through analysis of structural changes in the labor process under capitalism and inherent features of the methodology of science, Horkheimer and Adorno concentrated on a re-examination of the foundation of critical theory. This effort appears in systematized form in Adorno's Negative Dialectics, which tries to redefine dialectics for an era in which "philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed". Negative dialectics expresses the idea of critical thought so conceived that the apparatus of domination cannot co-opt it.

Its central notion, long a focal one for Horkheimer and Adorno, suggests that the original sin of thought lies in its attempt to eliminate all that is other than thought, the attempt by the subject to devour the object, the striving for identity. This reduction makes thought the accomplice of domination. Negative Dialectics rescues the "preponderance of the object", not through a naive epistemological or metaphysical realism but through a thought based on differentiation, paradox, and ruse: a "logic of disintegration". Adorno thoroughly criticizes Heidegger's fundamental ontology, which he thinks reintroduces idealistic and identity-based concepts under the guise of having overcome the philosophical tradition.

Negative dialectics comprises a monument to the end of the tradition of the individual subject as the locus of criticism. Without a revolutionary working class, the Frankfurt School had no one to rely on but the individual subject. But, as the liberal capitalist social basis of the autonomous individual receded into the past, the dialectic based on it became more and more abstract.

Habermas and communicative rationality[link]

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Habermas's work takes the Frankfurt School's abiding interests in rationality, the human subject, democratic socialism, and the dialectical method and overcomes a set of contradictions that always weakened critical theory: the contradictions between the materialist and transcendental methods, between Marxian social theory and the individualist assumptions of critical rationalism between technical and social rationalization, and between cultural and psychological phenomena on the one hand and the economic structure of society on the other.

The Frankfurt School avoided taking a stand on the precise relationship between the materialist and transcendental methods, which led to ambiguity in their writings and confusion among their readers. Habermas' epistemology synthesizes these two traditions by showing that phenomenological and transcendental analysis can be subsumed under a materialist theory of social evolution, while the materialist theory makes sense only as part of a quasi-transcendental theory of emancipatory knowledge that is the self-reflection of cultural evolution. The simultaneously empirical and transcendental nature of emancipatory knowledge becomes the foundation stone of critical theory.

By locating the conditions of rationality in the social structure of language use, Habermas moves the locus of rationality from the autonomous subject to subjects in interaction. Rationality is a property not of individuals per se, but rather of structures of undistorted communication. In this notion Habermas has overcome the ambiguous plight of the subject in critical theory. If capitalistic technological society weakens the autonomy and rationality of the subject, it is not through the domination of the individual by the apparatus but through technological rationality supplanting a describable rationality of communication. And, in his sketch of communicative ethics as the highest stage in the internal logic of the evolution of ethical systems, Habermas hints at the source of a new political practice that incorporates the imperatives of evolutionary rationality.

Criticism of Frankfurt School theorists[link]

Criticism of psychoanalytic categorizations[link]

In an interview with Casey Blake and Christopher Phelps, historian Christopher Lasch criticized the Frankfurt School's initial tendencies towards "automatically" rejecting opposing political criticisms on "psychiatric" grounds:

Horkheimer and Adorno's pessimism[link]

An early criticism, originating from the left, argues that Frankfurt School critical theory is nothing more than a form of "bourgeois idealism" devoid of any actual relation to political practice, and is hence totally isolated from the reality of any ongoing revolutionary movement. This criticism was captured in Georg Lukács's phrase "Grand Hotel Abyss" as a syndrome he imputed to the members of the Frankfurt School:

Philosopher Karl Popper equally believed that the school did not live up to Marx's promise of a better future:

Habermas' solutions: critical theory "between past and future"[link]

In 2006, Nikolas Kompridis (a former student of Jürgen Habermas) published new criticisms of Habermas's approach to critical theory, calling for a dramatic break with the proceduralist ethics of communicative rationality. He writes:

In addition, he writes that:

In order to prevent that dissolution, Kompridis suggests that critical theory should "reinvent" itself as a "possibility-disclosing" enterprise, incorporating Heidegger's controversial insights into world disclosure and drawing from the sources of normativity that he feels were blocked from critical theory by its recent change of paradigm. Calling for what Charles Taylor has named a "new department" of reason,^[44] with a possibility-disclosing role that Kompridis calls "reflective disclosure", Kompridis argues that critical theory must embrace its neglected German romantic inheritance and once again imagine alternatives to existing social and political conditions, "if it is to have a future worthy of its past."^[45]

