Max Horkheimer

Max Horkheimer

Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas (in the background, right), in 1965 at Heidelberg.
Born	(1895-02-14)February 14, 1895 Zuffenhausen (now Stuttgart), Württemberg, Germany
Died	July 7, 1973(1973-07-07) (aged 78) Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany
Era	20th century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Critical Theory, Frankfurt School
Main interests	Social Theory, Counter-Enlightenment
Notable ideas	Critical Theory, The Culture Industry, Authoritarian Personality, Eclipse of Reason
Influenced by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Pollock, Adorno, Cornelius, Judaism
Influenced Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, Honneth, Benjamin, Fromm, Apel

Max Horkheimer (February 14, 1895 – July 7, 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason (1947), "Between Philosophy and Social Science" (1930-1938) and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer planned, supported and made other significant works possible.

Biography

Early life

Horkheimer was born in the Zuffenhausen district of Stuttgart, which at the time was the capital of the Kingdom of Württemberg within the German Empire, the only son of a wealthy orthodox Jewish family on February 14, 1895. Due to pressure from his father who wanted Max to take over the family business, Horkheimer left secondary school at the age of sixteen to work in his father's factory. In 1916, his manufacturing career ended when he was drafted into World War I.

Academic Genealogy

Notable teachers
Hans Cornelius
Notable students
Jürgen Habermas

Education

After World War I, he enrolled at Munich University, where he studied philosophy and psychology. After university, Horkheimer moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he studied under Hans Cornelius. There, he met Theodor Adorno, several years his junior, with whom he would strike a lasting friendship and a fruitful collaborative relationship. In 1925, Horkheimer was habilitated with a dissertation entitled Kant's Critique of Judgement as Mediation between Practical and Theoretical Philosophy, written under Hans Cornelius. Here, he met Pollock who would be his colleague at the Institute of Social Research. He was appointed Privatdozent the following year.

Work with the Institute of Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung)

When the Institute for Social Research's directorship became vacant in 1930 after the departure of Karl Grunberg, Horkheimer was elected to the position. In the same year, Horkheimer took over the chair of social philosophy at Frankfurt University. The following year publication of the Institute's Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung began, with Horkheimer as its editor. Horkheimer intellectually reoriented the Institute, proposing a programme of collective research aimed at specific social groups (namely the working class) that would highlight the problem of the relationship of history and reason. The Institute aimed to integrate the thought of Marx and Freud. The Frankfurt School attempted this by systematically hitching together the different conceptual structures of historical materialism and psychoanalysis. Horkheimer worked to make the Institute a purely academic enterprise.

Horkheimer's venia legendi was revoked by the new Nazi government because of the Marxian nature of the Institute's ideas as well as its prominent Jewish association. The Institute thus closed its location in Germany in 1933. He emigrated to Switzerland, and then to the USA the following year, where Horkheimer met with the president of Columbia University to discuss hosting the Institute. To Horkheimer's surprise, the president agreed to host the Institute in exile as well as offer Horkheimer a building for the Institute.

In 1940, Horkheimer received American citizenship and moved to the Pacific Palisades district of Los Angeles, California, where his collaboration with Adorno would yield the Dialectic of Enlightenment. In the years that followed, Horkheimer did not publish much, although he continued to edit Studies in Philosophy and Social Science as a continuation of the Zeitschrift. In 1949, he returned to Frankfurt where the Institute for Social Research reopened in 1950. Between 1951 and 1953 Horkheimer was rector of the University of Frankfurt. In 1953, Horkheimer stepped down from director of the Institute and took on a smaller role in the Institute, while Adorno became director. Horkheimer, however, was seen as the most influential director of the Institute.

Later years

Horkheimer continued to teach at the University until his retirement in the mid-1960s. In 1953, he was awarded the Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt, and would later be named honorary citizen of Frankfurt for life.

He returned to America in 1954 and 1959 to lecture as a frequent visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He remained an important figure until his death in Nuremberg in 1973. He is buried at the Jewish cemetery in Bern, Switzerland.

