The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse. Morton SchoolmanThe Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School. George Friedman

Ethics ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-399
Author(s):  
James Schmidt
Author(s):  
Stephen Eric Bronner

‘The Frankfurt School’ provides a brief history of the formation of the Frankfurt School, and biographies of prominent members. The Frankfurt School grew out of the Institute for Social Research, the first Marxist think tank. However, in 1930, under the directorship of Max Horkheimer, the organization moved to America to escape the Nazis, and began to concentrate on critical theory. Aside from Horkheimer, notable members of the Frankfurt School's inner circle included Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Jürgen Habermas. Each member of the inner circle was different, but they all shared the same concerns, and attempted to solve them through intellectual daring and experimentation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Freyenhagen

In this paper, I would like to take up one proposal that I touch on as part of the longer paper delivered at the SPT conference on Critical Theory and the Concept of Social Pathology. The proposal is an analytic grid for characterising social pathologies, particularly in thelight of the conceptualisations of this idea specified within the Frankfurt School CriticalTheory tradition.Let me first summarise briefly the longer paper. I present some general features of the idea of social pathology (see below), and suggest that this idea can set FrankfurtSchool Critical Theory apart from mainstream liberal approaches – notably, in virtue of the specifically ethical register it involves (rather than a justice-based one dominant incontemporary liberalism) and the interdisciplinary approach it calls for (which marks a contrast to the relatively stark division between normative theorising and the social sciences characteristic of much of political philosophy today). I criticise the way Habermas and Honneth transform the early Frankfurt School conceptualisations of this idea by tying itto their respective models of functional differentiation of society.


Author(s):  
Simon Mussell

The book provides a new perspective on the early work of the Frankfurt School, by focusing on the vital role that affect and feeling play in the development of critical theory. Building on contemporary theories of affect, the author argues that any renewal of critical theory today must have an affective politics at its core. If one’s aim is to effectively theorize, criticize, and ultimately transform existing social relations, then a strictly rationalist model of political thought remains inadequate. In many respects, this flies in the face of predominant forms of political philosophy, which have long upheld reason and rationality as sole proprietors of political legitimacy. Critical theory and feeling shows how the work of the early Frankfurt School offers a dynamic and necessary corrective to the excesses of formalized reason. Studying a range of themes – from melancholia, unhappiness, and hope, to mimesis, affect, and objects – this book provides a radical rethinking of critical theory for our times.


1980 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
Ingo Mörth

The critical social theory and philosophy of the " Frankfurt School " and its followers within German Sociology analyses religion within dialectic framework of religion as ideology, as utopical thinking and as part of social change. Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, two of the founding fathers of the Frankfurt School and up to now of great influence not only within German sociology, in their essays dealing with religion, too — religion never was the main topic of any of their writings —, tried to show that religion especially in its present " neutralized " (Adorno) form is part of the ideo logical glue that keeps our one-dimensional, totalitarian so ciety together and going. Max Horkheimer, besides Adorno the second founding father tha restablished the Frankfurt School in Germany after World War II, unlike Adorno and Marcuse discussed religion explicitly in his writings several times and always concentrated on the positive aspects of religion. Religion for him is a possible dimension of autonomy against the the overwhelming forces of social control. For Horkheimer religion and Critical Theory itself converge in the desire for a totally different future. This emphasis on the positive-utopical aspects of religion is combined with a critical theory of evolution by Jürgen Habermas and Rainer Döbert. These recent representatives of the old critical tradition try to include Webers point of view, too, who, in short, had tried to show how religion is a way of developing human rationality. Habermas and Döbert view religion as a " cogni tive potential " in society, that — in terms of its ethics and view of life — has developed fundamental norms of an universalistic ethic and thus is a prerequisite of human progress and emancipation. Finally it has to be stated that the theo retical, speculative-philosophical " leg " of the Critical Theory of religion is as oversized as the empirical leg is under developed. Only recently a generation of critical theologians, inspired by the ideas of the Critical Theory, started to analyse structure, organization, ideological ties and political involve ment of the churches in Germany by empirical means and to compare the results self-critically with the emancipatory possibilities of religion as indicated by Horkheimer or Haber mas.


Author(s):  
Stephen Eric Bronner

Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction explores the concepts and themes that distinguished critical theory from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German–Jewish academics who sought to diagnose and cure the ills of society. Sketches of leading representatives of this critical tradition, such as Georg Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas, as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations, are presented. Concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non-identity, and utopia are explained and discussed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Sermada Kelen Donatus

This essay elaborates the Critical Theory proposed by a group of German intellectuals who revived the anti-capitalist social theory of Karl Marx. They belong to what is called the “Frankfurt-School” which emphasises the contextualisation of Marx’ theory. Critical Theory emerged as a response to anti-socialist dominance in contemporary society. This essay takes up some of the ideas of Frankfurt-School members Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas. Critical Theory can impact greatly on how we read present-day Indonesian society which is being destroyed by the global capitalist-system which in turn is producing social diseases like systemic corruption. Keywords: Teori Kritis, sekolah Frankfurt, Karl Marx, Horkhmeimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, relevansi teori kritis, realitas sosial Indonesia.


Author(s):  
Richard Devetak

Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory’s prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory’s reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory: An Intellectual History defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 314-328
Author(s):  
Regina Kreide

AbstractOver the last years, the debate over global justice has moved beyond the divide between statist and cosmopolitan, as well as ideal and non-ideal approaches. Rather, a turn to empirical realities has taken place, claiming that normative political philosophy and theory need to address empirical facts about global poverty and wealth. The talk argues that some aspects of the earlier “Critical Theory” and its notions of negativity, praxis, and communicative power allow for a non-empiristic link between normative theory and a well-informed social science analysis that is based on experienced injustice. The analysis of border politics and housing politics will serve as an example for a critical theory of global injustice that addresses regressive as well as emancipative developments in society.


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