Economic and media critiques[link]

Recent criticism of the Frankfurt School by the libertarian CATO Institute focused on the claim that culture has grown more sophisticated and diverse as a consequence of free markets and the availability of niche cultural text for niche audiences.^[46][47]

See also[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Arato, Andrew and Eike Gebhardt (eds.) (1982). The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Continuum International Publishing Group. (ISBN 0-8264-0194-5)
• Bernstein, Jay (ed.) (1994). The Frankfurt School: Critical Assessments. Routledge (in six volumes).
• Benhabib, Seyla (1986). Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. Columbia University Press. (ISBN 0-231-06165-X)
• Bottomore, Tom (2002). The Frankfurt School and its Critics. Routledge. (ISBN 0-415-28539-9)
• Bronner, Stephen Eric and Douglas MacKay Kellner (eds.) (1989). Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Routledge. (ISBN 0-415-90041-7)
• Brosio, Richard A. (1980). The Frankfurt School : an analysis of the contradictions and crises of liberal capitalist societies.
• Friedman, George. (1981). The Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press (ISBN 0-8014-1279-X)
• Held, David (1980). Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. University of California Press (ISBN 0-520-04175-5)
• Jay, Martin (1996). The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research 1923-1950. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (ISBN 0-520-20423-9)
• Kompridis, Nikolas. (2006). Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future. MIT Press. (ISBN 0-262-11299-X)
• Postone, Moishe. Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Shapiro, Jeremy J. (1974). "The Critical Theory of Frankfurt". In: Times Literary Supplement, No. 3 (October 4, 1974), p. 787
• Scheuerman, William E. (2008). Frankfurt School Perspectives on Globalization, Democracy, and the Law. Third Edition. Routledge. (ISBN 0-415-70183-X)
• Wiggershaus, Rolf. (1995). The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-73113-4)
• Wheatland, Thomas. (2009). The Frankfurt School in Exile. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (ISBN 978-0-8166-5367-6)

External links[link]

• Official website of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt
• "Critical Theory" on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Frankfurt School on the Marxists Internet Archive
• BBC Radio 4 Audio documentary "In our time: the Frankfurt School"

Herbert Marcuse

Born	July 19, 1898 Berlin, German Empire
Died	July 29, 1979(1979-07-29) (aged 81) Starnberg, West Germany
Era	20th century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Frankfurt School, Marxism, critical theory
Main interests	Social theory, socialism, industrialism, technology
Notable ideas	Totally administered society, technological rationality, the Great Refusal, one-dimensional man, New Reality Principle, libidinal Work Relations, work as free Play, repressive tolerance
Influenced by Machiavelli, Rousseau, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Lukács, Friedrich Schiller
Influenced Norman O. Brown, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, Andrew Feenberg, Jürgen Habermas, Abbie Hoffman, Gad Horowitz, Douglas Kellner, William Leiss, John Zerzan, Bob Black

Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason The Fear of Freedom Dialectic of Enlightenment Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action
Notable theorists
Max Horkheimer · Theodor Adorno Herbert Marcuse · Walter Benjamin Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas
Important concepts
Critical Theory · Dialectic · Praxis Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism Popular culture · Culture industry Advanced capitalism · Privatism Non-Identity · Communicative Rationality Legitimation Crisis
v t e

Herbert Marcuse (German pronunciation: [maʁˈkuːzə]; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Active in the United States after 1934, his intellectual concerns were the dehumanizing effects of capitalism and modern technology. Celebrated as the "Father of the New Left,"^[1] his best known works are Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964). His Marxist scholarship inspired many radical intellectuals and political activists in the 1960s and '70s, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin to Carl Marcuse and Gertrud Kreslawsky and raised in a Jewish family. In 1916 he was drafted into the German Army, but only worked in horse stables in Berlin during World War I. He then became a member of a Soldiers' Council that participated in the aborted socialist Spartacist uprising. He completed his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1922 on the German Künstlerroman after which he moved back to Berlin, where he worked in publishing. In 1924 he married Sophie Wertheim, a mathematician. He returned to Freiburg in 1928 to study with Edmund Husserl and write a Habilitation with Martin Heidegger, which was published in 1932 as Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity. This study was written in the context of the Hegel renaissance that was taking place in Europe with an emphasis on Hegel's ontology of life and history, idealist theory of spirit and dialectic.^[1] With his academic career blocked by the rise of the Third Reich, in 1933 Marcuse joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.

