| Description |
ix, 787 pages ; 24 cm. |
| Content |
text txt |
| Media |
unmediated n |
| Carrier |
volume nc |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 715-771) and index. |
| Summary |
This is the definitive study of the history and accomplishments of the Frankfurt School. It offers elegantly written portraits of the major figures in the school's history as well as overviews of the various positions and directions they developed from the founding years just after World War I until the death of Theodor Adorno in 1969. |
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The book is based on documentary and biographical materials that have only recently become available. As the narrative follows the Institute for Social Research from Frankfurt am Main to Geneva, New York, and Los Angeles, and then back to Frankfurt, Wiggershaus continually ties the evolution of the school to the changing intellectual and political contexts in which it operated. |
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He also interweaves these accounts with incisive summaries of substantive works by Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Fromm, Kirchheimer, Lowenthal, Marcuse, Neumann, Pollock, and Habermas. The book is self-contained and can serve as a general introduction to critical theory, but it also has a wealth of new material to offer those who are familiar with this tradition but would like to learn more about its history and context. |
| Contents |
Part 1. Dawn. Felix Weil ... founds an Institute for Marxism ... -- Carl Grunberg establishes an Institute for research on the history of socialism and the labour movement -- Max Horkheimer becomes director of the Institute: (the new programme: overcoming the crisis of Marxism by fusing social philosophy and empirical social science) -- Horkheimer and his assistants (a biographical panorama): Max Horkheimer; Erich Fromm; Friedrich Pollock; Leo Lowenthal; Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno; Herbert Marcuse -- Politics, academic politics, academic work. |
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Part 2. Flight. Part 3. In the New World I: an independent institute of critical social research. Studies on authority and the family: a fragment of a collective 'work in progress' -- Renewal of collaboration between Horkheimer and Adorno -- Other empirical research projects at the Institute during the 1930s -- The dialectics project -- Walter Benjamin, the Passagen-Werk, the Institute and Adorno -- Critics of ideology: Herbert Marcuse and Leo Lowenthal on art -- Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer: unexploited opportunities for intensive interdisciplinary research -- Adorno, Lazarsfeld and the Princeton Radio Research Project -- Balancing acts and indecision. |
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Part 4. In the New World II: productive decay. 'Running an institute is by no means required by the Foundation's statutes' -- Break with Erich Fromm -- Projects -- Disputes on the theory of National Socialism -- A branch of private scholars in Los Angeles and a rump of the Institute in New York; parting with Neumann and Marcuse -- Work on the dialectics project -- Dialectic of enlightenment: philosophical fragments -- Horkheimer's 'Dialectic of enlightenment': Eclipse of reason -- The anti-Semitism project. Part 5. Gradual return. Ambitions for the anti-Semitism project, yearning for philosophical work, no urge to build a community of theorists, visits to a colony -- Studies in prejudice. |
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Part 6. Critical ornament of a restoration society. Taking part in post-war reconstruction, research on political awareness among West Germans -- Horkheimer, established overnight -- Adorno's vision of critical empirical social research, crisis at the Institute, Marcuse's dream -- Stabilization at the Institute, its first publications after the return to Frankfurt: Sociological, Group experiment -- Farewell to independence: research in Mannesmann factories, withdrawal of Adorno from empirical research -- Marcuse's 'Dialectic of enlightenment': Eros and civilization. Part 7. Critical theory in contention. Adorno as an independent interdisciplinary researcher, towards a musique informelle and corresponding approaches in other fields -- Notes to literature -- Towards a philosophy unafraid of lacking foundations. |
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Jurgen Habermas, a social theorist at the Institute at last, valued by Adorno but seen by Horkheimer as too left-wing -- The positivist dispute -- The conservatism dispute -- Critique of Heidegger. Past 8. Critical theory in a period of upheaval. Adorno's continuation of Dialectic of enlightenment: Negative dialectics -- The critical theorists and the student movement -- Habermas on course towards a communication theory of society, Adorno's legacy: aesthetic theory. |
| Notes |
Translated from the German M. Robertson. |
| ISBN |
0262231743
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9780262231749
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0262731134 (paperback)
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9780262731133 (paperback)
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0745605346
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9780745605340
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9780745616216
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0745616216
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