Otto Kirchheimer and the Frankfurt School: Failed Collaborations in the Search for a Critical Theory of Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
Hubertus Buchstein
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Instrumental Reason ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Mass

Abstract This article describes debates among members of the Frankfurt School during their years in exile in the United States about the status of political institutions within their analytic frameworks. The cited unpublished material in this article sheds new light on the complicated relationship between Otto Kirchheimer and the core of the Frankfurt School group on this issue. Kirchheimer’s biographical episode with the group exemplifies both the failure of interdisciplinary collaboration at the Institute of Social Research and the inability of its members to develop a joint theoretical perspective on political phenomena. In the context of the Frankfurt School, Kirchheimer’s works present a countermodel to the interpretation of modern mass democracy as an integrative regime of instrumental reason. He refused to accept such a global interpretation. In his work at the Institute of Social Research he accentuated the unequal power recourses of conflicting social groups and different institutional mechanisms to deal with these conflicts politically. This approach made his work interesting for authors of a later generation of Critical Theory like Jürgen Habermas and Claus Offe.

Frankfurt School

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Honneth
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Instrumental Reason ◽  
Erich Fromm ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rational Organization

The origins of the circle of philosophers and social scientists now known as the Frankfurt School lie in the 1920s when a number of critics and intellectuals were attempting to adapt Marxism to the theoretical and political needs of the time. The distinguishing feature of the approach adopted by the Frankfurt School lies less in its theoretical orientation than in its explicit intention to include each of the disciplines of the social sciences in the project of a critical theory of society. The objectives of this theoretical innovation vis-à-vis all the traditional Marxist approaches were established by Max Horkheimer in various articles written in the 1920s and 1930s. His critique of neo-idealist philosophy and contemporary empiricism sought to develop a philosophy of history which would comprehend the evolution of human reason; in so doing, he drew on empirical research. Thus the Institute of Social Research, conceived as a way of realizing this plan, was founded in 1929. Its work drew on economics, psychology and cultural theory, seeking to analyse, from a historical perspective, how a rational organization of society might be achieved. However, after the National Socialists came to power and drove the Institute into exile, historical/philosophical optimism gave way to cultural/critical pessimism. Horkheimer and Adorno now saw it as the function of a critical theory of society to try, by returning to the history of civilization, to establish the reasons for the emergence of Fascism and Stalinism. Their Dialectic of Enlightenment, which bears some resemblance to Heidegger, impressively testifies to this change of orientation: it asks why totalitarianism came into being and it identifies a cognitive and practical perspective on the world which, because of its concern with the technical control of objects and persons, only allows for an instrumental rationality. But there was some opposition to this critique of reason which tended to view totalitarianism as a consequence of an inescapable cycle of instrumental reason and social control. The concept of total reification was called into question by some of the more marginal members of the Institute working under Adorno and Horkheimer. These were far more interested in asking whether, even under totalitarian conditions, they could determine the remains of a desire for communicative solidarity. The work of philosopher Walter Benjamin constitutes an analysis of the interrelation of power and the imagination; Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer inquired into legal consensus culture and social control; while Erich Fromm conducted a psychoanalytic investigation of communicative needs and their potential for resistance. After the core members of the School had returned from exile, the Institute resumed its work in Frankfurt and embarked on large-scale empirical projects. From the very beginning, however, a considerable gap existed between the empirical investigations which focused on the industrial workplace and the philosophical radicalization of negativity on which Adorno and Horkheimer worked, albeit with differing emphasis. This gap was bridged only when Habermas began to challenge the systematic bases of critical theory, causing the basic philosophical concepts and the intentions of empirical social research once again to correspond. The central idea, with which Habermas introduced a new phase in the history of the Frankfurt School, was his understanding of a form of rationality which would describe the communicative agreement between subjects rather than the instrumental control of things. The concept of communicative rationality which emerged from this idea has since formed the basis for the moral grounds and democratic application of critical theory.

1. The Frankfurt School

2017 ◽  
pp. 7-16
Author(s):  
Stephen Eric Bronner
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Herbert Marcuse ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Erich Fromm ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
History Of ◽  
Inner Circle

‘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.

