Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist social theory, social research, and philosophy. The grouping emerged at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) of the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany when Max Horkheimer became the Institute's director in 1930. The term "Frankfurt School" is an informal term used to designate the thinkers affiliated with the Institute for Social Research or influenced by them: it is not the title of any institution, and the main thinkers of the Frankfurt School did not use the term to describe themselves.

The Second Phase

The second phase of Frankfurt School critical theory centres principally on two works that rank as classics of twentieth-century thought: Horkheimer 's and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment and Adorno's Minima Moralia. The authors wrote both works during the Institute's American exile in the Nazi period. While retaining much of the Marxian analysis, in these works critical theory has shifted its emphasis. The critique of capitalism has 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: the domination of nature appears as central to Western civilization long before ecology had become a catchphrase of the day.

Related Topics:
Horkheimer - Adorno - Dialectic of Enlightenment - Minima Moralia - Exile - Western civilization - Odyssey - Bourgeois - Nature - Ecology - Catchphrase

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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,

Related Topics:
Reason - Rationality - Technological - Proletariat - Emancipate

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"For since the overwhelming objectivity of historical movement in its present phase consists so far only in the dissolution of the subject, without yet giving rise to a new one, individual experience necessarily bases itself on the old subject, now historically condemned, which is still for-itself, but no longer in-itself. The subject still feels sure of its autonomy, but the nullity demonstrated to subjects by the concentration camp is already overtaking the form of subjectivity itself."

Related Topics:
Objectivity - Experience - Autonomy - Concentration camp - Subjectivity

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Consequently, at a time when it appears that reality itself has become 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 the dialectic can become a means to domination: "Its truth or untruth, therefore, is not inherent in the method itself, but in its intention in the historical process." And this intention must be toward integral freedom and happiness: "the only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption". How far from orthodox Marxism is Adorno's conclusion: "But beside the demand thus placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly matters."

Related Topics:
Truth - Freedom - Happiness

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Adorno, a trained musician, wrote The Philosophy of Modern Music, in which he, in essence, polemicizes against beauty itself -- because anything which does not further the destruction of bourgeois society, reinforces the "authoritarian" impulse. Hence:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"What radical music perceives is the untransfigured suffering of man... The seismographic registration of traumatic shock becomes, at the same time, the technical structural law of music. It forbids continuity and development. Musical language is polarized according to its extreme; towards gestures of shock resembling bodily convulsions on the one hand, and on the other towards a crystalline standstill of a human being whom anxiety causes to freeze in her tracks... Modern music sees absolute oblivion as its goal. It is the surviving message of despair from the shipwrecked."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Adorno continues, "...It is not that schizophrenia is directly expressed therein; but the music imprints upon itself an attitude similar to that of the mentally ill. The individual brings about his own disintegration... He imagines the fulfillment of the promise through magic, but nonetheless with

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

the realm of immediate actuality... Its concern is to dominate schizophrenic traits through the aesthetic consciousness. In so doing, it would hope to vindicate insanity as true health." To anyone who is not fully of the Frankfurt School persuasion, such sentiments can only be disturbing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~