Horkheimer And The Origins Of Social Critical Theory

Frankfurt School is one of the most important social thoughts in contemporary Germany and the most influential school in western Marxism. Social critical theory——established by Horkheimer, as the founder of Frankfurt School——has become the logo of Frankfurt School. Although there is also a high level of enthusiasm for research of social critical theory, studies of Horkheimer’s thoughts, especially of his early critical theory, have not been given enough attention. Based on the studies of the development of his thoughts in his early and pre-critical periods, I will find the inherent correlation among social critical theory, German idealism and Marxist tradition. Meanwhile, I will illustrate the misunderstandings of Horkheimer’s early and pre-critical theory in domestic and foreign academic circles to reconstruct a neutral history of philosophy for the foundation of social critical theory.This book has six chapters:the first three chapters mainly refer to the relationship between Horkheimer and German idealism, and explore how he could gradually move from idealism to practical philosophy characterized by historical materialism; the last three chapters mainly refer to the relationship between Horkheimer and Marxism, and explore how he could sublate traditional Marxism, early western Marxism and Marx’s materialist views of history to establish the social critical theory.I will begin with Horkheimer’s research papers between 1920 and 1925. They are some criticisms of Kant’s epistemology taking the side of Neo-Kantian Marburg School following his tutor Hans Cornelius. Horkheimer criticized Kant’s dualism of sensibility and understanding with transcendental phenomenology inspired by Gestalt Psychology. To overcome dualism, he also used the concept "experience" to integrate the inherent structure of cognitive processes. Although Horkheimer’s academic philosophy stuck in pure theoretical research characterized by positivism, the critical spirit including anti-dogmatism and anti-mechanism embedded in those papers continued throughout his life, which had an important impact on critical theory.In fact, it shows in Horkheimer’s philosophical diaries, speeches, letters and other written materials that his thoughts not only include Neo-Kantian epistemology following Cornelius, but also involve Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will and the budding historical materialism influenced by Marx. He had a practical purpose when he started on his road of philosophy. Although he was enlightened by his tutor’s practical philosophy, Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the will was a powerful influence on his thought. He gradually released himself from his tutor after getting his certificate in college and university teaching in 1925. Then he realized that epistemology was actually a kind of philosophy of inner consciousness characterized by solipsism, which he criticized.After 1925, Horkheimer systematically reflected and criticized the German idealism through a series of lectures. He began with the criticism of kant’s dualism of epistemology and formalism based on Hegel’s dialectic through the transcendence over the inherent philosophical reflection with the totality of reality of historical society. But Horkheimer found that there was an eternal essence in Hegel’s philosophy, which treated the totality of reality as a product of the internal development of Spirit. As a result, that absoluteness ends in Hegel’s metaphysics as a sheltered system. So Horkheimer accepted Kant’" priority of practical reason" again, while he considered the needs, interest and dilemmas of particular individuals as the motives and norms of theoretical cognition. He also systematically linked history and social reality and used the reflection of social history to pursue happiness, through which he transcended Kant and conceived the practical theory of historical materialism by denying Kant’s moral philosophy and idealism.Marxism played a leading role in the emergence of social critical theory toward the materialist philosophy after its criticism of idealism. Horkheimer’s research has involved certain parts of Marxism since 1926. Firstly, he criticized orthodox Marxism, which he considered as a political ideology controlled by the Bolshevik leaders. Secondly, he accepted early western Marxism represented by Lukacs, which he also criticized to some extent. One the one hand, he used Lukacs’s category of totality to overcome reification and positivist cognitive style and understand the totality of social relationships. One the other hand, he criticized Lukacs’s category of totality for its seclusion and identity, which led Lukacs to "returning to Hegel". Horkheimer regarded that position as a philosophical system of the unification of subject and object. He also rejected treating the proletariat as the unified subject and object in the development of social history. In the process of criticism of Lukacs, Horkheimer preferred empirical study and denied the essential distinctions between natural sciences and social sciences, whose position was similar to positivism.Certainly, Horkheimer distinguished Marx’s theory and Marxism from the beginning. Horkheimer generally accepted Marx’s materialist conception of history, but he modified Marx’s schema of "base-superstructure":firstly, he brought the criticism of ideology into cultural sphere and stressed the role and value of cultural superstructure; secondly, he combined psychoanalysis and historical materialism to form social psychology, with which critique of political economy and cultural theory did a total criticism of capitalist society. This interdisciplinary materialist criticism of social totality became the principle of the Institute for Social Research under the leadership of Horkheimer since 1931. Thus Horkheimer actually established social critical theory.The concept of "critical theory" originally appeared in Horkheimer’s article "Traditional and Critical Theory"(1937). Horkheimer claimed that the traditional theory of positivism excluded cognitive agents from the process of cognition. As a result, the theory was separated from the practice. Then he attempted to use a constructively critical theory to instead of the traditional theories characterized by description. The construction of critical theory embedded in the facts that it usually defined philosophical concepts in a particular historical context, treated social interest as the startpoint of realistic description, used constructive thought differed from positivism to make an "existential judgement" about social totality. Thus, critical theory became an element of social practice and kept itself "unsheltered".Horkheimer aimed to establish a practical critical theory all the way. Unlike Marx, he had not yet transformed theory into revolutionary practice, although he tried to make critical theory a kind of philosophy of action for liberation in the early 1930s. As far as the relationship between critical theory and practical subject (proletariat), he always emphasized the separation of theory and political action to keep the former’s critical. Meanwhile, he was aware of the weakness of proletariat in capitalist society after its transforming from liberalism to monopolism. Thus critical theory became a utopia without subject. In other words, critical theory as the philosophy of practice became a sort of theorical research of rational criticism.In this book, I will not only organize the literature of Horkheimer’s thoughts in his early and pre-critical periods, but also reflect all the philosophical questions which have an impact on the origins of Horkheimer’s social critical theory. Then I conclude that I do not agree about the separation of Horkheimer’s academic philosophy and his critical theory, rejecting of the influence of Cornelius on Horkheimer’s critical theory, simply reducing Horkheimer to "Hegelian Marxism" and "western Marxism in Lukacs’s genealogy". I also reveal Horkheimer’s ambivalent attitude about positivism in his early and pre-critical periods and clarify that Horkheimer does not reject science referring to the relationship between philosophy and science, but introducing critical theory into scientific sphere and reforming the concrete standpoints of science.