In 1933, Marcuse published his first major review, of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In this review, Marcuse revised the interpretation of Marxism, from the standpoint of the works of the early Marx. This review helped the world see that Marcuse was becoming one of the most promising theorists of his generation.^[1]

While a member of the Institute of Social Research, Marcuse developed a model for critical social theory, created a theory of the new stage of state and monopoly capitalism, described the relationships between philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism, and provided an analysis and critique of German fascism. Marcuse worked closely with critical theorists while at the Institute.^[1]

United States[link]

After emigrating from Germany in 1933, in 1934, Marcuse immigrated to the United States, where he became a citizen in 1940. Although he never returned to Germany to live, he remained one of the major theorists associated with the Frankfurt School, along with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (among others). In 1940 he published Reason and Revolution, a dialectical work studying G. W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx.

During World War II Marcuse first worked for the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) on anti-Nazi propaganda projects. In 1943 he transferred to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. His work for the OSS involved research on Nazi Germany and denazification. After the dissolution of the OSS in 1945, Marcuse was employed by the US Department of State as head of the Central European section, retiring after the death of his first wife in 1951.

In 1952 he began a teaching career as a political theorist, first at Columbia University, then at Harvard University, then at Brandeis University from 1958 to 1965, where he taught philosophy and politics, and finally (by then he was past the usual retirement age), at the University of California, San Diego. He was a friend and collaborator of the political sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr. and of the political philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, and also a friend of the Columbia University sociology professor C. Wright Mills, one of the founders of the New Left movement.

In the post-war period, Marcuse was the most explicitly political and left-wing member of the Frankfurt School^{[citation needed]}, continuing to identify himself as a Marxist, a socialist, and a Hegelian.

Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955 synthesis of Marx and Freud, Eros and Civilization, and his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man) resonated with the concerns of the student movement in the 1960s. Because of his willingness to speak at student protests, Marcuse soon became known as "the father of the New Left in the United States", a term he strongly disliked and disavowed. His work heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies. He had many speaking engagements in the US and Europe in the late 1960s and 1970s. He became a close friend and inspirer of the French philosopher André Gorz.

Marcuse defended the arrested East German dissident Rudolf Bahro (author of Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus [trans., The Alternative in Eastern Europe]), discussing in a 1979 essay Bahro's theories of "change from within" [1].

Jesuit Fr. James Chevedden made a written complaint to the Superior General of the Jesuit Order, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, regarding the promotion of the ideology of the Marxist philosopher, Herbert Marcuse at the 1998 California Jesuit Province Social Pastoral Conference.

The New Left and radical politics[link]

Many radical scholars and activists were influenced by Marcuse, such as Angela Davis,^[2] Abbie Hoffman, Rudi Dutschke, and Robert M. Young. (See the List of Scholars and Activists link, below.) Among those who critiqued him from the left were Marxist-humanist Raya Dunayevskaya, fellow German emigre Paul Mattick, both of whom subjected One-Dimensional Man to a Marxist critique, and Noam Chomsky, who knew and liked Marcuse "but thought very little of his work."^[3] Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance", in which he claimed capitalist democracies can have totalitarian aspects, has been criticized by conservatives. [2] Marcuse argues that genuine tolerance does not permit support for "repression", since doing so ensures that marginalized voices will remain unheard. He characterizes tolerance of repressive speech as "inauthentic." Instead, he advocates a form of tolerance that is intolerant of right wing political movements:

"Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left."^[4]

"Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc"^[4]

Marcuse later expressed his radical ideas through three pieces of writing. He wrote An Essay on Liberation in 1969 celebrating liberation movements such as those in Vietnam, which inspired many radicals. In 1972 he wrote Counterrevolution and Revolt, which argues that the hopes of the 1960s were facing a counterrevolution from the right.^[1]

After Brandeis denied the renewal of his teaching contract in 1965, Marcuse devoted the rest of his life to teaching, writing and giving lectures around the world. His efforts brought him attention from the media, which claimed that he openly advocated violence, although he often clarified that only "violence of defense" could be appropriate, not "violence of aggression." He continued to promote Marxian theory, with some of his students helping to spread his ideas. He published his final work The Aesthetic Dimension in 1979 on the role of high art in the process of what he termed "emancipation" from bourgeois society.^[1]

Marriage and death[link]

Grave in the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery, Berlin, where Marcuse's ashes were buried in 2003.

