A history of the
and the Institute of Social
University of California Press, 1973
last section focuses on authoritarianism -- an
obstruction to the the dialectic
proccess. In fact, the goal of this process is to
eliminate traditional authorities such as the father,
the pastor and the Bible. These represent intolerable
absolutes ( a father's "no,"
a pastor's "thou
unchanging guidelines. The masses must be freed from such
authorities and, instead, learn to follow their own inner
guidance. But that inner guide must be shaped by trained
facilitators and the dialectic process. It must be taught --
through PRAXIS -- to submit to an ever-evolving group
was used to designate
a kind of self-creating action, which differed from the
externally motivated behavior produced by forces outside man's
control. ... In fact, one of the earmarks
of praxis as opposed to mere action was its being informed by
theoretical considerations. The goal of revolutionary activity
was understood as the unifying of theory and praxis,
which would be in direct contrast to the situation prevailing under
capitalism." (pages 3-4)
"....the Frankfurt School was to become a major force in the
revitalization of Western European Marxism in the postwar years. In
addition, through the sudden popularity of
Herbert Marcuse in
the America of the late 1960's, the Frankfurt School's Critical
Theory has also had a significant influence on the New Left
in this country." (4-5)
"Grunberg concluded his opening address by clearly stating his
personal allegiance to Marxism as a scientific methodology.... Marxism would be the ruling principle at the Institut. ... True
Marxism, he continued, was not dogmatic; it did not seek eternal laws.
With this latter assertion, Critical Theory as it was later developed
was in agreement. (11-12)
"With the introduction of psychoanalyses to the Institut, the Grunberg
era was clearly over.... The change this symbolized was given further
impetus by the acceptance of a new member in late 1932,
who was to become one of the principal architects of Critical Theory. Marcuse was born in 1898 in Berlin, into a family of
assimilated Jews, like most of the others.... In 1919 he quit the Social
Democratic Party... in protest against its betrayal of the
Nazi assumption of power of January 30, 1933, the future of an avowedly Marxist organization, staffed almost exclusively by men of Jewish descent --
at least by Nazi standards -- was obviously bleak....
spent most of the next four years in
England staying at Merton College, Oxford."
America... the Institut's members became more sensitive to the Jewish
important similarity [between certain strains in the Jewish cultural tradition
and in that of German
Idealism], which is especially crucial for an understanding of Critical Theory, is the old
idea that speech rather than
pictures was the only way to approach God.... This, so Habermas has argued,
parallels the idealist critique of empirical reality, which reached its height
in Hegelian dialectics."
"After the Institut's resettlement at Columbia University,
however, this tone underwent a subtle shift in a pessimistic direction. Articles
in the Zeitschrift scrupulously avoided using words like 'Marxism'
or 'communism,' substituting 'dialectical materialism' or 'the
materialist theory of society' instead.... These changes were doubtless due in
part to the sensitive situation in which the Institut's members found
themselves at Columbia. They were also a reflection of their fundamental
aversion to the type of Marxism that the Institut equated with the orthodoxy of
the Soviet Camp. But in addition they expressed a growing loss of that basic
confidence, which Marxists had traditionally felt, in the revolutionary
potential of the proletariat." 44
"Although attacking the idea of a
or mass soul, Fromm felt that individuals were never
entirely isolated from their social situation. The real task was to
supplement and enrich the basic Marxist framework, which he
accepted as a given."
"Well before the
forced emigration, it [Frankfurt Institut]
had turned its attention to problems of authority. Critical Theory was developed partly in response to the
failure of traditional Marxism to explain the
reluctance of the proletariat to fulfill it historical
"In moving westward to California,
symbolic confirmation of the [Frankfurt] Institut's increased
distance from its European origins. In February, 1940 while
still in New York, Horkheimer, Pollock, Marcuse
and Lowenthal had taken out naturalization papers....
"In the forties the Studies in Prejudice picked up.... but now
the focus was on American forms of authoritarianism....
in America appeared in different guises from its European counterparts. Instead of
terror or coercion, more gently forms of enforced conformism had
been developed. Perhaps the post effective of these were to be found
in the cultural field. American mass culture thus became one of
the central concerns of the Frankfurt School in the forties. In
the next chapter we shall turn to the extensive and penetrating work
of Adorno and Benjamin in the context of the Institut's treatment
of... 'affirmative culture.'"
"The principle that Adorno attributed to the symbolists also informed their
work: 'Defiance of society includes defiance of its language.'... Adorno
himself indicated his purpose indirectly when he wrote of Schonberg's music: 'It
requires the listener spontaneously to compose its inner movement and demand of
him not mere contemplation but praxis.'"
"Benjamin strove to give his words a
richness and resonance that normal prose lacked. His interest in the Talmud and
the Cabala may have led him tot the conviction that multiple levels of
meaning exist in every sentence. "176
"Benjamin's keenest interest was in the Cabala, the most
arcane of Jewish mystical works... If Benjamin responded to the revelatory
elements in Judaism, he was equally sensitive to its redemptive [not
Biblical redemption] strains.
The messianic current in Jewish through, which was appropriated in a
secularized from by Marxism, ran through his writings form beginning to end.
... One of the last essays he wrote... made this every evident. It was here
that Benjamin most
clearly articulated his distinction between homogenous empty time and the messianic
Jetzteit (the fulfilled time of the present) that
the revolution was supposed to usher in."
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