The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded on February 3, 1923, at the University of Frankfurt am Main (today known as Goethe University Frankfurt). Formed during the Weimar Republic during the European interwar period, the first generation of the Frankfurt School was composed of intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents dissatisfied with the socio-economic systems of the 1930s: namely, capitalism, fascism, and communism. Significant figures associated with the school include Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas.

The Frankfurt theorists proposed that existing social theory was unable to explain the turbulent political factionalism and reactionary politics, such as Nazism, in 20th-century liberal capitalist societies. Also critical of Marxism–Leninism as a philosophically inflexible system of social organization, the School's critical-theory research sought alternative paths to social development.

What unites the disparate members of the School is a shared commitment to the project of human emancipation, theoretically pursued by an attempted synthesis of the Marxist tradition, psychoanalysis, and empirical sociological research.[1][2][3][4]

History

Institute for Social Research

The Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

The term "Frankfurt School" describes the works of scholarship and the intellectuals who were the Institute for Social Research, an adjunct organization at the University of Frankfurt am Main, founded in 1923, by Carl Grünberg, a Marxist professor of law at the University of Vienna.[5] It was the first Marxist research center at a German university and was funded through the largess of the wealthy student Felix Weil (1898–1975).[6]

Weil's doctoral dissertation dealt with the practical problems of implementing socialism. In 1922, he organized the First Marxist Workweek in an effort to synthesize different trends of Marxism into a coherent, practical philosophy; the first symposium included György Lukács, Karl Korsch, Karl August Wittfogel, and Friedrich Pollock. The success of the First Marxist Workweek prompted the formal establishment of a permanent institute for social research, and Weil negotiated with the Ministry of Education to appoint a university professor as director of the Institute for Social Research, thereby ensuring that the Frankfurt School would be a university institution.[7] Korsch and Lukács participated in the Workweek, which included the study of Marxism and Philosophy (1923), by Karl Korsch. Their Communist Party membership precluded their active participation in the Institute for Social Research; nevertheless, Korsch participated in the School's publishing venture.

The philosophical tradition of the Frankfurt School—the multi-disciplinary integration of the social sciences—is associated with the philosopher Max Horkheimer, who became the director in 1930, and recruited intellectuals such as Theodor W. Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, musicologist), Erich Fromm (psychoanalyst), and Herbert Marcuse (philosopher).[6]

European interwar period (1918–39)

In the Weimar Republic (1918–33), the continual political turmoils of the interwar years (1918–39) much affected the development of the critical theory philosophy of the Frankfurt School. The scholars were especially influenced by the Communists' failed German Revolution of 1918–19 and by the rise of Nazism (1933–45), a German form of fascism. To explain such reactionary politics, the Frankfurt scholars applied critical selections of Marxist philosophy to interpret, illuminate, and explain the origins and causes of reactionary socioeconomics in 20th-century Europe (a type of political economy unknown to Marx in the 19th century). The School's further intellectual development derived from the publication, in the 1930s, of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1932) and The German Ideology (1932), which were interpreted as showing a continuity between Hegelianism and Marxist philosophy.

As the anti-intellectual threat of Nazism increased to political violence, the founders decided to move the Institute for Social Research out of Nazi Germany (1933–45).[8] Soon after Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Institute first moved from Frankfurt to Geneva, and then to New York City in 1935, where it joined Columbia University. The School's journal, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung ("Journal of Social Research"), was renamed "Studies in Philosophy and Social Science". This began the period of the School's important work in Marxist critical theory. By the 1950s, the paths of scholarship led Horkheimer, Adorno, and Pollock to return to West Germany, while Marcuse, Löwenthal, and Kirchheimer remained in the U.S. In 1953, the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt School) was formally re-established in Frankfurt, West Germany.[9]

Critical theory

The works of the Frankfurt School are to be understood in the context of the intellectual and practical objectives of critical theory. In "Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937), Max Horkheimer defined critical theory as social critique intended to effect sociological change and realize intellectual emancipation, through an enlightenment that is not dogmatic in its assumptions.[10][11] Critical theory analyzes the true significance of the ruling understandings (the dominant ideology) generated in bourgeois society to show that the dominant ideology misrepresents how human relations occur in the real world and how capitalism justifies and legitimates the domination of people.