Marcuse married three times. His first wife was mathematician Sophie Wertman (1901–1951), with whom he had a son, Peter (born 1928). Herbert's second marriage was to Inge Neumann (1910–1972), the widow of his close friend Franz Neumann (1900–1954). His third wife was Erica Sherover (1938–1988), a former graduate student and forty years his junior, whom he married in 1976. His son Peter Marcuse is currently professor emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University. His granddaughter is the novelist Irene Marcuse and his grandson, Harold Marcuse, is currently a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

On July 29, 1979, ten days after his eighty-first birthday, Marcuse died after having suffered a stroke during a visit to Germany. He had spoken at the Frankfurt Römerberggespräche, and was on his way to the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg, on invitation from second-generation Frankfurt School theorist Jürgen Habermas. In 2003, after his ashes were rediscovered in the USA, he was buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery, Berlin.

Philosophy and views[link]

This section requires expansion.

Marcuse's early "Heideggerian Marxism"[link]

During his years in Freiburg, Marcuse wrote a series of essays that explored the possibility of synthesizing Marxism and Heidegger's fundamental ontology, as begun in the latter's work "Being and Time" (1927). Though he eventually came to distance himself from Heidegger's thought, it has been suggested by thinkers such as Juergen Habermas that an understanding of Marcuse's later thinking demands an appreciation of his early Heideggerian influence.^[5]

Marcuse and capitalism[link]

Marcuse’s analysis of capitalism derives partially from one of Karl Marx’s main concepts: Objectification,^[6] which under capitalism becomes Alienation. Marx believed that capitalism was exploiting humans; that the objects produced by laborers became alienated and thus ultimately dehumanized them to functional objects. Marcuse took this belief and expanded it. He argued that capitalism and industrialization pushed laborers so hard that they began to see themselves as extensions of the objects they were producing. At the beginning of One-Dimensional Man Marcuse writes, “The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment,”^[7] meaning that under capitalism (in consumer society) humans become extensions of the commodities that they create, thus making commodities extensions of people's minds and bodies and calling into question the notion of alienation.

Bibliography[link]

Books

• Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity (1932) - originally written in German ISBN 978-0-262-63125-9
• A Study on Authority (1936) - originally written in German ISBN 978-1-84467-209-7
• Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941), Presents the Hegelian Perspective along with a critique of Marxism and positivist philosophy.^[8] ISBN 978-1-57392-718-5
• Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955), The use of Freud's ideas on life and death to critique how modern culture changes and isolates desire.^[8]ISBN 978-0-415-18663-6
• Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958) ISBN 978-1-153-55449-7
• One-Dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse's concerns about modern capitalism restricting the possibility of opposition.^[8] He believed that the industrialization was creating a one-dimensional way of thought and behavior which decreased opposition towards capitalism.^[1] ISBN 978-0-8070-1417-2
• Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (1968) ISBN 978-1-906948-04-7
• An Essay on Liberation (1969) ISBN 978-0-8070-0595-8
• Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972) ISBN 978-0-8070-1533-9
• The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (1978) ISBN 978-0-8070-1519-3

Essays

• Repressive Tolerance (1965)
• On the Problem of the Dialectic. Telos 27 (Spring 1976). New York: Telos Press.
• An Essay on Liberation (1969) ISBN 0-14-021427-5

References[link]

Citations[link]

Further reading[link]

• John Abromeit and W. Mark Cobb, eds. (2004) Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader, New York, London: Routledge.
• Harold Bleich (1977) The Philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.
• Paul Breines (1970) Critical Interruptions: New Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse, New York: Herder and Herder.
• Alfred C. Fred (1985) Science and Revenge of Nature: Marcuse and Habermas, Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
• Christian Fuchs (2005). Emanzipation! Technik und Politik bei Herbert Marcuse. Aachen: Shaker. ISBN 3-8322-3999-5.
• Christian Fuchs (2005). Herbert Marcuse interkulturell gelesen. Interkulturelle Bibliothek Vol. 15. Nordhausen: Bautz. ISBN 3-88309-175-8.
• Douglas Kellner (1984). Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-520-05295-6.
• Herbert Marcuse (1998) Technology, War and Fascism, London: Routeledge.
• Alain Martineau (1986). Herbert Marcuse’s Utopia, Harvest House, Montreal. ISBN 0-88772-027-7.

