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The Essential Frankfurt School Reader
The Frankfurt School of philosophers, aestheticians, sociologists, and political scientists (including Theodore W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse) represents one of the most interesting and unique intellectual events of the twentieth century. Editors Arato and Gebhardt offer major introductions to the three sections that comprise the Reader, in which they seek to place to historical development of the School's thought and to deonstrate its complexity, while investigating its influence on various disciplines. Paul Piccone has written the General Introduction.
576 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1982
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January 29, 2022
Reading some of the original texts by Adorno and Marcuse provided a window into how they shaped the “mainstream” critical theory view of politics and culture; in particular, the contributions in Parts I and II were deeply insightful and contained foundational sociological insights.
My major complaint is that for various petty reasons the Frankfurt School never formally collaborated with the Viennese logical positivists (Carnap et al.), and ended up writing banal verbiage about scientific methodology and sociology of knowledge as collected in Part III of this book. Yes, the objectives of scientists, at times, strikingly lack self-awareness, however to peg this failure on their empirical methods is to throw out the baby with the bath water. For example: while a moral case for lampooning the creators of the Bomb and mass surveillance tools is fairly straightforward, demolishing the possibility of objectively analyzing the external world lays the groundwork for cynical chaos.
I strongly believe — and perhaps some philosophy departments are encouraging this (lol) — that the Habermasian “legitimation crisis” of the past few decades can only be resolved through a dialectical interaction between critical theory and einer logische Aufbau der Welt.
My major complaint is that for various petty reasons the Frankfurt School never formally collaborated with the Viennese logical positivists (Carnap et al.), and ended up writing banal verbiage about scientific methodology and sociology of knowledge as collected in Part III of this book. Yes, the objectives of scientists, at times, strikingly lack self-awareness, however to peg this failure on their empirical methods is to throw out the baby with the bath water. For example: while a moral case for lampooning the creators of the Bomb and mass surveillance tools is fairly straightforward, demolishing the possibility of objectively analyzing the external world lays the groundwork for cynical chaos.
I strongly believe — and perhaps some philosophy departments are encouraging this (lol) — that the Habermasian “legitimation crisis” of the past few decades can only be resolved through a dialectical interaction between critical theory and einer logische Aufbau der Welt.
January 20, 2018
The Essential Frankfurt School Reader provides an excellent introduction to the development of the Frankfurt School’s intellectual program. The book accomplishes three important steps in providing this introduction. First, the editors offer the reader a series of introductory chapters that cover the subjects of the essays presented in the text. These chapters give an overview of the historical and intellectual development of the Frankfurt School from its origins as a Marxist think-tank responding to the rise of fascism and the October Revolution to its late philosophical iterations in which Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse seek to find an intellectual response to the aftermath of the holocaust and totalitarianism. The choice of materials that the editors make constitutes the second major accomplishment of the text. While relying heavily on the major figures of the early Frankfurt School, nonetheless we also get essays from Otto Kirchheimer, Fredrich Pollack, Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal and Erich Fromm. These essays help fill in the “gaps” of the economic, sociological, cultural and psychological interdisciplinary approach that provided the intellectual foundation that Adorno, Marcuse and Horkheimer made their life projects. Finally, the editorial selection from the major figures provide us with some of the more accessible works of Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, essays that are also representative of the greater intellectual projects of these influential figures. In particular, the final essay of the book, Adorno’s Subject-Object, ties the thematic structure of the whole set of essays together as it demonstrates the intellectual approach the philosophers of the Frankfurt school deployed in their philosophical project. Here, all the elements of the Frankfurt School philosophy are present: dialectical mediation, sociology of the subject, and the critique of rationalism. The text is incredibly well structured and accessible for a reader interested in these difficult subjects and authors.
May 16, 2024
The intro by Paul Piccone, deceased editor and publisher of the journal, Telos, provides a more than suitable and substantial starting point for this collection. Here are a few passages of his that I highlighted:
"The choice of a deliberately obscure mode of expression was not merely an unavoidable by-product of either the complexity of the phenomena they chose to investigate or of their theoretical heritage, but was inextricably linked with the problematic character of their attempt to create a theory of emancipation in a context where all organized or organizable opposition had long since capitulated. Within such a predicament, to make the theory conceptually accessible through the reified language of the logic of domination would have meant to expose it to instrumentalization by the same administered society against which it was aimed. Thus, the internal complexity and obscurity were to be themselves guarantees that the process of decoding explosive theoretical contents would shatter the reification resulting from automatic readings and conceptual commodification."
