Collection: Society and Reason (1943-1947)

Transcriptions and translations of previously unpublished materials from and around Horkheimer's 'Eclipse' (1947)

Max Ernst. Eclipse. 1968.

Table of Contents.

Editor’s Introduction: Eclipse as “Prolegomena” to the Dialectic.

I. Possible Topics. (Jan.-Feb. 1943).

II. Notes for Lectures I-III (Late 1943).

III. Letter to Pollock: “On problems of Scientific Style” (Nov. 1943).

IV. Lecture II: On the Domination of Nature [First Draft] (Late 1943).

V. The Revival of Dogmatism (1943).

VI. Society and Reason. Lectures I-V (Spring 1944).

VII. From Society and Reason to Eclipse (1944-1947).

VIII. Lectures on National Socialism and Philosophy (Spring 1945).

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Max Ernst. The Phases of the Night [Detail]. 1946.

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Editor’s Introduction: Eclipse as “Prolegomena” to the Dialectic.

§1. Revising Society and Reason.

This collection features original transcriptions of manuscripts from Horkheimer’s sequence of five lectures delivered at Columbia University in Spring 1944, between February 3rd and March 2nd, under the title of Society and Reason (hereafter: S&R). The manuscripts for these lectures would serve as the basis for Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason (hereafter: Eclipse), published in 1947 through Oxford University Press in New York.¹ Eclipse was the result of nearly three years of extensive revisions by remaining members of the ISR. By the mid-1940s, the core had been reduced to five: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Leo Löwenthal, Friedrich Pollock, and Felix J. Weil. These materials were sourced from the digitized portion of the Max Horkheimer Nachlass (hereafter: MHA, for Max-Horkheimer-Archiv),² likely compiled around the time Alfred Schmidt began translating Eclipse under Horkheimer’s direction, published in 1967 through S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt, am Man, under the title Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft.³ With the exception of many of the letters included below—as well as the fragment “On problems of scientific style” (1943), excerpted from a letter written to Pollock in 1943⁴—few if any of these texts have been published in part, and none, to my knowledge, in full. This is all the more surprising because most of the material was originally written (or dictated and typed) in English. This makes the composition of Eclipse unique.

In a letter to Gertrude Isch, 3/29/1946, Horkheimer distinguishes between Eclipse and his ongoing philosophical collaboration with Adorno, still named the Philosophische Fragmente (hereafter: Fragmente) at the time, by connecting the respective language in which each project was composed to its intended audience and to its systematic position within their joint ‘philosophy’ as a whole:

My external life is very monotonous. I mainly study philosophy, which, as you know, I have always considered to be my real reason for existing. Since the Institute is still affiliated with Columbia University in New York and I also maintain contacts with other universities and institutions, my work is occasionally interrupted by travel, the writing of long minutes and “memos,” and tedious correspondence. From time to time I give lectures at the university where I teach so as not to lose contact with the new generation. I have also written a little book for students, which is due to be published in the autumn! Nevertheless, my heart belongs to philosophy. What I write in this field is intended for a few readers and appears in mimeographed form or in very small editions. In doing so, I stick to the language of philosophy, German, even though Herr Hitler has degraded it to jargon and disfigured it beyond recognition. He himself perverted the German language in Germany, but since many emigrated intellectuals also betrayed it, this language has only been able to survive outside your beautiful country with a few loyal followers, some of whom work on the beautiful Pacific coast of California. My closest collaborator is Mr. Adorno. In him I was lucky to find a person who uses his universal education for the passionate pursuit of truth, something that has become rare today, since the two almost always occur separately. I do not know whether he was in Geneva when you worked for me. Now he lives not far from us in Los Angeles and shares my ideas and interests.⁵

At the time of the letter, the Fragmente had only received a limited printing of several hundred copies in the format of a mimeograph in 1944, and would not be published until 1947, by Querido Verlag in Amsterdam, under the title of the Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment, hereafter: Dialectic).⁶ Like the Dialectic, Eclipse was the work of a collective. Without the combined and sustained efforts of Löwenthal, Norbert Guterman,⁷ and, last but never least, Adorno, in editing and revising the text, it is doubtful that it would ever have been published in any form. In January 1945, Horkheimer wrote a letter to Adorno informing him that Guterman had already begun to oversee preparations of the manuscripts for publication. Horkheimer ends the letter by asking Adorno to send some revision notes at his leisure: “I think it would be a good idea for you to jot something down the additions you had in mind. Should you not have time to get around to it, however, we will just let the thing go to print as is.”⁸ Adorno’s response was anything but leisurely. Löwenthal and Guterman would soon be made responsible not only for translating and integrating drafts of Horkheimer’s later additions, but also doing the same for Adorno’s substantial ‘inserts.’ From March 1945 through January 1946, just weeks before the submission deadline for the manuscript, Adorno would send a number of lengthy memoranda to the editorial team with “countless formulations for minor additions and small changes” as well, the longest of which was 37 pages in length.⁹ As was typical for their writing process since the early 1940s, Adorno and Horkheimer would meet in person to discuss the manuscript intensively and generate new lists of changes and ideas each time to send to Löwenthal, who would then have to sort out the redundant suggestions and confirm whether he was supposed to countermand or ignore conflicting directions.¹⁰ A month before the manuscript was due, the book still had no title. Horkheimer provisionally christened it Twilight of Reason, which he considered ”too pessimistic” and too reminiscent of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Eclipse was first proposed as an alternative by an editor at Oxford University Press in March 1946 who needed to fill in a title on a form the publisher needed to begin the process of typesetting proofs.¹¹ There were two peaks of last-minute panic in 1946: the first lasted the month of January, during which Horkheimer would rewrite the entire ‘Preface’ from scratch, express grave reservations about the structure, and send a “massive telegram to Löwenthal and Guterman with detailed instructions for the incorporation of large excerpts from Horkheimer’s unpublished essay “On the Sociology of Class Relations” [1942/43]; the second spanned the early fall months after Horkheimer received the proofs from the publisher, during which Horkheimer would ask Löwenthal if they could reset the entire book and express crippling anxiety over the deficiencies in its literary style. Löwenthal had to beg Horkheimer:“Please do me the favor and enjoy the completion of this work.”¹² While Horkheimer’s anxiety was certainly compounded by the headaches of Anglo-American academic publishing, it had a much deeper source, one which accounts for why he found (and made) the publishing process so needlessly difficult.

§2. Task of the ‘Prolegomena.’

