Conclusion

This chapter reviews Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's articulation of the initial versions of their neo-Marxist critical theories from 1927 to 1933. It talks about critical theorists who saw neo-Kantian trust in bourgeois culture and science as a product of the bygone pre-1914 era. It also details how Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse rejected idealist narratives of history, hypostatization of instrumental labor, and economic and contemplative explanations of human motivation. The chapter demonstrates how Marxism does not entail a view of history as a preordained success story or an image of the human being as animal laborans or homo economicus. It provides a historical reconstruction of Heidegger's role in Marcuse's concrete philosophy, Adorno's natural history, and Horkheimer's materialism as critical rejoinders to Heidegger's Being and Time.

The Hegel Debate

This chapter delves into Herbert Marcuse's ignored reception of Martin Heidegger's lectures by reconstructing the debate about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel between Marcuse's Hegel book and Heidegger's Hegel lectures. It suggests that the Hegel debate formed the most interesting dimension of Marcuse's Freiburg period. It also elaborates how Marcuse and Heidegger sought to articulate their emerging positions in concrete philosophy and the history of being through a contestation with Hegel. The chapter explains how Heidegger had judged Hegel's debate of history in Being and Time as the unfolding of spirit that is an exact opposite of his own concern with human finitude. It cites Marcuse's argument that the early Hegel understood by “life” is not a feature of the world spirit but of finite human existence.

“What Is the Human Being?”

This chapter talks about Theodor W. Adorno's inaugural address that scrutinized the dominant philosophical trends from scientifically minded positivism of the Vienna Circle and various schools of neo-Kantianism. It examines Adorno's declaration that it is mandatory to reject the illusion that the power of thought is sufficient to grasp the totality of the real. It also details how Adorno challenged the popular opinion that Martin Heidegger's Being and Time marked the beginning of a new concrete philosophy, declaring that Heidegger too aims at ahistorical truth. The chapter discusses Heidegger's rejection of Hegelianism, neo-Kantianism, and Husserlian phenomenology and his turn toward a worldly Dasein. It cites Adorno's concession that the critique of his habilitation study by the representatives of fundamental ontology forced him to articulate better the philosophical theory that had guided his study.

Introduction

This chapter begins with the publication of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) in 1927, which made the philosopher Martin Heidegger become one of the most discussed figures in German intellectual life. It explains that Being and Time thoroughly questions the scientifically minded philosophical and cultural self-understanding of modern Europe. It also suggests that Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse saw in Heidegger the most provocative challenge and competitor to their own analyses of the discontents of European modernity. The chapter focuses on the years between the publication of Being and Time and Heidegger's notorious embrace of National Socialism in 1933. It examines what Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer saw as the merits and the blind spots of Heidegger's philosophy before its contamination by Nazism.

The Frankfurt Discussion

This chapter recalls Theodor W. Adorno and Martin Heidegger's reputation as archenemies because of their political antagonism and Adorno's unanswered polemics against Heidegger after World War II. It examines Adorno and Heidegger's emphasis on the philosophical significance of art and their concern over the allegedly diminished capacity of moderns to experience the world beyond the technical domination of nature. It also investigates the role played by Heidegger in the emergence of Adorno's critical theory between the publication of Being and Time in 1927 and Heidegger's Nazi turn in 1933. The chapter reconstructs the Frankfurt discussion between Adorno and his Heideggerian opponents in the University of Frankfurt from 1929 to 1933. It elaborates that Frankfurt discussion was a debate over the significance of Heidegger's revolutionary philosophy and its implicit diagnosis of the crisis of modernity.

Critical Theory as a Reply to Heidegger, Scheler, and the Frankfurt Heideggerians

This chapter examines Martin Heidegger's role in Max Horkheimer's programmatic formulations of critical theory in the early 1930s as the director of the Institute for Social Research. It highlights Horkheimer's sublation of philosophy into multidisciplinary social criticism that opened a third post-metaphysical path along Heidegger's philosophical hermeneutics and analytical philosophy. It also refers to Jürgen Habermas, who judges Horkheimer's early critical theory as an original, anti-Heideggerian response to the end of metaphysics. The chapter investigates Horkheimer's critical theory as an alternative to the hegemonic teachings of Heidegger and Max Scheler as well as to the neo-metaphysical doctrines of the Frankfurt Heideggerians. It reviews Horkheimer's debates in the Frankfurt discussion with Kurt Riezler and Paul Tillich.

The Un-Heideggerian Core of Marcuse’s Most Heideggerian Text

This chapter argues that Herbert Marcuse's Freiburg writings formed a continuous effort to redirect Martin Heidegger's philosophical revolution from solipsistic existentialism toward a critical theory of capitalism or concrete philosophy. It discusses how Marcuse did not see himself simply as criticizing Heidegger but rather persuading him to recognize the social-critical, Hegelian-Marxist elements of Being and Time. It also sheds new light on Lucien Goldmann's famous claim about Heidegger's debt to Georg Lukács by showing that Marcuse had suspected such debt in the 1920s. The chapter looks at Marcuse's experience as part of the failed socialist revolution in Germany after World War I that is crucial in understanding why he could become enthusiastic about Heidegger. It mentions Marcuse's goal to reconstruct the philosophical premises of Marxism.

Demythologizing Heidegger’s Thrownness

This chapter reviews Theodor W. Adorno's criticism that revolves around Martin Heidegger's notion of historicity, at the core of which lay an understanding of the human being after the temporal scheme of thrownness and projection. It mentions Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West and Ludwig Klages's TheSpirit as Adversary of the Soul as the popular doomsday prophecies of the Weimar era. It also analyses Heidegger's insight about moments, history and nature that were essential in understanding human life. The chapter explores the central elements of Adorno's lecture and illuminates its status as immanent critique. It connects Adorno's lecture to a doctoral thesis on Heidegger by Dolf Sternberger, who was after an immanent critique of Being and Time.

Stakes of the Hegel Debate

This chapter weighs the stakes of the Hegel debate by questioning why Martin Heidegger ended up rejecting Herbert Marcuse's study. It contends the impossibility to separate the philosophical debate over Hegel given Heidegger's turn to radical conservatism in the late 1920s and the recent appearance of the Black Notebooks. It also relates the Davos debate in Peter E. Gordon's reading to Heidegger's changing political sensibilities. The chapter looks at Theodor W. Adorno's lifelong and ambivalent struggle with Heidegger as he judged Being and Time as fascist right down to its innermost components. It analyses Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (The Jargon of Authenticity) from 1964, which stated that Heidegger's book acquired its aura by describing the directions of the dark drives of the intelligentsia before 1933.

Being and Time

This chapter focuses on Max Horkheimer's years as a student and private lecturer in the 1920s and argues that he was indeed impressed by Martin Heidegger's radical teachings. It recounts Horkheimer's experience of Germany's failed socialist revolution in 1919 and his disillusionment with Max Weber's famous statements against socialism and emancipatory social theory. It also looks at Heidegger's radicalism that appeared as a genuine promise to bring philosophy back in touch with life. The chapter details how Horkheimer had grown highly critical of Heidegger as he saw Being and Time as a major competitor to his critical theory. It describes the distinguishing aspect of Horkheimer's case as he saw Max Scheler as an equally great challenge for critical theory.