Critical Theory of International Relations

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven C. Roach
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Action ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Ir Theory

Max Horkheimer, one of the founders of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research established in 1923, coined the term critical theory in 1937. While the school failed to produce what could be called a systematic theory, it drew on, and interweaved, various philosophical strands and prominent themes of political and social thought, including historical materialism (Marxism/Western Marxism), Freudian analysis, cultural disenchantment, Hegelian dialectics, and totality. Yet by the 1940s, many of the first-generation Frankfurt school thinkers sought to counter the emasculation of critical reason, dialectics, and self-conscious theory with a focus on the negativity of dialectics. Later critics would claim that they had abandoned the progressive platform of the Enlightenment, or the project of emancipation from social and political oppression. In the 1980s, Jürgen Habermas’s communicative action theory would provide a so-called critical turn in Frankfurt school critical theory by resituating reason and social action in linguistics. It was during this time that international relations (IR) theorists would draw on Habermas’s theory and that of other critical theorists to critique the limits of realism, the dominant structural paradigm of international relations at the time. The first stages of this critical theory intervention in international relations included the seminal works of Robert Cox, Richard Ashley, Mark Hoffman, and Andrew Linklater. Linklater, perhaps more than any other critical IR theorist, was instrumental in repositioning the emancipatory project in IR theory, interweaving various social and normative strands of critical thought. As such, two seemingly divergent critical IR theory approaches emerged: one that would emphasize the role of universal principles, dialogue, and difference; the other focusing predominantly on the revolutionary transformation of social relations and the state in international political economy (historical materialism). Together, these critical interventions reflected an important “third debate” (or “fourth,” if one counts the earlier inter-paradigm debate) in IR concerning the opposition between epistemology (representation and interpretation) and ontology (science and immutable structures). Perhaps more importantly, they stressed the need to take stock of the growing pluralism in the field and what this meant for understanding and interpreting the growing complexity of global politics (i.e., the rising influence of technology, human rights and democracy, and nonstate actors). The increasing emphasis on promoting a “rigorous pluralism,” then, would encompass an array of critical investigations into the transformation of social relations, norms, and identities in international relations. These now include, most notably, critical globalization studies, critical security studies, feminism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism.

Varieties of Critique in Sociological Theory and Their Methodological Implications for Social Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Delanty
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
Marxist Approach ◽  
Micro Analysis

The notion of critique, as in the idea of a critical theory of society, is in urgent need of clarification both theoretically and methodologically. At least five major uses of the term can be found within sociological theory, the positions associated with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School from Adorno to Habermas and Honneth, Bourdieu's critical sociology, critical realism, Foucault's genealogical critique, and various notions of critical practice, most notably the work of Boltanski and Thévenot. It is possible to detect a movement from the Hegelian-Marxist approach towards interpretative conceptions of critique, leading to a pluralisation of critique and a shift from macro to micro analysis. A theoretical clarification of the notion of critique in these approaches offers a basis for a new and more rigorous methodological application of critique in social research.

scholarly journals Critical Theory: Self-Reflexive Theorizing and Struggles for Emancipation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Freyenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Frankfurt Am Main ◽  
Political Struggles

Critical Theory is an umbrella term to denote those theorists who take up the task described by Karl Marx as the self-clarification of the age struggles and wishes of the age. As such, two elements are crucial: (a) a connection to social and political struggles of emancipation, and (b) self-reflexivity. Critical Theorists differ—sometimes quite fundamentally—about what these two elements require (and how they relate). For example, some such theorists (such as Max Horkheimer or Michel Foucault) take the normative orientations of struggles for emancipation as something that does not require grounding at the level of theorizing, while others (such as Jürgen Habermas) think such grounding is the main task of Critical Theory, securing moral validity for the struggles. These substantive differences also mean that there are no accepted methods on which all Critical Theorists would agree. To stay with the example, those Critical Theorists who reject discursive grounding of its normative standards tend to engage in genealogy and other disclosing forms of social critique; while those who seek discursive grounding employ reconstructive and/or constructivist methods. The existence of fundamental substantive and methodological differences among proponents of Critical Theory means that it is difficult, or perhaps even impossible, to give a uniform characterization of it. Sometimes, Critical Theory is defined institutionally. Then it is denoting a succession of theorists (often classed into different generations) who are connected to the Institute of Social Research and/or the Philosophy Department in Frankfurt am Main, Germany—the so-called “Frankfurt School.” However, this institutional definition has only limited use. The disagreements among thinkers within the Frankfurt School tradition can run deep—sometimes deeper than they run with theorists, like Foucault, who are not connected institutionally to it. And it is an open and contested question whether everyone institutionally connected to the Frankfurt School is engaged in Critical Theory. Thinking systematically about the task of self-reflexively connecting to struggles of emancipation requires a different approach. It is helpful to understand Critical Theory as a broad and varied tradition, with core cases (such as Horkheimer’s 1937 text “Traditional and Critical Theory”), but no sharp boundaries. Understood that way, there cannot be a fully comprehensive treatment of Critical Theory, but it is possible to think of this tradition as involving multiple morphing sequences, whereby approaches are amended in various ways over time and thereby change into something else. One important dividing line is how historical or transcendental one takes Marx’s task to be—some proponents of Critical Theory are, in effect, historical contextualists, while others seek to establish the conditions of possibility of human interaction as such.