The process of readying Eclipse for publication was excruciating for nearly every party involved. (At one point, Löwenthal compared it to Hegel’s schlechte Unendlichkeit.)¹³ It’s not surprising Horkheimer mustered so little enthusiasm for it in the letter to Isch, even to the point of contrasting it, ‘a little book for students’ of lectures he gives ‘from time to time […] so as not to lose contact with the new generation,’ to his efforts in ‘philosophy’ proper, and to which his ‘heart belongs,’ in ‘the language of philosophy, German.’ A month prior to the letter to Isch, Horkheimer writes Löwenthal in early February that the purpose of book was largely pragmatic: on the one hand, “it would help to establish relations in Europe” as the ISR looked into establishing a new ‘branch’ in Frankfurt after the end of the war, and, on the other, it would relieve some of the pressure Adorno and Horkheimer had felt to rush the finalizing and “distribution of the Fragmente.”¹⁴ But it was clear that Horkheimer held Eclipse to a much higher standard. In another letter to Löwenthal later that August, Horkheimer passed his most balanced judgment on the book, describing it as “an almost satisfactory introduction to some of our ways of thinking.”¹⁵ In the summer of 1945, Adorno wrote the draft of a letter to Karl Mannheim on the ISR’s recent and ongoing publications, something after Pollock requested after Mannheim reached out to him to inquire:

First, a little book “Society and Reason” which is now in the last stage of editing. This is based on five lectures H[orkheimer] gave at Columbia University 1944 with a number of other studies, particularly a detailed critique of both logical positivism and Neo-Thomism added. This book which should have perhaps 150 to 200 pages in print may well be regarded as a kind of “Prolegomena” to our philosophy. It is a more popular formulation of some of the leading ideas contained in the German Philosophische Fragmente which H[orkheimer] wrote together with Adorno. It is not too difficult, but should give a clear idea of our specific approach. The whole thing is built around the difference and relationship of “subjective” and “objective” reason. It uses these concepts in order to provide an introduction into the problem of dialectics of enlightenment.¹⁶

This was the task assigned to Eclipse. The ‘little book’ was to be a ‘Prolegomena’ to the basic problematic of the Dialectic of Enlightenment: “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.”¹⁷ Already, this reverses the received wisdom in the reception of ‘the Frankfurt School’ that considers Eclipse “as a postscript to the work now seen as the magnum opus of the Frankfurt School's American exile: Dialectic of Enlightenment,” or even as “Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.”¹⁸ In the ‘Preface’ to the Dialectic, Adorno and Horkheimer explain that the task of the book is to investigate the “aporia” of “the self-destruction of enlightenment” through essayistic fragments designed for a dual purpose: (1) to show how the enlightenment, as both philosophical movement and the tendencies of modern society it expresses (“not merely […] rational consciousness but equally to the form it takes in reality”), “already contains the germ of [its own] regression”; (2) to comprehend the self-destruction of the enlightenment by means its uncompromising self-critique—the reflexive appropriation of its “regressive moment” through reflection, as well as excoriation of the prevailing tendency in enlightenment thus far to “leav[e] consideration of the destructive side of progress to its enemies.”¹⁹ Using Adorno’s draft for Pollock, we can distinguish between the task of the Dialectic and the task of Eclipse as its ‘prolegomena.’ According to Adorno, Eclipse

1. Should be ‘a more popular formulation of some of the leading ideas contained in the German Philosophische Fragmente’ for an Anglo-American audience;

2. Should not be ‘too difficult,’ but ‘should give a clear idea of our specific approach’;

3. Should, through the dialectical construction of its core antithesis (‘difference and [inter-]relationship’) of objective and subjective reason, ‘use[] these concepts in order to provide an introduction into the problem of dialectics of enlightenment.’

Based on Adorno’s description here, Eclipse, like Kant’s own Prolegomena (1783), seems to be written not to “be serviceable for the systematic exposition of a ready-made science, but merely for the discovery of the science itself.”²⁰ In making recommendations for the ‘Preface,’ Horkheimer writes Löwenthal, 12/28/1945: “It should be mentioned that the ideas in this book are derived from the more comprehensive and precise philosophical theories as they are contained in the FRAGMENTE, published by the Institute.”²¹ In a letter to Pollock, 12/18/1945, Horkheimer describes Eclipse as the “exoteric version of thoughts already formulated” in the Fragmente, and laments that his work on the manuscript for Eclipse (“these last weeks, during which I made myself an expert in American pragmatism…”) had prevented him from resuming his collaboration with Adorno on the Rettung, their long-planned, unwritten sequel to the Fragmente/Dialectic (“the development of a positive dialectical doctrine which has not yet been written…”).²²

Yet, in a letter to Löwenthal dated 8/19/1946, Horkheimer writes “it is our duty to have our book [viz., Eclipse and Dialectic] published as soon as possible” and critiques the style of Jean-Paul Sartre’s L'Être et le néant (1943) precisely because it is “a kind of simplification” of thought with the power to “make people believe that here is the cupboard which holds the truth,” a condescension of the expert to a non-specialist audience which “gives a kind of authority to the poor and desolate vulgarities which will undoubtedly be presented as the exoteric summaries of the real treasure.”²³ In fact, nearly every critique the co-editors of the S&R manuscript make of suggested additions and revisions, both those proposed by others and their own contributions, emphasizes the same danger in the concision and accessibility of the text: it threatens to give the impression of a false depth, an esoteric doctrine of which it is the vulgarization. Horkheimer and Adorno are particularly worried about this, as Eclipse was supposed to be something like an English-language précis of the Fragmente.

In a letter to Löwenthal dated 6/3/1945, both of Adorno’s ‘critical theses’ on the first revised manuscript begin from the comparison of the method of presentation in Eclipse with that of Hegel’s Phenomenology.²⁴ (Horkheimer even calls Eclipse “my Hegel.”)²⁵ Like Hegel does in his “Preface” to the Phenomenology,²⁶ Horkheimer—along with Adorno, whose lengthy additions and inserts to Eclipse are largely devoted to addressing this issue—actively courts the paradox of making “science,” which “seems to be the esoteric possession of only a few individuals,” into something “exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody” by constructing a path for “unscientific consciousness […] to enter into science,”²⁷ as the reader “has the right to demand that science provide him at least with the ladder to reach this standpoint.”²⁸ Eclipse, like the Phenomenology, should be the “coming-to-be of science itself” and “beget the element of science” that the un-initiated reader “must laboriously travel down a long path” to gain for themselves.²⁹ The science Eclipse-as-prolegomena should initiate the reader into must accordingly incorporate the possibility of the reader’s initiation into the science and the obstacles which might block the reader from doing so into the science itself.³⁰ This comes with significant risk for both of the parties involved—the ‘non-scientific’ reader must be willing to hazard their preconceptions and follow the development of the ‘element of science,’ while the ‘scientific’ author must find a way to recover the ‘scientific’ standpoint by abandoning it in the assumption of the standpoint of the ‘non-scientific’ reader as their point of departure. The method of presentation for this initiation can only be given theoretical justification from the perspective of the science it might very well fail to initiate the reader into; the ‘scientific’ author fails to the same extent they artificially restrict themselves to a stock of formal methodological procedures and ready-made examples which, from the author’s perspective within the science, must result in the discovery of the science itself as a matter of mechanical necessity.³¹