"The subject disappears, society becomes all-powerful and intellectuals can only escape into abstruseness and isolation to avoid homogenization, instrumentalization, or in extreme cases, even annihilation."
"...Late capitalism finds itself unable to provide free space for the emancipatory tendencies which it needs to guarantee its own continued world domination in a context characterized by a rapidly decaying 'Communist' world and a Third World unable to successfully modernize. What this analysis entails as a precondition for a meaningful relaunching of critical theory and a full understanding of its heritage is a self-historicization within a new periodization of twentieth-century capitalism. In short, it means locating the one-dimensionality thesis as the critical awareness of the transitional phase between entrepreneurial and advanced capitalism, while locating traditional Marxism as a critique of entrepreneurial capitalism and searching for a yet to be developed critical perspective to deal with the present."
"One-dimensionality as the tendential fulfillment of the dialectic of Enlightenment--which Horkheimer and Adorno unjustifiably dehistoricized and projected back onto the whole trajectory of Western civilization from Odysseus to Hitler--assumed the characteristics that Marcuse has so trenchantly described, and eliminated all remaining obstacles. The homogenization and depersonalization associated with this period--i.e., the domination of the concept and of capital's abstract instrumental reason--constitute the historical limit of this transitory rationalizing phase. The full triumph of one-dimensionality corresponded to the exhaustion of the model that generated it."
I'd also call the reader's attention to the editors' contribution that follows Piccone's intro, including thoughts on the failures of the critique of capitalism provided by orthodox Marxism that returned to an 18th century materialism that "Marx already repudiated." They also note how Horkheimer characterized "genuinely effective power" as being that which is "translated into authority based on...consent that is mediated by cultural institutions." From this, then, "the actual dynamics of society, the rate of social change,...depends rather on the specificity of cultural institutions and even specific effects of these on personality structure." I also highlighted their thoughts on Horkheimer's earlier position on authority, where he insisted that "not all authority is regressive" and where, on p.9, all members are said to have believed that "any attempt to return to liberalism was political bankruptcy." And then, on p. 10, I thought it was important to note the editors' citing of Horkheimer's comments on the "bourgeois family" as "the birthplace and one of the last defenses of of the last traces of substantial individuality"; and that the mother/child relationship could be viewed as a potential "refuge of sensitivity in a society dominated by economic reason...." Christopher Lasch constructs his thesis on these very same grounds for his important book, "Haven in a Heartless World." Finally, one is compelled to read all there is on the rise of fascism in Europe and other forms of the "authoritarian state," of which Horkheimer counted three, including the Soviet Union.
"The choice of a deliberately obscure mode of expression was not merely an unavoidable by-product of either the complexity of the phenomena they chose to investigate or of their theoretical heritage, but was inextricably linked with the problematic character of their attempt to create a theory of emancipation in a context where all organized or organizable opposition had long since capitulated. Within such a predicament, to make the theory conceptually accessible through the reified language of the logic of domination would have meant to expose it to instrumentalization by the same administered society against which it was aimed. Thus, the internal complexity and obscurity were to be themselves guarantees that the process of decoding explosive theoretical contents would shatter the reification resulting from automatic readings and conceptual commodification."
"The subject disappears, society becomes all-powerful and intellectuals can only escape into abstruseness and isolation to avoid homogenization, instrumentalization, or in extreme cases, even annihilation."
"...Late capitalism finds itself unable to provide free space for the emancipatory tendencies which it needs to guarantee its own continued world domination in a context characterized by a rapidly decaying 'Communist' world and a Third World unable to successfully modernize. What this analysis entails as a precondition for a meaningful relaunching of critical theory and a full understanding of its heritage is a self-historicization within a new periodization of twentieth-century capitalism. In short, it means locating the one-dimensionality thesis as the critical awareness of the transitional phase between entrepreneurial and advanced capitalism, while locating traditional Marxism as a critique of entrepreneurial capitalism and searching for a yet to be developed critical perspective to deal with the present."