According to the theory of cultural hegemony, the dominant ideology is a ruling-class narrative that provides an explanatory justification for the current power structure of society. Nonetheless, the story told through the ruling understandings conceals as much as it reveals about society. The task of the Frankfurt School was the sociological analysis and interpretation of areas of social relations that Marx did not discuss in the 19th century—especially the base and superstructure aspects of capitalist society.[12]

Horkheimer opposed critical theory to traditional theory, wherein the word theory is used in the positivistic sense of scientism, as a purely observational mode that finds and establishes scientific law (generalizations) about the real world. Social sciences differ from natural sciences because their scientific generalizations cannot be readily derived from experience. The researcher's understanding of a social experience is always filtered through their biases. What the researcher does not understand is that they operate within an historical and ideological context. The results for the theory being tested would conform to the ideas of the researcher rather than the facts of the experience proper; in "Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937), Horkheimer said:

Praxis

Members of the Frankfurt School were academics and generally avoided (direct) political action or praxis.[36] Max Horkheimer opposed any revolutionary rhetoric in the institute's publications, since it could jeopardize funding from the West German government.[37] Theodor Adorno showed some sympathy to student movements, particularly after the killing of Benno Ohnesorg, but he did not believe street violence had the potential to effect change.[38][39] Angela Davis, a student of Marcuse, recounted advice given to her by Adorno that critical theorists working in the radical movements of the 1960s were, "akin to a media studies scholar deciding to become a radio technician".[37][40]

In The Theory of the Novel (1971), György Lukács criticized the "leading German intelligentsia", including some members of the Frankfurt School (Adorno is named explicitly), as inhabiting the Grand Hotel Abyss, a metaphorical place from which the theorists comfortably analyze the abyss, the world beyond. Lukács described this contradictory situation as follows: They inhabit "a beautiful hotel, equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the abyss, between excellent meals or artistic entertainments, can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered."[41][38]

The singular exception to this was Herbert Marcuse, who engaged with the new left in the 1960s and 1970s.[36][38] Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man described the containment of the working class by material consumption and mass media that diverted any possibility of a proletarian revolution. Although Marcuse considered this pessimistic state of affairs to be fait accompli when the book was published in 1964, he was surprised and pleased when almost immediately the civil rights movement intensified and serious opposition to the Vietnam war began. Student activists such as the Students for a Democratic Society in turn took an interest in Marcuse and his works. Formerly an obscure academic émigré, he rapidly became a controversial public intellectual known as the "Guru of the New Left". Marcuse did not aim for narrow, incremental reforms but for the "Great Refusal" of all existing culture and "total revolution" against capitalism. In the democratic protest movements, Marcuse saw agents of change that could supplement the quiescent working class and unite with third-world communist revolutionaries. Marcuse took an active role in the New Left, organizing events with students in the United States and the West German student movement.[36]

Marcuse's relationship with Horkheimer and Adorno was strained by their divergence of opinion about the student movements.[36][39] The Socialist German Students' Union was harshly critical of Adorno for his lack of political engagement and would disrupt his lectures.[39] When a student's room was trashed for refusing to take part in protests, Adorno wrote, "praxis serves as an ideological pretext for exercising moral constraint." Adorno further said it was a manifestation of the authoritarian personality.[38] Adorno's student Hans-Jürgen Krahl was also critical of Adorno's inaction.[39] When, in January 1969, Krahl led a group of students to occupy a room, Adorno called the police to remove them, further angering the students.[39] Marcuse criticized Adorno's decision to call the police, writing, "I reject the unmediated translation of theory into praxis just as emphatically as you do. But I do believe that there are situations, moments, in which theory is pushed on further by praxis—situations and moments in which theory that is kept separate from praxis becomes untrue to itself".[39]

In the 1970s, perceiving the limitations of the new left, Marcuse de-emphasized the third world and revolutionary violence in favor of a focus on social issues in the United States.[36] He sought to recruit other movements on the political periphery, such as environmentalism and feminism, to a popular front for socialism. During this period, he spoke enthusiastically about women's liberation, seeing in it echoes of his earlier work in Eros and Civilization. Seeing that the revolutionary moment of the 1960s was over, Marcuse advised students to avoid even a suggestion of violence. Instead, he advocated the "long march through the institutions" and recommended educational institutions as a refuge for radicals in the U.S.[36]