There is no royal road to science—not for Hegel, who concludes his “Preface” to the Phenomenology with a critique of the idea that a “Preface” could provide the readers with an external survey of the essentials of the science from above,³² nor for Marx, who prefaces the French publication of Capital by “forewarning and forearming” his readers, steeling them for the “fatiguing climb” of the “steep paths” of science against becoming “disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once” to the conclusion or at least to “the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions.”³³ As with the Phenomenology, Eclipse is meant to be a “path of despair,”³⁴ and the despair of its editors in the agonizing preparations for the manuscript reflects this acutely. If the method of presentation for both the Phenomenology and Eclipse requires that “the educator must himself be educated,”³⁵ this applies even more so to Eclipse and the Fragmente, since, as Horkheimer distinguishes their thinking from Hegel’s in conversation with Adorno in 1946 about the long-planned sequel to the Dialectic, or the Rettung (‘Rescue’): “Hegel had absolute reason, fulfillment, as his guide (Leitfaden). What do we have as a guide?”³⁶ Adorno’s proposed ‘solution’ to both the problems he raises on the method of presentation in Eclipse is to consciously and clearly incorporate them into the conclusion of Eclipse itself: “Speaking crudely, the last chapter must explicitly answer the questions which have been raised by the first, and it would by making their unanswerability truly clear.”³⁷ From Horkheimer’s first attempts at composition of the lectures for Society and Reason in late 1943 through the last of Adorno’s in-depth modifications and insertions to the manuscript for Eclipse in January 1946, the text would be held to this theoretical criterion.

§3. Early Reception of Eclipse.

Despite, or perhaps because, of their painstaking efforts, the earliest readers of Eclipse in the ISR’s intellectual circles would struggle with this ‘unanswerability’ more than anything else in the book. The fear Adorno and Horkheimer repeatedly expressed in their letters through late January, 1946³⁸—namely, that the book would seem like a defense of ‘objective’ reason in static opposition to ‘subjective’ reason,³⁹ rather than the ‘mutual critique’ of each concept of reason through its immanent reversal into the other—came true. (Eclipse is still largely read this way, an interpretation which derives its pedigree from Jürgen Habermas, among others.)⁴⁰ In 1949, Ruth Nanda Anshen (1900-2003)—an American philosopher and publisher who was Horkheimer’s friend, and sometimes-publisher, from his time in NYC— published a double review of Horkheimer’s Eclipse and Erich Fromm’s Man For Himself (1947) through the Philosophical Review, in which she proposed an ‘analogy’ between her own Neo-Thomist philosophy, Fromm’s humanism, and Eclipse. Horkheimer was furious. He drafted a letter to the editorial board which, though he never sent, contains a concise refutation of the apparent defense of ‘objective reason’ in Eclipse:

[Dr. Anshen’s] article is filled with stereotyped attacks against dialectical philosophies of various shades. She leans heavily on pseudo-religious prestige values and she boldly proclaims her belief in some of the most commonplace, universally accepted ideals. My intentions are precisely the opposite. In spite of my critiques of “subjective reason” and its relapse into a second mythology—a critique bearing only a superficial resemblance to certain antipathies nourished by Dr. Anshen—I have never advocated a return to an even more mythological “objective reason” borrowed from history. Decisive elements of my own philosophy were derived from idealistic as well as materialistic schools of thought, and I have attacked enlightenment in the spirit of enlightenment, not of obscurantism. Much of my argument is devoted to the rejection of such “panaceas” as streamlined Thomism. Philosophically or, rather, pragmatically ordained religion, stripped of whatever substance it may once have derived from genuine tradition, has by now tilted over into untruth; it can be swallowed only with a bad conscience. Consequently, it becomes vindictive and repressive, fitting perfectly with sinister political purposes: the justification of irrational hierarchies everywhere. To make the slightest concession to this brand of perennial wisdom involves a betrayal of the millions who were murdered in the name of the authoritarian state which also called itself a “new order.”⁴¹

Of the earliest readers, Herbert Marcuse might be the most perceptive and insightful. In a letter to Horkheimer dated 7/18/1947, Marcuse identifies that ‘unanswerability’ Adorno hoped to foreground as the conclusion of the dialectical movement—through which, to adapt the chiasmus in the ‘Preface’ of the Dialectic, objective reason is already subjective, and subjective reason reverts to objective—at the core of Eclipse:

I have read your book. For now, I will just say: I agree completely. If only you would have a chance to develop all of the lines of thought you were only able to hint at here in the near future. Particularly the one which worries me most: that the reason which reverses into consummate manipulation and domination remains reason all the same; that the real horror of the system lies within rationality [Vernünftigkeit] rather than anti-reason [Widervernunft]. This, of course, has been said—but you must still provide the development for your reader—no one else can, or does. I would like to speak with you about this at much greater length. The German situation is already at an even more advanced stage than the development you analyzed: negative rationality becomes positive insanity.⁴²

Despite being cited as a critique of Horkheimer’s (as well as Adorno’s) theoretical perspective at the time of Eclipse and the Dialectic,⁴³ Marcuse’s letter is an expression of exactly that unity of opposites its author(s) hoped to find in their readers: a deep disquiet over the fate of reason it reconstructs and anticipates rivaled only by the force of the resolve to complete the thought that thinks it.

§4. A Voice in the Desert.

Thinking, the endeavor of an individual to discover by himself the ultimate truth and teach it, is discredited. Look around — is there a place for such a man?