"One-dimensionality as the tendential fulfillment of the dialectic of Enlightenment--which Horkheimer and Adorno unjustifiably dehistoricized and projected back onto the whole trajectory of Western civilization from Odysseus to Hitler--assumed the characteristics that Marcuse has so trenchantly described, and eliminated all remaining obstacles. The homogenization and depersonalization associated with this period--i.e., the domination of the concept and of capital's abstract instrumental reason--constitute the historical limit of this transitory rationalizing phase. The full triumph of one-dimensionality corresponded to the exhaustion of the model that generated it."
I'd also call the reader's attention to the editors' contribution that follows Piccone's intro, including thoughts on the failures of the critique of capitalism provided by orthodox Marxism that returned to an 18th century materialism that "Marx already repudiated." They also note how Horkheimer characterized "genuinely effective power" as being that which is "translated into authority based on...consent that is mediated by cultural institutions." From this, then, "the actual dynamics of society, the rate of social change,...depends rather on the specificity of cultural institutions and even specific effects of these on personality structure." I also highlighted their thoughts on Horkheimer's earlier position on authority, where he insisted that "not all authority is regressive" and where, on p.9, all members are said to have believed that "any attempt to return to liberalism was political bankruptcy." And then, on p. 10, I thought it was important to note the editors' citing of Horkheimer's comments on the "bourgeois family" as "the birthplace and one of the last defenses of of the last traces of substantial individuality"; and that the mother/child relationship could be viewed as a potential "refuge of sensitivity in a society dominated by economic reason...." Christopher Lasch constructs his thesis on these very same grounds for his important book, "Haven in a Heartless World." Finally, one is compelled to read all there is on the rise of fascism in Europe and other forms of the "authoritarian state," of which Horkheimer counted three, including the Soviet Union.
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June 20, 2023the essential frankfurt school reader (urizen books 1978) a decent sized housebrick of a book in a fetching green.
it features key writings by adorno-benjamin-horkheimer (the founding fathers of western marxism) together with the lesser known pollock, kirchheimer, lowenthall, and their successors marcuse and fromm. paul piccone does a great introduction and andrew arato/ eike gebhardt do good introductions to each of the eras.
now I've not read it all and the times when I was on top of this kind of stuff are long gone so my 'review' should be taken with a pinch of salt.
in the foundational era - horkheimer’s the end of reason, we have left the era of bourgeois liberalism and the individual and the reason they possess (founded on an economic liberalism, free trade etc.) and are entering the era of the mass society and a monopoly capitalism, where what is left of an individual’s reason is spent trying to survive, and becomes wholly twisted in that cause.
the frankfurt schoolers looked around them at the world of the 30ies - at fascist italy, nazi germany, soviet russia, and even at the US new deal and saw economies driven to ruin by unfettered capitalism and the state stepping in and taking over whole areas of economic life in order to ensure capitalism’s continued survival. and this, we may note, is not unlike the current situation.
this is the take home message of horkeheimer and kirchheimer (his 'changes in the structure of political compromise' details how this actually worked in nazi germany) and pollock’s initial essays. for adorno all subsequent drivel about entrepreneurship, creative destruction, disruption, privatisation is just nostalgia for vanished varieties of agency.
but is this actually the case? I would probably compare it to boltanski and chiapello’s the new culture of capitalism that points not just to the continued survival of entrepreneurialism etc but in fact its intensification post the 1970ies (at least in management cadre training literature). this they see as an attempt to deal with the problem of recruiting a cadre of managers both for the larger state managed enterprises but presumably also for the smaller boutique businesses existing in the interstices of the monopolised economy.
piccone’s opening essay sees part of the frankfurt schools founding genius as recognising that the economy had changed since the days of marx and that this was the motor of changes in consciousness.
'in the past the future used to be better' deadpans the austrian comic valentin. but what if we are in an oscillatory but stable system of fetishisation of entrepreneurialism/ actual rescue by state capital? free market ideology/ nostalgia ridiculously continues to be active despite the post 2008 state bailouts and the necessary measures against coronavirus, there is a perpetual enthusiasm about the new technology. of course the consequence of the necessary measures against coronavirus (and presumably the necessary measures against climate change) push us in the direction of state monopoly capitalism (and the consciousness necessary to survive under it).
