Beyond Historical Tragedy: The Frankfurt School and Judeo-Christian Messianism

In "Beyond Historical Tragedy" the author compares and discusses Hegel's prescient understanding of the meaning of tragedy and how it differs from Aristotelian or quasi-Aristotelian theories. At the same time, he embarks on a critique of George Steiner's Hegelian reading of Sophocles' Antigone, and of tragedy more generally. He develops the idea that the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School is closer to a Jewish or Christian perspective than to the tragic perspective - or to Hegel's modern version of the tragic perspective. The contrast is most clear in the way that the idea of fate is negated by Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Benjamin.

Enlightenment and Repression: A Comparison of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization

This paper offers a comparison of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. It is my contention that although the content of these two works differs, there is an underlying argument which is remarkably similar. Drawing mainly on the early chapters of Dialectic and the first half of Eros, I plan to demonstrate that each text explores, the intertwining and cyclical nature of progress and regression; the manner in which liberating tendencies emerge which challenge present conditions, but upon their ascension become a new form of repression; for Horkheimer and Adorno this is the development of subjectivity in the movement from myth to enlightenment, which becomes the new myth; for Marcuse, it is the instinctual repression, under the guise of ‘civilization’, required of individuals in the interest of self-preservation and propagation. Furthermore, in both cases neither enlightenment, nor the reality principle are ever fully victorious, hence this cycle is self-perpetuating.

The Power of Negative Thinking: Defending the Hegel of Adorno and Marcuse

This paper will attempt to briefly outline (and defend) Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse’s respective depictions of the eminently critical and revolutionary spirit inherent in G.W.F. Hegel’s thought: a spirit that led him to “denounce the world” as it was given, in order to strive towards “new modes of existence with new forms of reason and freedom.” After contextualizing the Frankfurt School’s (theoretical) predicament as a war on two fronts between both positivism and irrationalism, I proceed to discuss what Marcuse has termed “the power of negative thinking.” Here, I portray what I consider to be the fundamental components of the dialectical approach (immanent critique, determinate negation, totality, contradiction, mediation, etc.), before moving on to appraise its relevance today at the “end of history.”