—National Socialism and Philosophy. [Lecture I. Problem: Authority of the Epoch]

Out of all the early reviews, however, my favorite is Löwenthal’s, which he sends in a letter of 1/16/1946. This letter was one of many Löwenthal wrote trying to remind Horkheimer how incredible it was that a book like Eclipse, for all its flaws, was being published at all:

Above all I wish to express my admiration for the additional text. I have the definite feeling that now you have achieved a document which, for the first time in [the] English language, can give an adequate idea about the impression of one philosopher’s voice in the desert of streamlined society today. Since I believe in the presence of unknown spiritual friends even on this continent, I look forward to the time where people will contradict the smooth critics who see in Ernst Cassirer the non plus ultra of philosophical thinking in this epoch.⁴⁴

As James Schmidt (2007) notes, the pointed aside about Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) was prompted by the unexpected, posthumous success of Cassirer’s Essay on Man (1944) and Myth of the State (1946) among “educated readers” in the American public.⁴⁵ The incompatibility between Cassirer’s distinct brand of neo-Kantianism and critical theory is less relevant for explaining the reference than the disparity between Cassirer’s reception in the American university system and the ISR’s. After settling in the United States in 1941, Cassirer taught at Yale until 1944 and, from 1944 through his sudden death in the spring of 1945, at Columbia University.⁴⁶ In the course of a single year, Cassirer had a much more enthusiastic reception in and much greater impact upon the intellectual culture of Columbia and affiliated institutions than the ISR ever had or ever would. The ISR’s problems with Columbia started in the late 1930s when their financial situation significantly worsened. This set the stage for a series of events ultimately leading to the ISR’s official disaffiliation with Columbia in Summer 1946.⁴⁷ In 1941/42, the ISR would be forced to effectively dissolve in all but name after the group failed to secure funding for any of the many ambitious, multidisciplinary project proposals they began drafting, revising, and submitting in fall 1938. Columbia’s sociology department had been instrumental in bringing the ISR to the US in 1934. Because the ISR’s financial crisis coincided with the outbreak of WWII, they began to apply for more courses, and even teaching appointments, at the same time the odds that Columbia would ever employ most members of the ISR full time reached new lows. The sociology department continued to turn down their proposed lecture courses through 1942.

Beyond financial constraints however, the sociology department was skeptical of the ISR’s ‘theoretical’ approach to social research and troubled by their lack of respectable social-scientific publications. Schmidt even suggests that the first impetus Horkheimer felt to revise the S&R lectures for publication was based on a comment made by Robert Lynd of the sociology department, which Löwenthal paraphrases in a letter of 9/25/1944 to the effect of: “University authorities feel that we have not ‘come through in a big way’ in the same sense as in Germany.”⁴⁸ By the time Eclipse was published in 1947, however, it was too late for the book to have any impact on their relationship with Columbia. In a letter to Horkheimer dated 7/19/1947, the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld (1901-1976), a fellow exile who, despite seemingly irreconcilable theoretical differences, had worked closely with the ISR on a variety of projects since the mid-1930s and was their primary contact with Columbia’s sociology department, where he’d been fully employed since 1940, writes approvingly of Eclipse:

I might add at this point that I also feel that your Eclipse of Reason is a real step forward toward the kind of institute’s policy I have always hoped you would follow. The book is written in such a way as to make it understandable to many people and will undoubtedly also influence many readers. As a matter of fact, I, myself, have never so clearly understood before some of your basic ideas. In a way, then, the last few years have brought about an intellectual situation which should make the role of the institute in this country a much more effective one, but that raises a question on which I would like very much to get some information from you. The first ten years the Institute was a concrete administrative unit but it spoke a language and had a policy which, in my opinion, defeated many of its purposes. Now, on the intellectual side, very great progress has been made, but at the moment, the Institute is no clear-cut administrative body. This again seems to me a real danger. Obviously, the effect of the new publications would be much greater if they were to emanate from a clearly defined administrative center. What plans have you in this respect? I would think that any affiliation, even with a small university, would be very desirable. I realize that would require considerable personal sacrifices for many of you, but the advantages would be very great.⁴⁹

Here, Lazarsfeld is referring more or less directly to the offer he first made to Horkheimer in the summer of 1946 to integrate the ISR into the Columbia sociology department’s Bureau of Applied Social Research. He served as its first director after its founding in 1944.⁵⁰ This was not a sacrifice the few remaining members of the ISR were willing to make. As Horkheimer writes Löwenthal just before Lazarsfeld would make the long-anticipated offer official: “One of our main tasks, the critique of culture, includes the critique of conceptions which underly the division of labor in the sciences and […] academic training. This demands as much independence as possible, theoretically and practically.”⁵¹ By 1943, the odds of Horkheimer securing a longer-term teaching position in Columbia’s philosophy department were virtually non-existent.⁵² In the summer after Horkheimer proposed the S&R series and was contracted to teach it the following spring, several members of the philosophy department publicly expressed doubts about the ISR (which they considered poorly managed and responsible for its own financial troubles), and the ISR core’s anxieties about the department’s hostility towards them were seemingly confirmed in two early reviews of Eclipse by Columbia philosophers—Glenn Negley (1947) and John R. Everett (in 1948)—who “appeared to be settling old scores.”⁵³ In addition to misgivings about the ISR’s distinctively ‘theoretical’ approach to sociology and ‘European’ approach to philosophy, however, there was the fact that since 1940 the ISR had been suspected by both university officials and law enforcement of harboring Marxist and even communist sympathies.

Despite the fact that “[i]t was hardly ever possible to nail down suspicions of Marxism as a reason for difficulties that were being made for the Institute,” whatever“[m]inor successes” they had in momentarily allaying suspicion “were frustrated by the fact that Horkheimer's Institute was becoming […] more left-wing,” and explicitly so in a number of its publications, around 1940.⁵⁴ In June 1943, someone who was previously suspicious of the ISR—whether at Columbia or another university in their NY academic orbit—apparently began to prepare to make a formal accusation. Pollock immediately notifies Horkheimer, and the charges were apparently serious enough for Horkheimer to draft a long response to Columbia university defending the scientific integrity of the ISR against the claims that they were a front for advancing a radical political agenda.⁵⁵ In one sense, the accusation was baseless. Most members of the ISR observed a ban on overt political activities during their time in the US.⁵⁶ In another sense, the accusations could have led to something much more serious if the ISR hadn’t been as careful as they were, even if some of their attempts “to avoid even the appearance of radicalism border on the comic,” like using ‘dog-ate-my-homework’ tactics to explain why certain (explicitly communist) essays were missing from a limited print of the ISR’s memorial volume for Walter Benjamin (Zum Gedächtnis [1942]).⁵⁷ Like their other works through the 1940s, Eclipse was subjected to the ISR’s typical process of ‘tactical’ self-censorship. Notably, this resulted in the removal of Horkheimer’s ‘disclaimer’ to S&R which opened the series, in which Horkheimer identified the crisis of reason with the crisis of European socialism (see the ‘Editor’s Note’ to §VI, below). It also resulted in the elimination of Horkheimer’s profession of “dialectical materialism” in the course of his polemic against Neo-Positivism and Neo-Thomism in “The Revival of Dogmatism” (see §V, below) as the essay was repurposed for Chapter 2 of Eclipse, “Conflicting Panaceas.” Nevertheless, Horkheimer hoped that Eclipse would be enough of a success that it could give them the opportunity to publish more explicitly ‘materialistic thought’ in English.⁵⁸ Horkheimer wasn’t always so guarded at Columbia either. In a series of lectures titled National Socialism and Philosophy delivered in the spring of 1945 through the sociology department (§VIII, below), Horkheimer reformulates the question of the role of philosophy in postwar European reconstruction by posing the problem of the relationship between scientific and utopian socialism anew in the world ‘after’ Nazism.