(I wrote this in 2020 I may have been being over-optimistic.)
there’s a bit in minima moralia where adorno discusses the nostalgia for entrepreneurialism as a symptom of monopoly capitalism. horsemouth will try and dig that out.
while there is evidence of carl schmitt and walter benjamin having read each other it is good to see the frankfurters thinking on this moment (as 'changes in the structure of political compromise' is surely a very schmittian thought).
it features key writings by adorno-benjamin-horkheimer (the founding fathers of western marxism) together with the lesser known pollock, kirchheimer, lowenthall, and their successors marcuse and fromm. paul piccone does a great introduction and andrew arato/ eike gebhardt do good introductions to each of the eras.
now I've not read it all and the times when I was on top of this kind of stuff are long gone so my 'review' should be taken with a pinch of salt.
in the foundational era - horkheimer’s the end of reason, we have left the era of bourgeois liberalism and the individual and the reason they possess (founded on an economic liberalism, free trade etc.) and are entering the era of the mass society and a monopoly capitalism, where what is left of an individual’s reason is spent trying to survive, and becomes wholly twisted in that cause.
the frankfurt schoolers looked around them at the world of the 30ies - at fascist italy, nazi germany, soviet russia, and even at the US new deal and saw economies driven to ruin by unfettered capitalism and the state stepping in and taking over whole areas of economic life in order to ensure capitalism’s continued survival. and this, we may note, is not unlike the current situation.
this is the take home message of horkeheimer and kirchheimer (his 'changes in the structure of political compromise' details how this actually worked in nazi germany) and pollock’s initial essays. for adorno all subsequent drivel about entrepreneurship, creative destruction, disruption, privatisation is just nostalgia for vanished varieties of agency.
but is this actually the case? I would probably compare it to boltanski and chiapello’s the new culture of capitalism that points not just to the continued survival of entrepreneurialism etc but in fact its intensification post the 1970ies (at least in management cadre training literature). this they see as an attempt to deal with the problem of recruiting a cadre of managers both for the larger state managed enterprises but presumably also for the smaller boutique businesses existing in the interstices of the monopolised economy.
piccone’s opening essay sees part of the frankfurt schools founding genius as recognising that the economy had changed since the days of marx and that this was the motor of changes in consciousness.
'in the past the future used to be better' deadpans the austrian comic valentin. but what if we are in an oscillatory but stable system of fetishisation of entrepreneurialism/ actual rescue by state capital? free market ideology/ nostalgia ridiculously continues to be active despite the post 2008 state bailouts and the necessary measures against coronavirus, there is a perpetual enthusiasm about the new technology. of course the consequence of the necessary measures against coronavirus (and presumably the necessary measures against climate change) push us in the direction of state monopoly capitalism (and the consciousness necessary to survive under it).
(I wrote this in 2020 I may have been being over-optimistic.)
there’s a bit in minima moralia where adorno discusses the nostalgia for entrepreneurialism as a symptom of monopoly capitalism. horsemouth will try and dig that out.
while there is evidence of carl schmitt and walter benjamin having read each other it is good to see the frankfurters thinking on this moment (as 'changes in the structure of political compromise' is surely a very schmittian thought).
May 22, 2019
Anyone that is interested in Critical Theory or this diverse group of misplaced Jewish-German immigrants should get this text. While some essays are better than others, I'd recommend any of the selections by Adorno and/or Horkheimer, they all have merit.
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July 20, 2016Contagious chaos. Overloading the paragraph to the point wherein one is seasick yet far away from the sea. It is a brutal method; to overload prose to the point wherein the unenlightened cower in awe, and the Ivy League runs around proclaiming the solution to this chaos. I've seen it enacted. I have literally seen a three-day seminar on my poetry, written under a pseudonym, and I have watched the unenlightened jam down my throat, 'The True Meaning.' Hilarious! There is no sensation quite like having a fool try to convince you what your own words mean! And on the occasion they're called out, they break down hysterically weeping. Good. You were laughing for awhile, but you're not laughing anymore. Unto the end!