scholarly journals Tecnologia e Progresso: Dois pontos de vista da Teoria Crítica/Technology and Progress: two views of critical theory

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Rafael Cordeiro Silva
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Productive Force ◽  
The Status ◽  
Dual Perspective ◽  
Advanced Industrial Society

O artigo pretende mostrar a discussão sobre a tecnologia no Instituto de Pesquisa Social baseado nos pensamentos de Horkheimer e Marcuse. Embora ambos discutam a tecnologia referenciada socialmente, as conclusões a que chegam não são as mesmas. O pensamento do jovem Horkheimer avalia positivamente a tecnologia enquanto força produtiva capaz de libertar o ser humano. Gradativamente essa posição vai cedendo lugar, a partir dos anos 1940, a uma posição mais cética sobre as possibilidades da tecnologia. Esta passa a ser vista enquanto instância de dominação da natureza e dos homens. A tecnologia é responsável pelo declínio do indivíduo. Ao contrário, desde seu primeiro escrito, Marcuse avalia a tecnologia a partir de uma dupla perspectiva: ela é dominação e libertação. No quadro de referência de sua teoria da sociedade, a tecnologia é concebida como força de libertação. Em suas análises da sociedade industrial avançada, a tecnologia está voltada essencialmente para a dominação e manutenção do status quo. Essa dupla percepção torna o pensamento de Marcuse mais dialético e menos pessimista que o de Horkheimer.Abstract: The article intends to show the discussion on technology at the Institute of Social Research based on the thoughts of Horkheimer and Marcuse. Although both discuss the technology referenced socially, the conclusions they reached are not the same. The thought of the young Horkheimer evaluates technology as a productive force capable of liberating the human being. In the 1940s this position gradually gave way to a more skeptical one about the possibilities of technology. This is now seen as an instance of domination of nature and man. Instead, since his first writing, Marcuse evaluates technology from a dual perspective: it is domination and liberation. In the framework of his theory of society, technology is conceived as a force for liberation. In his analysis of advanced industrial society, technology is geared primarily for the domination and maintenance of the status quo. This dual perception makes Marcuse’s thought more dialectical and less pessimistic than those of Horkheimer. Keywords: Horkheimer, Marcuse, Technology, Progress, Social Theory

The Frankfurt School at Egyptian Universities

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 104-120
Author(s):  
Haggag Ali
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
Soviet Marxism ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
Sane Society ◽  
Theses And Dissertations

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School reached Egypt in 1955, when the Arabic translation of Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society (New York, 1955) was published in Cairo. Later, Herbert Marcuse’s Soviet Marxism (1958) was translated into Arabic in Beirut in 1965, and with the rise of student protests in France, Germany, and the United States, much attention was given to Marcuse; almost all his writings were translated into Arabic between 1969 and 1973. This article explores the nature of individual “receptions” of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School at Egyptian universities. To this end, it briefly introduces the early generation of the Frankfurt School, as well as the reasons of interest in its fate in Egyptian universities. Though master’s theses and doctoral dissertations do not represent a university’s orientation to critical theory, and at best represent the perspective of their individual authors, this article shows that key individual theses and dissertations testify to an early rejection of the Frankfurt School and to the late adoption of it as a critical paradigm of the transformations in Egyptian society.

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