Löwenthal’s admiring comment on Eclipse is a ‘spiritual portrait’ of Max Horkheimer, circa 1944-1946: the philosopher as a voice in the desert of streamlined society, awaiting the time when people will contradict its smooth critics, seeking his unknown spiritual friends across a continent of the indifferent and suspicious. The portrait is generous because it presents Horkheimer in the integrity of his boundaries, but also testifies to his dogged resolve—keeping the afterimage of socialist enlightenment in the totality of its eclipse so it would not be forgotten before the light that might still break:

I am well aware that there are strong counter-tendencies at work to combat nihilism. However, I must admit that I do not feel justified in predicting that these destructive processes will be purged in the near future. Nevertheless, that there are forces in the making to assure that this purging will not be indefinitely postponed seems beyond dispute. One of these consists in the increasing awareness that the unbearable pressure which is today brought upon the individual is not derived from inescapable necessity. More and more men are coming to see that it does not even spring directly from the purely technical requirements of production, but from the social structure. To state it more precisely: Indeed, the recent intensifications of repression are themselves testimony to the fact that a better world is in its birth throes. All the forces which are opposed to this world are trying desperately to forestall its arrival. The very processes which have led to the destruction of old mythologies and ideologies, to which even the best available versions of individuality belong, threaten to issue in a new era which cannot yet be described by philosophy, even by a much better one than mine. The terror of fascism is maintained not only because fascism can cope more easily with social atoms that with conscious human beings, but because it was feared that ever-increasing disillusionment with all ideologies might leave men free to realize their own and society’s deepest potentialities. Indeed, in some cases, social pressure and political terror have tempered the profoundly human resistance to irrationality which has always been the core of true individuality. The real individuals of our time are not the inflated personalities of popular culture, the conventional dignitaries—the real individuals are the martyrs who go through infernos of suffering and degradation in their resistance to the “iron heel” of conquest and oppression. These unsung heroes sacrifice not only their lives but freely submit their personalities to the terroristic annihilation which others undergo unconsciously through the social process. The anonymous victims of the concentration camp and the dungeon are the symbols of the humanity that is striving to be born. It is our task to translate what they are doing into language which can be understood even when their voices have long been silenced by tyranny.

—Society and Reason, Lecture IV.

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Max Ernst. Painting for Young People. 1943.

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I. Possible Topics (Jan.-Feb. 1943).

[…] I thank you for your thoughtfulness with regard to the lecture on “American and German Philosophy.” You were right in saying that this lecture will perhaps cause me a little more work than the others. I think, however, that it adds considerably to the attractiveness of the whole list. If the Faculty should pick out this series, I would probably take advantage of the occasion and publish something on American philosophy that might well prove helpful to our practical plans. But, you know, that I am very doubtful about the whole matter anyhow. […]

—Horkheimer to Leo Löwenthal, 2/2/1943.⁵⁹

Editorial Note. After seeking advice from Leo Löwenthal and Paul Tillich, who’d proposed on Horkheimer’s behalf that he return to teach a lecture series to Columbia, Horkheimer cut: “C. Theories on Philosophy and Society,” the most explicitly Marxian, and “F. Basic Concepts of Social Philosophy,” which roughly followed the pattern he’d previously set out (in approx. 1938) for a ‘dialectical logic’ that was to begin with a critique of dominant sociological categories.⁶⁰ As James Schmidt (2007) explains, Löwenthal’s advice that Horkheimer focus on “A. Society and Reason” is indicative of the keen sense Löwenthal had for the direction of Horkheimer’s ongoing collaboration with Adorno.⁶¹ Having been cut down to four alternatives, the final proposal Tillich forwarded to the Columbia Department of Philosophy in late February, 1943, listed the following: “A. Society and Reason,” “B. Philosophy and the Division of Labor,” “C. Philosophy and Politics,” and “D. American and German Philosophy.”⁶² In the letter of hire dated 3/5/1943, Herbert W. Schneider, Executive Officer of the Columbia Department of Philosophy, would confirm Horkheimer’s temporary appointment as a visiting lecturer for “public addresses on social philosophy” for the Spring Session of 1944 and requests on behalf of the department that Horkheimer teach “A. Society and Reason” while incorporating as much of “D. American and German Philosophy” as feasible.⁶³ While Horkheimer does not have a chance to develop an explicitly comparative approach to the histories of American and German philosophy in S&R or even Eclipse, they constitute Horkheimer’s single most sustained engagement with the traditions of American social theory from a perspective as critical of the German philosophical canon as shaped by it.

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A. Society and Reason.

1. Reason as the basic theoretical concept of Western civilization.

2. Civilization as an attempt to control human and extra-human nature.

3. The rebellion of oppressed nature and its philosophical manifestations.

4. The rise and decline of the individual.

5. The present crisis of reason.

B. Philosophy and Division of Labor.

1. The bearing of social structures upon philosophical thinking.

2. How industrialization tends to transshape [sic] philosophy into an “exact science”.

3. Psychology as an example for the transformation of philosophical thinking into a science.

4. Sociology as an example for the transformation of philosophical thinking into a science.

5. Philosophical attempts to overcome scientific specialization.

C. Theories on Philosophy and Society.

1. The role of the philosopher in ancient and modern society.

2. Philosophical utopias (Morus, Campanella, Bacon).

3. Political theories of enlightenment and romanticism.

4. The Marxian doctrine of ideology.

5. Modern sociology of knowledge (Wissensoziologie).

D. Philosophy and Politics.

1. The dissolution of Feudal Society and the rise of modern philosophy.

2. Absolutism and Reason.

3. French Enlightenment as a political movement.

4. Philosophies of counterrevolution.

5. The Philosophy of modern democracy.

E. American and German Philosophy.

1. The different role of philosophy in both countries.

2. The concept of History in Western and German Philosophy.

3. The concepts of Western civilization and German “Kultur.”

4. The expression of American democracy and German traditionalism in divergent philosophical theories.

5. The function of philosophy in world reconstruction.

F. Basic Concepts of Social Philosophy.

1. Society and the individual.

2. Progression and retrogression.

3. Freedom and necessity.

4. Ideas and ideologies.

5. The idea of justice.

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Max Ernst. Day and Night. ca. 1941-1942.