Criticism

Psychoanalytic categorization

The historian Christopher Lasch criticized the Frankfurt School for their initial tendency to "automatically" reject opposing political criticisms, based upon "psychiatric" grounds:

The Authoritarian Personality [1950] had a tremendous influence on [Richard] Hofstadter, and other liberal intellectuals, because it showed them how to conduct political criticism in psychiatric categories, [and] to make those categories bear the weight of political criticism. This procedure excused them from the difficult work of judgment and argumentation. Instead of arguing with opponents, they simply dismissed them on psychiatric grounds.[42]

Economics and communications media

During the 1980s, anti-authoritarian socialists in the United Kingdom and New Zealand criticized the rigid, deterministic view of popular culture in the Frankfurt School's theories of capitalist culture, which seemed to preclude any prefigurative role for social critique in such work. They argued that EC Comics often did contain such cultural critiques.[43][44] 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.[45]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bohman, James (January 7, 2024). "Critical Theory (Frankfurt School)". Critical Theory. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  2. ↑ Corradetti, Claudio. "The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  3. ↑ Held, David (1983). "Frankfurt School". In Bottomore, Tom (ed.). A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (2nd ed.). Blackwell. pp. 208–13.
  4. ↑ Held, David (1980). Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. University of California Press. p. 14.
  5. ↑ Corradetti, Claudio (2011). "The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (published: 21 October 2011).
  6. 1 2 "Frankfurt School". (2009). Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Archived 22 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine (Retrieved 19 December 2009)
  7. ↑ "The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory", Marxist Internet Archive Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine (Retrieved 12 September 2009)
  8. ↑ Dubiel, Helmut. "The Origins of Critical Theory: An interview with Leo Löwenthal", Telos 49.
  9. ↑ Held, David (1980), p. 38.
  10. ↑ Geuss, Raymond. The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. Cambridge University Press, 1981. p. 58.
  11. 1 2 Carr, Adrian (2000). "Critical theory and the Management of Change in Organizations", Journal of Organizational Change Management, pp. 13, 3, 208–220.
  12. ↑ Martin Jay. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. London: Heinemann, 1973, p. 21.
  13. ↑ Horkheimer, Max (1976). "Traditional and critical theory". In: Connerton, P (Eds), Critical Sociology: Selected Readings, Penguin, Harmondsworth, p. 213
  14. ↑ Rasmussen, D. "Critical Theory and Philosophy", The Handbook of Critical Theory, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996. p .18.
  15. ↑ Horkheimer, Max (1976), p. 221.
  16. ↑ dialectic. (2009). Retrieved 19 December 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Archived 29 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  17. 1 2 Little, D. (2007). "Philosophy of History", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (18 February 2007), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/history/#HegHis Archived 28 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ↑ "When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old. . . . The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk" —Hegel, G. W. F. (1821). Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts), p.13
  19. ↑ "Hegel's philosophy, and in particular his political philosophy, purports to be the rational formulation of a definite historical period, and Hegel refuses to look further ahead into the future." —Peĺczynski, Z. A. (1971). Hegel's political philosophy—Problems and Perspectives: A Collection of New Essays, CUP Archive. Google Print, p. 200 Archived 4 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  20. ↑ Karl Marx (1859), Preface to Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie.
  21. ↑ Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies. London: Verso. (pp. 76–93)
  22. ↑ Jonathan Wolff, PhD (ed.). "Karl Marx". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford. Archived from the original on February 8, 2012. Retrieved September 17, 2009.
  23. ↑ Seiler, Robert M. "Human Communication in the Critical Theory Tradition", University of Calgary, Online Publication Archived 14 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ↑ Bernstein, J. M. (1994) The Frankfurt School: Critical Assessments, Volume 3, Taylor & Francis, pp. 199–202, 208.
  25. ↑ Adorno, Theodor (2005). Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Translated by Jephcott, E. F. N. Verso. p. 247. ISBN 978-1-84467-051-2.
  26. ↑ Adorno, T. W., with Max Horkheimer. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 242.