September 4, 2013
I'm pretty sure I say something their specific reviews about the various key essays in this volume. I wish there were more Horkheimer, but oh well. He's not the best, but his work is arguably the most under-recognized of the group and so I had hoped for more in this anthology. This is like a Greatest Hits - if you're familiar with the Frankfurt School, check the contents before buying this. If you're new to the school and interested, check it out. Unfortunately, I got this as a gift (and it wasn't cheap), and I'd say about 3/4 of it I had already read and put back on my shelves in their "original" publications.
December 21, 2009
Not light reading by any means, but crucial to anyone with a desire to understand the foundations of post WWII sociological & economic theory. The authors fling universal assertions about with a nonchalance certain to raise the hackles of anyone trained in "3rd World" economics & sociology. Many of their fundamental assertions, much less their conclusions, simply don't have much relevance outside of Europe and the so-called "1st World."
April 8, 2009
“Düşünce, nesnenin hayatını kopya etmeye ve kendini ona uyarlamaya çalışsa da, hiçbir zaman düşünülen nesneyle aynı şey değildir. Öyleyse bir eksikliği kavramlaştırmak o eksikliği gidermek değildir. Kavramlar ve teoriler, bu eksikliğin açılması için dürtü verirler, o kadar.”
February 17, 2016
This book is incredible! So many great essays. Definitely a foundation for anyone who wants to be Critical in the world. A form of therapy in itself, and will inspire definite re-reading, and I'd like to delve deeper into the works of Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, Benjamin and Fromm.
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December 3, 2018Picking through some of the essays in this anthology, I happened to read two consecutively: 'Knut Hamsun' by Leo Lowenthal and 'On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening' by Theodor Adorno. It is to be expected that both should share many themes, being Frankfurt Scho0lers, but it was striking that both essentially write around one topic: the end of the individual in the (their) current age. Lowenthal begins his essay with, "At his best the modern writer, like all writers, keeps alive the hopes of the individual and the ideal of self realization in society." (p. 320) Many thinkers have immersed themselves in nature in order to rejuvenate themselves for " self realization in society," but Lowenthal is intent on showing that this same immersion can lead to something very different, depending on how the comforts taken there are confronted. It is more than understandable that a person should desire to retreat from the intimidating horrors of urban life, as portrayed in Hamsun's first novel, 'Hunger', but Hamsun's later works all endorse a return to nature that Lowenthal's essay well documents as a flight from all responsibility, the submergence of the individual; in fact, the worthlessness of individual life. It is only as a species of animals whose uniqueness lies in tilling the soil that Hamsun can find anything deemed worthwhile. Nature is shown as both horrifying and the final cause against which a human can only acquiesce, in other words the mythology of precivilized times. There is no discrimination between the confinements of the marketplace and some of the achievements of urban life, such artistic production. Hansum wants peace but has lost his will to know.
Adorno mourns the decline of the individual even more intensely than Lowenthal where, in fact, (s)he seems pretty vital, just in need of a warning as to the many dangers confronting them under the current cultural situation. Using light music and its reception as his example, Adorno paints a picture of the individual subject as so far damaged by monopolistic capitalism that a reader might be justified in sympathizing with Hansum's withdrawal. The case was so bleak that my notes for the essay ended up being two lists that fall under, one, conditions allowing individuality, and, two, conditions limiting individuality. The latter consisted in the acquiescent purchaser, the surrender to what befalls them, the familiarity of a product replacing quality of a product, distraction, imitative assimilation, duty. The positive situation allows concentrated listening, ability to sustain tension, available of artistic production that rebelled against convention, dream of freedom by getting away from purpose (play), a listener who can synthesize different parts into an evolving whole. Adorno ends the essay with: "In music, too, collective power are liquidating and individuality past saving, but against them only individuals are capable of consciously representing the claims of the collectivity."