Thought

Horkheimer's work is marked by a concern to show the relation between affect (especially suffering) and concepts (understood as action-guiding expressions of reason). In this, he responded critically to what he saw as the one-sidedness of both neo-Kantianism (with its focus on concepts) and Lebensphilosophie (with its focus on expression and world-disclosure). Horkheimer did not think either was wrong, but insisted that the insights of each school on their own could not adequately contribute to the repair of social problems. Horkheimer focused on the connections between social structures, networks/subcultures, and individual realities, concluding that we are affected and shaped by the proliferation of products on the market place. It is also important to note that Horkheimer collaborated with Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin.

Critical theory

Through critical theory, Horkheimer "attempted to revitalize radical social, and cultural criticism" and discussed authoritarianism, militarism, economic disruption, environmental crisis and the poverty of mass culture. Horkheimer helped to create Critical Theory through a mix of radical and conservative lenses that stem from radical Marxism and end up in "pessimistic Jewish transcendentalism". Horkheimer developed his critical theory by examining his own wealth while witnessing the juxtaposition of the bourgeois and the impoverished. This critical theory embraced the future possibilities of society and was preoccupied with forces which moved society toward rational institutions that would ensure a true, free, and just life. He was convinced of the need to "examine the entire material and spiritual culture of mankind" in order to transform society as a whole. Horkheimer sought to enable the working class to reclaim their power in order to resist the lure of fascism. Horkheimer stated himself that "the rationally organized society that regulates its own existence" was necessary along with a society that could "satisfy common needs". To satisfy these needs, it would need to engage with the social conditions within which people lived and in which their concepts and actions were formed. It reached out for a total understanding of history and knowledge. Through this, critical theory develops a "critique of bourgeois society through which 'ideology critique' attempted to locate the 'utopian content' of dominant systems of thought" Above all, critical theory sought to develop a critical perspective in the discussion of all social practices

Writing

Eclipse of Reason

Main article: Eclipse of Reason (Horkheimer)

Eclipse of Reason

Horkheimer's book, Eclipse of Reason, published in 1947, is broken into five sections: Means and Ends, Conflicting Panaceas, The Revolt of Nature, The Rise and Decline of the Individual and On the Concept of Philosophy and deals with the concept of reason within the history of western philosophy, which can only be fostered in an environment of free, critical thinking while also linking positivist and instrumental reason with the rise of fascism. He details the difference between objective, subjective and instrumental reason, and states that we have moved from the former through the center and into the latter (though subjective and instrumental reason are closely connected). Objective reason deals with universal truths that dictate that an action is either right or wrong. It is a concrete concept and a force in the world that requires specific modes of behavior. The focus in the objective faculty of reason is on the ends, rather than the means. Subjective reason is an abstract concept of reason, and focuses primarily on means. Specifically, the reasonable nature of the purpose of action is irrelevant - the ends only serve the purpose of the subject (generally self-advancement or preservation). To be "reasonable" in this context is to be suited to a particular purpose, to be "good for something else". This aspect of reason is universally conforming, and easily furnishes ideology. In instrumental reason, the sole criterion of reason is its operational value or purposefulness, and with this, the idea of truth becomes contingent on mere subjective preference (hence the relation with subjective reason). Because subjective/instrumental reason rules, the ideals of a society, for example democratic ideals, become dependent on the "interests" of the people instead of being dependent on objective truths. Nevertheless, Horkheimer admits that objective reason has its roots in Reason ("Logos" in Greek) of the subject. He concludes, "If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate - in short, the emancipation from fear - then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service we can render."

In 1941, Horkheimer outlined how the Nazis had been able to make their agenda appear "reasonable", but also issued a warning about the possibility of a similar occurrence happening again. Horkheimer believed that the ills of modern society are caused by misunderstanding of reason: if people use true reason to critique their societies, they will be able to solve problems they may have.

Despite the explicit common referrals to "subjective" reason in the book, his frequent connecting of it with relativism could be an indication that by "subjective reason" Horkheimer also means "relativist reason".

Between philosophy and social science

Between Philosophy and Social Science

"Between Philosophy and Social Science" appeared between 1930–1938, during the time the Frankfurt school moved from Frankfurt to Geneva to Columbia University. It included: "Materialism and Morality", "The Present Situation of Moral Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research", "On the Problem of Truth", "Egoism and the Freedom Movement", "History and Psychology", "A New Concept of Ideology", "Remarks on Philosophical Anthropology", and "The Rationalism Debate in Contemporary Philosophy". It also included "The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks for an Institute of Social Research", "Egoism and Freedom Movements" and "Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History". These essays within "Between Philosophy and Social Science" were Horkheimer’s attempts to “remove the individual from mass culture, a function for philosophy from the commodification of everything”. Horkheimer was extremely invested in the individual.

