Unfinished Critique

Max Horkheimer, who was the founder of Frankfurt School, originated the social critical theory. His social critical thought, for the purpose of making the interdisciplinary research and the critique to the modern capitalism society, constructed social critical theory's overall frame, meanwhile opened the West Marxism research new mentality.This article plans under the social philosophy field of vision to launch the elaboration focusing on the following question:combs Horkheimer social critical thought's theory origin, the formation and the development route, and summarizes its thought characteristic; Returning to the tradition of Horkheimer social critical theory, inspects him how to apply "the critique weapon"-social critical thought to the contemporary western society's research and critique.According to the above research frame, in the first part of the paper, I have traced the origin of the theory of critical thought from the following respects, pessimism sentiment, changing the existing order, the ideological inclination and traditional theory's non-reconsideration essence. The second part is to analyze the main viewpoints of Horkheimer social critical thought, including "Critical Theory", science and technology view, the populace cultural perspective, critique of enlightenment & reason, and the freedom view of human nature, etc. also reflects on the tradition of Horkheimer social critical thought around the characteristics and the ideological logic. The last part makes brief comments on Horkheimer's thought, whereas points out that social critical thought also keeps the same contemporaneity with development of human being, just as one kind of critical philosophy this day and age calls. Both human development and society's progress will not be able to leave the impetus of the critical spirit, so the critique will be forever without limits.