I give short shift to this essay because I thing it should be taken as a preface to the essay that follows, Adorno's 'Commitment'. This piece gives body to the roll of complaints of the last essay, this by way of a discussion of committed art versus autonomous art. The first I assume needs no amplification (this essay is, in part, a response to Sartre), autonomous art being 'art for art's sake' or form over content. At the end of the first paragraph, Adorno announces that work stuck in either of these poles dissolves the tension in which art has always lived. He proceeds by pointing out that every work of art grows from the building blocks of everyday life, the language of everyday speech, forms and symbols conventionally provided to us. Thus, in some sense, no artist can begin with anything other than a committed statement, committed to the status quo. In making art, (s)he must move toward the autonomous; that is, fabricate a world that has moved away from the conventional to the extent that it is successful, a work of art that is its own structure. It is only in this way that speech can escape the conventional and, perhaps even unintentionally by the artist, provided a critique of it. A move too far into the formal loses the tension that is the space of art, as well. It becomes trivial, an 'empty juggling with the elements', of no relevance.
Using Brecht and Sartre as examples, it is not too difficult for Adorno to show committed art as being in the business of giving us alternatives of which we are already aware. Many of their pronouncements could be taken from the mouths of their enemies, because they all fall within the realm of the given world view. True critique needs to be alienating, while at the same time providing a glimpse of something with, just possibly, a touch of hope. This last is especially difficult in current times because of the constrictions of living under monopolistic capitalism, well documented in the "Fetish Character of Music". Beckett and Kafka are two who do. They show what human beings have become and arouse emotions beside which committed art feels childish. Many of Adorno's pithy statements could stand as a summary of my summary, but this is one of the best: "It is not the office of art to spotlight alternatives, but to resist by its form alone the course of the world, which permanently puts a pistol to men's head." (p.304)
Adorno mourns the decline of the individual even more intensely than Lowenthal where, in fact, (s)he seems pretty vital, just in need of a warning as to the many dangers confronting them under the current cultural situation. Using light music and its reception as his example, Adorno paints a picture of the individual subject as so far damaged by monopolistic capitalism that a reader might be justified in sympathizing with Hansum's withdrawal. The case was so bleak that my notes for the essay ended up being two lists that fall under, one, conditions allowing individuality, and, two, conditions limiting individuality. The latter consisted in the acquiescent purchaser, the surrender to what befalls them, the familiarity of a product replacing quality of a product, distraction, imitative assimilation, duty. The positive situation allows concentrated listening, ability to sustain tension, available of artistic production that rebelled against convention, dream of freedom by getting away from purpose (play), a listener who can synthesize different parts into an evolving whole. Adorno ends the essay with: "In music, too, collective power are liquidating and individuality past saving, but against them only individuals are capable of consciously representing the claims of the collectivity."
I give short shift to this essay because I thing it should be taken as a preface to the essay that follows, Adorno's 'Commitment'. This piece gives body to the roll of complaints of the last essay, this by way of a discussion of committed art versus autonomous art. The first I assume needs no amplification (this essay is, in part, a response to Sartre), autonomous art being 'art for art's sake' or form over content. At the end of the first paragraph, Adorno announces that work stuck in either of these poles dissolves the tension in which art has always lived. He proceeds by pointing out that every work of art grows from the building blocks of everyday life, the language of everyday speech, forms and symbols conventionally provided to us. Thus, in some sense, no artist can begin with anything other than a committed statement, committed to the status quo. In making art, (s)he must move toward the autonomous; that is, fabricate a world that has moved away from the conventional to the extent that it is successful, a work of art that is its own structure. It is only in this way that speech can escape the conventional and, perhaps even unintentionally by the artist, provided a critique of it. A move too far into the formal loses the tension that is the space of art, as well. It becomes trivial, an 'empty juggling with the elements', of no relevance.
Using Brecht and Sartre as examples, it is not too difficult for Adorno to show committed art as being in the business of giving us alternatives of which we are already aware. Many of their pronouncements could be taken from the mouths of their enemies, because they all fall within the realm of the given world view. True critique needs to be alienating, while at the same time providing a glimpse of something with, just possibly, a touch of hope. This last is especially difficult in current times because of the constrictions of living under monopolistic capitalism, well documented in the "Fetish Character of Music". Beckett and Kafka are two who do. They show what human beings have become and arouse emotions beside which committed art feels childish. Many of Adorno's pithy statements could stand as a summary of my summary, but this is one of the best: "It is not the office of art to spotlight alternatives, but to resist by its form alone the course of the world, which permanently puts a pistol to men's head." (p.304)
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