"The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks for an Institute of Social Research" was not only included in this volume, but it was also used as Horkheimer’s inaugural speech as director of the Frankfurt School. In this speech he related economic groups to the struggles and challenges of real life. Horkheimer often referenced human struggle and used this example in his speech because it was a topic he understood well.

"Egoism and Freedom Movements" and "Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History" are the longest of the essays. The first is an evaluation of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Vico; the latter discusses the bourgeois control. In Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History, Horkheimer explained “what he learned from the bourgeois rise to power and what of the bourgeois he thought was worth preserving.

The volume also looks at the individual as the “troubled center of philosophy.” Horkheimer expressed that “there is no formula that defines the relationship among individuals, society and nature for all time”. To understand the problem of the individual further, Horkheimer included two case studies on the individual: one on Montaigne and one on himself.

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Dialectic of Enlightenment, originally published in 1947, was an extremely influential work that Horkheimer collaborated with his colleague Theodor Adorno. Its main argument was to serve as a wide-ranging critique of the "self-destruction of enlightenment". The work criticized popular culture as "the product of a culture industry whose goal was to stupefy the masses with endless mass produced copies of the same thing" (Lembert). They argued that these mass-produced things only appear to change over time. They argue that these products are so standardized in order to help consumers comprehend and appreciate the products with little attention given to them. They state, "the result is a constant reproduction of the same thing" (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1993 [1944]). However, they also explain how pseudo-individuality is encouraged among these products in order to keep the consumers coming back for more. They argue that small differences in products in the same area are acceptable.

Criticisms

Horkheimer's work has been largely debated over time. It has been said that after he moved to Los Angeles, his view that "money is the best protection" made him manipulate other members of the Institute by keeping them on low salary or dropping them and played Adorno and Marcuse off against each other, creating enemies out of them. Perry Anderson sees Horkheimers attempt to make institute purely academic as “symptomatic of a more universal process, the emergence of a ‘Western Marxism’ divorced from the workingclass movement and dominated by academic philosophers and the 'product of defeat’” because of the isolation of the Russian Revolution. Rolf Wiggerhaus, author of The Frankfurt School believed Horkheimer lacked the audacious theoretical construction produced by those like Marx and Lukács and that his main argument was that those living in misery had the right to material egoism. In his book, "Social Theory", Alex Callinicos claims that Dialectic of Enlightenment offers no systematic account of conception of rationality, but rather professes objective reason intransigently to an extent. Charles Lembert discusses in his book Social Theory that in writing 'Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno lack sufficient sympathy for the cultural plight of the average working person, unfair to criticize the tastes of ordinary people, and that popular culture does not really buttress social conformity and stabilize capitalism as much as the Frankfurt school thinks.

See also

• Gerhard Stapelfeldt
• Theodor W. Adorno

Selected works

• Authority and the Family (1936)
• Traditional and Critical Theory (1937)
• Critique of Instrumental Reason (1967) ISBN 978-0-8264-0088-8
• Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) - with Theodor Adorno ISBN 978-0-8264-0093-2
• Eclipse of Reason (1947) (orig. 1941 "The End of Reason" Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences Vol. IX) ISBN 978-1-4437-3041-9
• Egoism and the Freedom Movement
• The Authoritarian State
• The Longing for the Totally Other
• Dawn & Decline (1978) ISBN 978-0-8164-9329-6

Articles

• “The Authoritarian State”. 15 (Spring 1973). New York: Telos Press.

Further reading

• Abromeit, John. Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Jay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. Second edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
• Schirmacher, Wolfgang. German 20th Century Philosophy: The Frankfurt School. New York: Continuum, 2000.
• Wiggershaus, Rolf. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Boston: MIT Press, 1995.

External links

• Max Horkheimer Internet Archive contains complete texts of Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944), Theism and Atheism (1963) and Feudal Lord, Customer, and Specialist (1964).
• Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online: Max Horkheimer
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Max Horkheimer
• "Encyclopedia Britannica": Max Horkheimer