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II. Notes for Lectures I-III (Late 1943).

[Sourced from: MHA Na [653]]⁶⁴

Lecture I.

1. What is philosophy? In a certain sense, philosophy is not a science and in a certain sense it is all science. Science cannot simply be assumed to be the truth, but is first and foremost a branch of division of labor, the relationship of which to the truth is problematic.

2. What is reason? Difference between immediate life and reflection. Reason may have originated Darwinistically, but then it took on a life of its own. Dogs scratching at the door. Conversion from quantity to quality. Difference between humans and animals.

3. Are reason and philosophy identical? Different meanings of the concept of reason. The English word “reason” means understanding and reason in German. Hegel's philosophy as an explication of difference and unity. [Handwritten insert: Every concept is more than its definition: The words.]

4. Society and reason. Can mean either: the prejudice-free society (subjective reason, self-preservation, reason as the opposite of prejudice, superstition) or objective reason = meaning, significance, the society that realizes reason, i.e. giving all things their due, not just arranging all things according to human purposes, not just controlling nature. Relationship between religion and reason. The entire history of the Enlightenment, indeed of Western civilization, is the attempt to fulfill the achievement of religion through reason.

5. Greek culture (definition of reason in Plato), medieval philosophy, enlightenment, Hegel.

[Handwritten marginal insert:] Western civilization came to formalize the concept of reason because it took the content [X] for granted. Its goal: self-preservation, mechanized civilization. Therefore, in instrumentalism, religion would become irrationalizing. —That precipitation of millennia-old experience means of perception. Example of the movement of the concept of peace as the "truth" of history as an element of their concepts. Differentiation from positivism and irrationalism. German and western concept of history and reason.

Lecture II.

1. The domination of nature in human society is implemented as class domination. It is impossible to say which comes first. Self-preservation rebounds on the self.

2. The boundary to radical control was originally set heteronomously by concepts such as love, justice, etc. These concepts proved untenable before the Enlightenment, and residues of the process of domination remained abstract selves and mere material.

3. Demythologization and positivism.

4. Our society as a monopoly society is the necessary result of the destruction of the myth.

Lecture III.

1. If the problem of the rebellion of oppressed nature is treated psychologically, as is done in monopoly society, the rebellion becomes a neurosis. Examples from “Civilization and Its Discontents” (Freud).

2. Romantic philosophy. The genuinely romantic philosophies, which assert the violated nature through the concept (Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche) and the deceitful modern ones, which evade the concept in favor of conceptless life and thus commit themselves to domination (Spengler, Klages, Revivals).⁶⁵

[Handwritten Notes.]

Differentiation between positivism as an epistemological doctrine and as a public-intellectual attitude. Relation between the two.

Rationalism departs from empiricism because the objectivity of rational insight, the view of the real individual, is at risk. [X] Religion and empiricism emerge in the idea that insight is impossible; the one speaks of reason, [...] absoluteness [X] the dominating of life.

But there is no way that it would be possible for it to be conceived.

Developing comparison: pragmatism and its ambivalent relation to democratization. Structure: majority religion. Majority-pure work contradicts ideals.

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Max Ernst. Vox Angelica. 1943.

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III. Letter: “On problems of Scientific Style” (Nov. 1943).

Note: On Style. Written in response to two documents from Pollock titled “memoranda 21 and 22,” which contained proposals for formulating and experimentally testing hypotheses for ‘the practical defense against anti-Semitism’ in the United States. This excerpt was excerpted by either Pollock or Horkheimer himself, typed up in an independent 3-page manuscript, and filed alongside the S&R lectures in MHA Na [653].⁶⁶ Horkheimer prefaces the following excerpt as follows:

I shall give you here the thoughts as they occurred to me while reading your notes. I won’t organize them at all; ideas which might be worthwhile considering may be preceded or followed by most superficial objections. It is the nature of critical remarks that they don’t show the points of assent. Therefore, I state that although maintaining my general question mark with regard to the wisdom of such a comprehensive presentation right now, I think your idea, how to organize it, is certainly useful.

After the excerpt below, Horkheimer returns to Pollock’s proposed program and gives line-by-line suggestions for revision. As Horkheimer indicates in the letter, the complex of problems with ‘scientific style’ includes:

1. The language barrier. Horkheimer was forced to confront this barrier repeatedly in his renewed efforts to become more fluent in English before his lecture series began. In January 1943, Horkheimer writes “[m]y own philosophical cogitating has terminated” given the efforts of “trying to accomplish the miracle of conquering the world’s most difficult language,” explaining that the goal of his lessons is to “kindle the fire of English thinking in me.”⁶⁷ By January 1944, however, a month before the S&R lecture series is slated to begin, he writes to Pollock, expressing his despair over the discrepancy between his German writings and the lecture manuscripts dictated in English:

Ceterum censeo: it is a great pity, it is almost a catastrophe that I have to interrupt my work in order to deliver lectures in a language which I do not master. I am quite aware that it is I who insisted on getting this appointment. I did it because of the well known motives. Now I must bear the consequences. However, I want to state that the four months, one third of a year, which I sacrifice for this purpose, are a terrible investment. I could have devoted them to our philosophical work, which is now in a decisive state. Never in my life did I feel so deeply the victory of external life over our real duties. If I could only believe that the lectures in themselves were really worthwhile. But reading a page of these lectures as I now start to dictate them, and comparing it with a page of my own texts, I must say it is almost a crime. The world is winning, even in our own existence. This makes me almost desperate. Never mind, I shall be gai et courageux, and it will work out all right, because we are doing all we can.⁶⁸

2. The divergence between American and German ‘scientific traditions.’ Horkheimer’s acute awareness of the problems this presented in communicating the ISR’s conception of social theory to American audiences is evident from his introductory lecture to the ISR’s 1936/37 Columbia seminar on “Authority and Society”—featuring lectures by Herbert Marcuse, Paul Lazarsfeld, Friedrich Pollock, Julian Gumperz, Erich Fromm, Franz L. Neumann, and Leo Löwenthal. This introduction is an extraordinary document. Opening with an apparent disclaimer about the difference between German and American scientific thought, Horkheimer presents this difference within the context of the shared horizon. The cliches about ‘metaphysical’ Germans and ‘rational-empirical’ French and Anglo-American traditions are grounded and relativized within the historical development of modern society—that is: capitalist society, and trans-Atlantic ‘bourgeois’ culture—in which the popular image and self-conceptions of scientific thinkers have converged and diverged since the enlightenment. Rather than moving on from his disclaimer, Horkheimer introduces the central categories of the lecture series as a whole, Authority and Society, through giving fuller articulation to the disclaimer itself. The introductory lecture ends with the argument that social-theoretical investigation of the problem of authority in contemporary society requires reflection on the social theorist as an authority in the society they investigate, something which is just as lost in the inward-facing ‘metaphysical’ approach of the Germans as it is in the outward-facing ‘rational-empirical’ approach of the French, English, and Americans.

