5 Horkheimer and the Re-Founding of the Institute

Recapitulation: Hegelian Marxism

David Ryazanov (ree-ah-ZAH-nof; /rʲɪɐˈzanəf/) found Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, and they were published in the original German in 1932. Georg Lukács (LOO-kahch; /ˈlukaːtʃ/) had already argued, in “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” (1923), that the commodity form is objective (the economy) and subjective (consciousness) at once, so that reification, Verdinglichung (fair-DING-likh-oong; /fɛɐ̯ˈdɪŋlɪçʊŋ/), reaches both the economy and the mind.

Herbert Marcuse’s (mar-KOO-zeh; /maʁˈkuːzə/) “The Foundation of Historical Materialism” (1932) drew the consequence. Marx was attempting something much larger than an economic critique of capital: a critique of the total deformation of social life. Read through the manuscripts, Marxism is a comprehensive philosophy of human existence. Marcuse found in Marx what he had gone to Heidegger (HY-deg-er; /ˈhaɪ̯dɛɡɐ/) to find, and in 1932 he joined the Institute.

Founding and re-founding the Institute

Origins

The Weimar (VY-mar; /ˈvaɪ̯maʁ/) Republic was a socially, politically and philosophically experimental and exploratory place, and the Institute for Social Research was one of its experiments: an openly Marxist research institute. It was paid for with independent funds from Hermann Weil, a grain merchant, and his son Felix, and founded in 1923 in association with the University of Frankfurt. That association had a condition: the director had to be a professor at the university.

The first director was Carl Grünberg (GREWN-bairk; /ˈɡʁyːnbɛʁk/), who held a chair in economics and social science. Under him the Institute’s task was historical and documentary: an Archive for the History of Socialism and the Labor Movement. Grünberg fell ill and stepped down, and in 1930 Max Horkheimer (HORK-hy-mer; /ˈhɔʁkhaɪ̯mɐ/) was appointed to both the directorship and a professorship.

The re-founding, 1930–31

On 24 January 1931 Horkheimer gave his inaugural address as the new director. That address, our reading, is the official beginning of what the Institute would call critical theory.

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973)

Horkheimer was born near Stuttgart, the son of Moritz Horkheimer, an industrialist, into a strictly observant Jewish family. He studied with Edmund Husserl (HOOSS-erl; /ˈhʊsɐl/) and Heidegger in Freiburg, and was drawn to their phenomenology. He wrote his doctoral dissertation in philosophy at Frankfurt with Hans Cornelius (kor-NAY-lee-ooss; /kɔʁˈneːli̯ʊs/), on “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” and his habilitation, also with Cornelius, on “Kant’s Critique of Judgment as a Connecting Link between Theoretical and Practical Philosophy” (1925). His inaugural lecture as a university teacher, in May 1925, was called “Kant and Hegel.”

On paper, then, a very standard academic career: a young professor who had just finished his habilitation, highly educated, with a respectable interest in phenomenology. But he was also far to the left. He felt a real fury at the suffering of people in the streets, and a moral outrage at the distance between the impoverished and the bourgeoisie. Horkheimer was a philosopher, but a social philosopher: practical, committed to social change, ready to use the methods of sociology, and wanting to frame social change with philosophy and sociology together.

The inaugural address (1931)

The idea of a social philosophy

The address is called “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of the Institute for Social Research.” Its central idea is a social philosophy, and Horkheimer would refer back to it in 1951, when the Institute was renewed in Frankfurt after the war and exile.

The intellectual situation

Horkheimer speaks into a particular moment. The modern research university in postwar Germany was questioning its own disciplinary boundaries, and philosophy was divided among rival movements: positivism, neo-Kantianism, the pessimism of Schopenhauer (SHOH-pen-how-er; /ˈʃoːpn̩haʊ̯ɐ/), and Heidegger’s “melancholy.”

His answer is interdisciplinarity together with empiricism. Chaotic specialization, he says, will not be overcome by bad syntheses of specialized results, and real empirical research will not come about by reducing its theoretical element to nothing. It is overcome to the extent that philosophy, as a theoretical undertaking oriented to the general and the essential, can give particular studies their “animating impulses,” while staying open enough to be changed by those studies in turn. (Quotation 1.)

So interdisciplinarity is necessary, but it must not come at the expense of any of the specialized fields. The Institute is to bring philosophers, sociologists, economists, historians and psychologists into permanent collaboration, doing together what other fields do in the laboratory: pursuing large philosophical questions with the most precise scientific methods, revising the questions as the work proceeds, inventing new methods without losing sight of the larger context. (Quotation 2.) Philosophy is the guiding spirit of the sciences and social studies; its orientation toward value instructs science. Social philosophy supplies the animating impulse.

The inheritance of German Idealism

Why “social” philosophy? Horkheimer tells a story about German Idealism.