  27. ↑ "Critical Theory was initially developed in Horkheimer's circle to think through political disappointments at the absence of revolution in the West, the development of Stalinism in Soviet Russia, and the victory of fascism in Germany. It was supposed to explain mistaken Marxist prognoses, but without breaking Marxist intentions" —Habermas, Jürgen. (1987). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Trans. Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, p. 116.
    See also: Dubiel, Helmut. (1985). Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory. Trans. Benjamin Gregg. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London.
  28. ↑ "[G]one are the objective laws of the market which ruled in the actions of the entrepreneurs and tended toward catastrophe. Instead the conscious decision of the managing directors executes as results (which are more obligatory than the blindest price-mechanisms) the old law of value and hence the destiny of capitalism." —Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 38.
  29. 1 2 Kompridis, Nikolas. (2006), p. 256
  30. ↑ Tucker, Ken; Treno, Andrew. "The Culture of Narcissism and the Critical Tradition". Berkeley Journal of Sociology. 24/25: 341–355. JSTOR 41035493.
  31. ↑ Blake, Casey and Christopher Phelps. (1994). "History as Social Criticism: Conversations with Christopher Lasch", Journal of American History 80, No. 4 (March), pp. 1310–1332.
  32. ↑ Kirsh, Adam (August 21, 2006). "The Philosopher Stoned". The New Yorker.
  33. 1 2 Ross, Alex (September 15, 2014). "The Naysayers". The New Yorker.
  34. ↑ Adorno, Theodor W. (2003) The Philosophy of Modern Music. Translated into English by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster. Continuum International Publishing Group, pp. 41–42.
  35. ↑ Jay, Martin (Winter 1984). "Adorno in America". New German Critique. Winter 1984 (31). Duke University Press: 157–182. doi:10.2307/487894. JSTOR 487894.
  36. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kellner, Douglas (2005). "Introduction". Herbert Marcuse: The New Left and the 1960s. Routledge. ISBN 9780815371670.
  37. 1 2 Jeffries, Stuart (September 26, 2017). "Up against the wall, motherfuckers". Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. Verso. ISBN 9-781-78478-569-7.
  38. 1 2 3 4 Jeffries, Stuart (September 26, 2017). "Introduction". Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. Verso. ISBN 9-781-78478-569-7.
  39. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Jeffries, Stuart (September 26, 2017). "Philosophising with Molotov cocktails". Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. Verso. ISBN 9-781-78478-569-7.
  40. ↑ Davis, Angela Y. (2005). "Foreword". In Kellner, Douglas (ed.). Herbert Marcuse: The New Left and the 1960s. Routledge. ISBN 9780815371670.
  41. ↑ Lukács, Georg. (1971). The Theory of the Novel. MIT Press, p. 22.
  42. ↑ Blake, Casey and Christopher Phelps (March 1994). "History as Social Criticism: Conversations with Christopher Lasch", The Journal of American History 80, No. 4, pp. 1310–1332. doi:10.2307/2080602. JSTOR 2080602.
  43. ↑ Martin Barker: A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign: London: Pluto Press: 1984
  44. ↑ Roy Shuker, Roger Openshaw and Janet Soler: Youth, Media and Moral Panic: From Hooligans to Video Nasties: Palmerston North: Massey University Department of Education: 1990
  45. ↑ Cowen, Tyler (1998). "Is Our Culture in Decline?" Cato Policy Report, https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/policy-report/2012/11/culture.pdf ; Archived 4 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine

Further reading

  • Arato, Andrew and Eike Gebhardt, eds. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum, 1982.
  • Benhabib, Seyla. Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
  • Bernstein, Jay (ed.). The Frankfurt School: Critical Assessments Vols. I–VI. New York: Routledge, 1994.
  • Bottomore, Tom. The Frankfurt School and Its Critics. New York: Routledge, 2002.
  • Bronner, Stephen Eric and Douglas MacKay Kellner (eds.). Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 1989.
  • Brosio, Richard A. (1980). The Frankfurt School: An Analysis of the Contradictions and Crises of Liberal Capitalist Societies; Archived 4 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
  • Friedman, George. The Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981.
  • Held, David. Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
  • Jay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1996.
  • Jeffries, Stuart (2016). Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. London; Brooklyn, New York: Verso. ISBN 978-1-78478-568-0.
  • Kompridis, Nikolas. Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory Between Past and Future. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006.
  • Mittelmeier, Martin (2024). Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-30025-930-8.
  • Postone, Moishe. Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
  • Scheuerman, William E. Frankfurt School Perspectives on Globalization, Democracy, and the Law, 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008.
  • Schwartz, Frederic J. Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2005.
  • Wheatland, Thomas. The Frankfurt School in Exile. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
  • Wiggershaus, Rolf. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School