See also[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Herbert Marcuse

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Herbert Marcuse

• Comprehensive 'Official' Herbert Marcuse Website, by one of Marcuse's grandsons, with full bibliographies of primary and secondary works, and full texts of many important works
• http://www.marcusesociety.org International Herbert Marcuse Society website
• "Herbert Marcuse (on-line) Archive" at the Marxists Internet Archive
• Herbert Marcuse Archive, by Herbert Marcuse Association
• "Marcuse: professor behind 1960s rebellion", at worldsocialism.org
• "Illuminations: The Critical Theory Project" (detailed biography and essays, by Douglas Kellner).
• Herbert's Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise, biographic documentary on Google video
• Bernard Stiegler, "Spirit, Capitalism, and Superego"
• "Herbert Marcuse Biography Indonesian" at aprillins.com
• Luther Blissett feat. Herbert Marcuse - Rupture, music video

Jonathan David Anthony Bowden (April 12, 1962 - March 29, 2012)^[1] was a British political figure who had been involved with a number of political parties and groups, and a leading speaker on the nationalist circuit. His great influence was the novelist, Bill Hopkins, who had been one of the Angry Young Men of the 1950s.

Early politics[link]

Bowden was born in Kent and was educated at Presentation College, Reading, Berkshire. In 1983-4 he completed one year of a B.A. history course at London University's Birkbeck College, but then left. He began his political career as a member of the Conservative Party in the Tower Hamlets association, in the Shoreditch and Stepney Green constituency. In October 1990 (until 1992) he joined the Monday Club, where the following year he made an unsuccessful bid to stand for its Executive Council. In May 1991, he was appointed co-chairman, with Stuart Millson, of the Club's Media Committee^[2][3]. During the early 1990s, he stated that he had been the deputy chairman of the Western Goals Institute^[4] although this cannot be verified.

Revolutionary Conservative Caucus[link]

Bowden and Millson co-founded the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus in November 1992,^[5] with, he said, the aim of introducing "abstract thought into the nether reaches of the Conservative and Unionist party".^[6] In the group's first quarterly journal, The Revolutionary Conservative Review, it stated that "The Caucus has been established by Right-wing activists within the Conservative Party in order to disseminate information, ideology, and intellectual opinion within and beyond the party." However, the journal's name was almost immediately changed to The Revolutionary Conservative, and in issue number 1, they stated that the Caucus "is dedicated to national sovereignty, European culture, masculinity, ruthless elitism, and racial purity." They were attacked by Sir Norman Fowler in the Sunday Express who said, "These people are not remotely typical of mainstream Conservatives", and by James Glyn Ford, MEP, speaking at the 1993 Labour Party Conference when he said, "The Tories have a Far-Right tendency....I have passed details of the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus to Special Branch...". However the Conservative MP Rupert Allason was quoted in Searchlight magazine as saying "If they are against Maastricht, they can't be bad."^[7] Issue no.3 of their journal was devoted entirely to the continuing power struggle within the Monday Club following the departure of Gregory Lauder-Frost at the end of May 1992. By the end of 1994, Millson and Bowden had parted company and issue no.4 was the last production of the Caucus.

Later activities[link]

Bowden's book Right was published by the European Books Society in 1993 and brought praised from Gregory Lauder-Frost in The Revolutionary Conservative.^[8] Bowden was also said to be prominent in the milieu responsible for the emergence of Right Now! magazine.^[9]

He later joined the Freedom Party, for which he acted as Treasurer for a short period,^[10] and subsequently, with Adrian Davies, was a member of the Bloomsbury Forum.^[11] Bowden contributed an essay (Bill)"Hopkins - An Angry Young Man" to the book of 20 essays Standardbearers - British Roots of the New Right which he, with Adrian Davies and Eddy Butler, also edited. The book carried a Foreword by a former Vice-President of the Monday Club, Professor Antony Flew^[12].

Bowden went on to join the British National Party (BNP), and was for a period its Cultural Officer. In July 2007, he resigned from the BNP following a bitter dispute in which an associate of BNP leader Nick Griffin made defamatory allegations against Bowden on a blog.^[13] It has been claimed by Martin Webster that Bowden was forced out of the party due to his support for Chris Jackson, who made an unsuccessful attempt to replace Griffin as leader.^[14] After September 2008, Bowden resumed speaking at BNP events, but never rejoined the party. Since the May 2010 elections he had no further connection to the BNP.

New Right[link]

Jonathan Bowden began working with long-time activist Troy Southgate in January 2005 and went on to become Chairman of the New Right. He spoke at thirty-three of the group's meetings in central London. The topics were as follows:

37th New Right Meeting: Saturday 4th February 2012 - 'The Soviet Gulag'