For Kant, the rational individual is the moral individual: you, the individual, give yourself your own rules. Horkheimer calls this a kind of “transcendental isolation.” For Hegel (HAY-gel; /ˈheːɡl̩/), reason belongs to the social totality: Geist (GUYST; /ɡaɪ̯st/) is the collective rationality of spirit. Hegel freed self-consciousness from introspection and moved the question of what we are into the work of history, where the subject gives itself objective form. Law, the economy, the state: these are all, for Hegel, objective spirit, the manifestation of collective consciousness.

Social philosophy, Horkheimer says, must not be bound by Kantian individualism and liberalism; it should take up the Hegelian vision of the social whole as the realm of objective spirit. Social reality should be rational, and Hegel’s perspective lets us see it from above, as a whole, and so see how it might be formed.

But Hegel went wrong in one decisive way. His philosophy transfigures reality “with all its apparent injustices” and reconciles it with reason. It offers consolation, and consolation, Horkheimer says, is only compensation for a misfortune that ought never to have happened. (Quotation 3.) What is a rational world? Not one with poverty in it. Hegel was too idealistic. Rationality has to be brought about, not discovered; or, as Marx put it, the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

The key problem: life and spirit

This is a continuation of German Idealism, with Geist kept, but Horkheimer wants social philosophy to unite Marxist materialism with German Idealism: to mediate between materialism and idealism, between life and spirit.

He states the problem precisely. Discussion of society in philosophy and sociology has crystallized around one question, the contemporary version of the oldest philosophical problems: what is the connection between the economic life of society, the psychical development of individuals, and the changes in culture? And by culture he means not only science, art and religion but law, customs, fashion, public opinion, sports, leisure, lifestyle. Investigating how these three processes bear on one another is just a reformulation, with modern methods, of the old question of the connection between particular existence and universal reason, reality and Idea, life and spirit. (Quotation 4.) Society is a totality, and nothing in it, not even fashion, is too slight for philosophy.

Horkheimer really does think these tasks arise from the origins of philosophy. Notice too what is missing: Marx is hardly named. In 1931 the Institute’s Marxism had to be disguised (next time we meet the idea of an “Aesopian” language).

Six years later Horkheimer will give the program its most famous formula: the abolition of social injustice is “the materialist content of the idealist concept of reason” (1937). How to make all this into a self-reflective, genuinely critical theory is the subject of the next lecture.

Handout outline (Professor Gordon)

I. Recapitulation: Hegelian Marxism

• A. Marx’s philosophical humanism
  • discovery of the EPM by David Ryazanov (director, Marx-Engels Institute, Moscow)
  • publication of the EPM in original German (1932)
• B. Lukács’s essay, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” (1923)
  • the commodity form as objective (economy) and subjective (consciousness)
  • reification: from the Latin re (thing); in German, Verdinglichung
  • reification of both economy and consciousness
• C. Marcuse, “The Foundation of Historical Materialism” (1932)
  • a vindication of Marxism not as economism but as a comprehensive philosophy of human existence
  • finds in Marx what he had looked for in Heidegger; in 1932 joins Institute

II. The founding and re-founding of the Institute for Social Research

• A. Origins and founding
  • Hermann Weil and son Felix: independent funds
  • founded in 1923; in association with the University of Frankfurt
  • first director, Carl Grünberg, chair in Economics and Social Science
  • Institute’s task: Archive for the History of Socialism and the Labor Movement
  • Grünberg’s illness and Horkheimer’s appointment to both post and professorship, 1930
• B. The refounding in 1930
  • Horkheimer’s inaugural address as new director, 24 January 1931

III. Max Horkheimer: an introduction

• A. Life and work
  • born Stuttgart: father industrialist Moritz Horkheimer: strictly observant Jewish family
  • studies with Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg
  • doctoral dissertation in philosophy (with Hans Cornelius) at Frankfurt, on “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgement”
  • habilitation in philosophy (with Cornelius), on “Kant’s Critique of Judgement as a Connecting Link between Theoretical and Practical Philosophy” (1925)
  • gives inaugural address, “Kant and Hegel” (May 1925)

IV. Horkheimer’s inaugural address as the new director (1931)

• A. “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of the Institute for Social Research” (1931)
  • the idea of a “social philosophy”
  • Horkheimer refers back to this idea in 1951, with renewal of Institute after war and exile
• B. The current intellectual situation
  • the modern research university in postwar Germany
  • a questioning of traditional disciplinary boundaries
  • rival movements in philosophy: positivism, neo-Kantianism, Schopenhauer’s pessimism, Heidegger’s “melancholy”
  • interdisciplinarity and empiricism [quote 1]
  • but under the guidance of a social philosophy [quote 2]
• C. The inheritance of German Idealism
  • from Kantian individualism to the Hegelian conception of the social totality
  • philosophy and a vision of the social whole as the realm of Hegel’s “objective Spirit” [quote 3]
• D. The key problematic
  • mediating materialism and idealism, life and spirit [quote 4]
  • the abolition of injustice as “materialist content of the idealist concept of reason” (1937)
  • how to develop this as a self-reflective, and genuinely critical theory [next lecture]

On the back: four passages from Horkheimer, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of the Institute for Social Research” (1931), with Professor Gordon’s emphasis.