Research On The Social Philosophy Of Frankfurt School

Frankfurt School is one of the most influential school of Western Marxism.In1931,Max Horkheimer claimed explicitly the Social Philosophy as the direction of Institute for Social Research,in the Horkheimer's inaugural speech,i.e.,"The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research''.In the previous research on the Frankfurt School,there were several research models,i.e.,cultural theory,ideological criticism,and so on.We agree with that people can understand Frankfurt School from different aspects.However,with carefully reviewing some related literature,we will find there are some conflicts and connections between these aspects.We must face some theoretical problems,i.e.,as a school,Is there internal logical connections? Is there a historical inheritance relationship between them in the critical mode? Furthermore,if there is no such relationships including the inner connection and inheritance relationship,why are they still regarded as the same school? In other word,if there is the relationships,what do they inherite,and how does the inherited thing inherite and change among several generations of scholars of the Frankfurt School? These questions mentioned above should be studied further.Many existing works about Frankfurt School,most of them just select Horkheimer as the background of the Frankfurt School.In this paper,we adopt a "social philosophy" research paradigm to conduct a systematic study of the Frankfurt School,based on the research concept of "establishing a theory of social philosophy" mentioned by Horkheimer.The second chapter of this paper makes a detailed analyzing about the theoretical origin of the social philosophy thought of the Frankfurt School.In fact,the theoretical origins of Frankfurt School are diverse and they are inspired by the thoughts of different philosophers in different times,i.e.,Kant's philosophy of critical rationality,Haig Seoul's dialectics,Marx's subversion and criticism of traditional philosophy and the Lukács of the early Western Marxist thinker and so on.The Frankfurt School is an all-encompassing and complex school whose internal theories are both contextual and diverse.As Marcuse talked about the theoretical characteristics of the Frankfurt School,he agreed with Horkheimer's view that Frankfurt School studied the major social and political issues based on the a “cross-disciplinary” approach and it broke the academic division.Meanwhile,Frankfurt School employed the sociology,psychology and philosophy for recognizing and questioning various social issues at the time.The Frankfurt School's social philosophy is both a kind of philosophy and a social theory which are contected closely.Their social philosophy aims at analysizing the social phenonmenon,but it is included many other important categories in philosophy.In the third chapter of this paper,named “The Theoretical Basis of Frankfurt School's Social Philosophy”,we study the basic theory,fundamental problems and main features in the social philosophy of the Frankfurt school.The theory about social critique and social alienation are two fundamental and basic theory in the Frankfurt School.They are different from the early social critical theory,since early critical theory is a kind of value criticall theory which selects the value of“should” as the theoreticall starting.The theorists of the Frankfurt School were influenced by Marx's "capital logic" critique.Their economic research focus on revealing the social status of people in economic relations and directing people to change their living condition,instead of simply describing socioeconomic phenonmenon and internal relations.The alienation theory is another important theoretical foundation of the Frankfurt School.In particular,Frankfurt School thinks Alienation occurs in all aspects of modern society,and they divides the main areas of alienation into main four aspects,i.e.,alienation in technology,alienation in culture,alienation in communication,alienation in daily life,and so on.The fourth chapter of this article studies the formation and development of the Frankfurt School's social philosophy thoughts.Horkheimer and Adorno made their initial exploration.They rejected Kant and Hegel's traditional metaphysical "metaphysics".For example,Horkheimer think that philosophy should go deep into reality and "metaphysic theorists usually ignore human suffering".In their view,the ultimate goal of social philosophy is not only for individuals,but for the philosophical interpretation of the destiny of common members.The Frankfurt School 's social philosophy thoughts involve three basic aspects of phisolophy,i.e.,epistemology,ontology and value theory.Finally,Frankfurt School established an interdisciplinary research method and criticized positivism.From the perspective of Frankfurt theorists,positivism emphasized a high degree of abstraction and they treated the research object as a symbol in a logical context.However,positivism didn't touch or solve the stem of the actual social problems.In traditional epistemology,there are always two different research ideas of "positivization" and "human culture".Frankfurt School think that research on society should pay more attention to its explanatory and critique.The fifth chapter of the article analyzes the specific content of the Frankfurt School.According to the time series,the specific content of the Frankfurt school's social philosophy is divided into three parts,i.e.,analysizing on the German social situation,analysizing on the American social situation and researching on American social situation during the transition period.In fact,the social ontology showed heterogeneity in the economic system and the political system in different periods.Considering the Auschwitz incident,the theorists of the Frankfurt School think that this incident is a huge mockery of the historical reason of human beings,and this disadvantage is caused by the enlightenment.And Horkheimer and Adorno violently criticized this Enlightenment rationality.After World War II,with the prosperity of American society,the Frankfurt School carried out research on American "industrial society",and began to explore scientific and technological rationality,capital logic,and cultural dilemma.Different from Horkheimer and Adorno's violent critique of modern society and pessimistic assumptions about future society,Habermas put forward the view about "endless modernity" and began to turn the communicative rationality.The last chapter of the article analyzes the contribution and the contemporary inspiration of Frankfurt School 's social philosophy.Chinese society is undergoing social transformation from two different perspectives,i.e.,economic social transformation and technological social transformation.In other word,China is transforming from a traditional society to a modern society.Frankfurt School's analysis about the modernity of the subject and the object of the society can provide ideas for China's modernization.For example,it highlights the humanistic concerningn about science and technology,promotes the construction of a socialist cultural power,and perfects the political consultation system.Back to the question we begin,what exactly runs through the entire school? That is,the Frankfurt School upholds Marx's value stand,it's social philosophy is a revolutionary theory which criticizes and surpasses the existing society.Its ultimate purpose is to realize human freedom and liberation.