3. The qualitative transformation of language in history. This last problem is in a certain sense the most difficult, as it encompasses the other two. It becomes all the more pressing the more progress Horkheimer makes in overcoming the language barrier and adapting his writing style to the standards of the American scientific tradition. The progress he’s made in both by late 1943 is manifest in the hybrid structure of the letter from which the excerpt is excerpted itself. The last three pages show Horkheimer applying ‘the standards of the American scientific tradition’ exhaustively to the syntax and semantics of Pollock’s memo; the first two pages, the excerpt itself, are a testament to Horkheimer’s progress in overcoming the language barrier which once ‘terminated’ his ‘philosophical cogitation.’ “On problems of scientific style” is as much a fragment of totality in absentia as many of the ‘Notes and Sketches’ Horkheimer had already written in German for and with Adorno. In addition to the mutual exclusivity of overcoming the language barrier (aphoristic form) and adapting to scientific convention (memoranda) the hybrid structure of the letter implies, Horkheimer experiences a kind of temporal displacement: having become more proficient in English, Horkheimer can now feel anachronistic in two languages instead of just one. One war, two fronts. It confirms the intuition Horkheimer once described in a letter to Löwenthal, dated 7/21/1940, when recounting what it was like to hear a speech of Hitler’s broadcast over car stereo as he drove across the American countryside between Kansas and Colorado:

I heard Hitler’s speech on the way here. His word reaches beyond the world’s plains and oceans; it penetrates the most distant mountain valleys. But I have never felt so strongly that it is not exactly a word but a force of nature. The word has to do with truth, but this is a means of war and is part of the gleaming armor of the inhabitants of Mars. But the determination of what is truth is our actual task. […] We have to rewrite our logic.⁶⁹

“On problems of scientific style” is a hybrid of hybrids. In it, Horkheimer returns to the problem of integrating his more ‘academic’ mode of authorship and his more ‘literary’ one, a difficulty he’d consciously internalized in his German compositions since the mid-1920s, through the medium of the English language. In terms of the three distinct but interconnected problems we’ve developed above, Horkheimer’s letter opens with a reflection on the problem of the split between scientific and non-scientific style (2), amplified by a sense of estrangement from English Horkheimer shares with Pollock when writing in English (1), prompting a more synoptic reflection on the diremptions which arise in the historical transformation of ‘the linguistic medium’ itself (3).

The conclusion of the excerpt is rather bleak. With the loss of naive metaphysical belief in a transcendent signified, the seriousness of the signifier—or semblance (Schein)—is lost as well. As language is functionalized in what Horkheimer will call the “all-comprehensive psycho-technics” at the end of his draft of LII, even one’s acceptance, whether earnest and accommodating (“in order to believe them honestly once and for all…”) or ironic and critical (“… or to refute them as lies”), of the ‘surface value,’ or significance, of words under the conditions of the present would only prove that they fail to understand the transformations of the linguistic medium itself. This raises a final question—that of the standpoint of the critic himself. In other words, how is it possible for Horkheimer to write this letter in the first place if he’s right about the impossibility of either expressing truth (“the determination of what is truth is our actual task”) or even refuting lies in language with language anymore? Like so many of the seemingly ‘pessimistic’ texts authored by Adorno and Horkheimer throughout the early 1940s—including the Dialectic of Enlightenment itself—, “On problems of scientific style” performs a protest against ‘what exists’ precisely through articulating the impossibility of protest. As Horkheimer writes to Adorno in critical remarks on the latter’s draft of The Philosophy of New Music (not published until 1949) in a letter dated 8/21/1941:

The language we have to create for ourselves should be neither communicative nor exactly adapted to the content. […] Sade’s teaching is, in a unique way, the antithesis of the compulsion of what exists. Your essay proves that this is also precisely true of music. In the future I see our task as no longer being satisfied with critically demonstrating this function in cultural phenomena but taking it on ourselves. I see in your essay not merely a prolegomena to doing so, as you originally wanted, but already as the transition to doing so.⁷⁰

And in a letter to Marcuse dated 12/19/1942, Horkheimer explains the ‘negativistic’ tone of his drafts for Ch. 1 of the ‘Dialectic’ as the performance of the positive function of critical reason:

During the last few weeks I have devoted every minute to those pages on mythology and enlightenment which will probably be concluded this week. I am afraid it is the most difficult text I ever wrote. Apart from that it sounds somewhat negativistic and I am now trying to overcome this. We should not appear as those who just deplore the effects of pragmatism. I am reluctant, however, to simply add a more positive paragraph with the melody: “But after all rationalism and pragmatism are not so bad.” The intransigent analysis as accomplished in the first chapter seems in itself to be a better assertion of the positive function of rational intelligence than anything one could say in order to play down the attack on traditional logics and the philosophies which are connected to it.⁷¹

Likewise, in a letter to Marcuse dated 10/11/1943 in response to the latter’s concern that Horkheimer’s essay on “The Sociology of Class Relations” [1842/43] advocated a kind of social pessimism, Horkheimer responds:

I have not the slightest inclination to advocate an attitude of social pessimism. On the other hand, however, you will agree with me that theory is critical. That means, among other things, that it concentrates on those social and political conditions which have to be overcome. The confidence that the possibility of such overcoming exists is a presupposition, so to speak, an a priori of theory as a whole as well as of each particular sentence.⁷²

Though unspoken in “On problems of scientific style,” this is precisely the gesture Horkheimer will make at the conclusion of his draft of LII (§IV, below), “Revival” (§V, below), and LV of S&R itself (§VI, below). In his 1946 public lecture titled “Reason Against Itself,” which is meant to be a précis of both Eclipse and the Dialectic, Horkheimer gives what is perhaps his most explicit formulation of this task:

As far as, our situation today is concerned, there seems to be a kind of mortgage on any thinking, a self-imposed obligation to arrive at a cheerful conclusion. The compulsive effort to meet this obligation is one of the reasons why a positive conclusion is impossible. To free Reason from the fear of being called nihilistic might be one of the steps in its recovery. This secret fear might be at the bottom of Voltaire's inability to recognize the antagonism between the two concepts of philosophy, an inability contrary to the idea of Enlightenment itself. One might define the self-destructive tendency of Reason in its own conceptual realm as the positivistic dissolution of metaphysical concepts up to the concept of Reason itself. The philosophical task then is to insist on carrying the intellectual effort up to the full realization of the contradictions, resulting from this dissolution, between the various branches of culture and between culture and social reality, rather than to attempt to patch up the cracks in the edifice of our civilization by any falsely optimistic or harmonistic doctrine. Far from engaging in romanticism, as have so many eminent critics of Enlightenment, we should encourage Enlightenment to move forward even in the face of its most paradoxical consequences. Otherwise the intellectual decay of society’s most cherished ideals will take place confusedly in the undercurrents of the public mind. The course of history will be hazily experienced as inescapable fate. This experience will provide a new and dangerous myth to lurk behind the external assurances of official ideology. The hope of Reason lies in the emancipation from its own fear of despair.⁷³

“On problems of scientific style” is a stylistic experiment in its own right, one through which Horkheimer seeks this kind of hope for himself in giving fuller expression to his despair at the prospect of mastering the English language through the medium of English prose itself.

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On problems of scientific style.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Pollock, 11/28/1943.]⁷⁴

… When I am reading documents like the one in question, whether they emanate from us or from other sources, I become well aware why I am unable to do anything useful in that realm. I am simply at a loss to understand what people who have even superficially studied the problem can learn from such papers.

Since I cannot get rid of the impression that in addition to the usual dullness and naivety of such documents, our presentations express a certain perplexity due to our inability to master the English style of thinking and writing, I strongly advise to have a good American writer assist you in formulating and organizing the final edition of this text.

With regard to myself, I become more and more aware of my utter inability to do such things. This language has developed into a tool by which you can point to things you already know. It does not enter into an interaction with the object. Never is the word understood as reflecting the nature of the object, nor is the experience of the object shaped by the intellectual potentialities inherent in the particular word expressing the object. The relation of word and thing, of sentence and subject matter, is purely mechanical alone. Speech must be to the point. In our case this means that we must show in how far we have revealed new facts or organized old ones in such a way that the knowledge gained by them can be put to a new use. Wherever the tool of language and style has been adapted so well to reality, the scientific and business methods of speaking and writing are so highly developed that each empty promise to deliver new facts or new uses or to show new pragmatic possibilities is immediately noticed in how you express yourself. Once the linguistic medium has become the realm of sales talk, the ears have become most delicate instruments for discovering everything that sounds phony or empty in such talk.

One of the main reasons for the so-called crisis of our culture (but this does not belong here) is that each word which does not point to a tangible fact, good and bad ideals, true and false religions, pleas for humanity and for inhumanity, is not only interpreted but directly—i.e. by virtue of modern language—sounds like sales talk. Whoever is listening to it, rich or poor, dumb or intelligent, is well trained in scenting what kind of social or other forces are behind the sales talk, whether it represents a reliable firm, for instance an ecclesiastical organization with experience in mass guidance, diplomacy and other necessary functions, or whether it is the poor advertisement of a firm doomed to liquidation by the progress of modern economy. Even the private conversations of business men, intellectuals and other experts are understood as signs of what they are trying and able to sell, be it only their mental versatility. One cannot help thinking of those 19th century middle class daughters who were exclusively trained for catching a husband. Their modest artistical performances, their sentimentality and nostalgia were a product of planned education. But there is a difference between those days and ours. Many a young man who fell victim to the skillful achievements of his future mother-in-law awakened, too late, to reality. But despite those experiences, despite the fact being well-known to everybody, each young lover, male and female, took the phenomenon at face value and believed in it, not a few of them until the end of their lives. The appearance (der Schein)⁷⁵ was taken seriously, in love as in art. That was the way how truth existed.

Industrial monopolism which has superseded the poor old, half-natural technique of buying and selling in all fields, has changed the character of language altogether. It has eliminated the last metaphysical elements. A man who would take ideological statements at their surface value, whether he would do so in order to believe them honestly once and for all, or to refute them as lies, would not be an idealist, but would simply misunderstand the meaning of the words. …

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Max Ernst. Bryce Canyon Translation. 1946.

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IV. Lecture II: On the Domination of Nature [First Draft] (Late 1943).

Editor’s Note: Critique of Pragmatism and Critical Marxism.

Critique of Pragmatism. Originally listed with the wordy title “Civilization as an attempt to control human and extra-human nature,” the lecture transcribed below was never delivered in this form. In a letter to Adorno dated 2/11/1944, Horkheimer explains that the change in focus was his attempt to address the objections raised by partisans of John Dewey in the discussion following LI. In response to their contention that Dewey’s ‘philosophy of experience’ already indicated a way out of the ‘impasse’ Horkheimer had developed in LI, Horkheimer abandoned his original draft and wrote a second manuscript.⁷⁶ Horkheimer doubles down: approximately half of the second manuscript for LII is devoted to showing how Dewey’s own body of work—particularly the books Experience and Nature (1925), Philosophy and Civilization (1931), and Experience and Education (1938)—constitutes a case study uniquely suited to exemplifying precisely the pathology within reason itself Horkheimer diagnosed in LI, and for which Dewey’s philosophy of experience had been prescribed as a remedy:

So far, I had two lectures. The first one originated a sharp rencontre with Randall who presided. Since he felt hurt by what I said, but was unable to argue, he simply pretended that the problems were not American. The discussion was very lively and the interest of the audience very outspoken. That meant that I had to use the greater part of the second lecture for an analysis of Dewey’s philosophy, which is the credo of everybody, I think that the effect was not bad. Even Schneider, who presided (Randall stayed away), joined the discussion and tried in a feeble way to defend Dewey, whose picture is on the wall.⁷⁷

Even Schmidt (2007), an atypically generous reader of Horkheimer, is critical of Horkheimer’s apparently transcendent critique of pragmatism ”in light of European philosophical traditions with which he had long been familiar,”⁷⁸ going as far as accusing Horkheimer of simply repeating his critique of Bergson in the final manuscript for LII delivered on February 10th, 1944.⁷⁹ Schmidt is inconsistent, however—as he observes himself, Horkheimer’s close criticism of Dewey, Sidney Hook, and Ernst Nagel for the “Revival” essay of 1943 was essential for Horkheimer’s approach to pragmatism in the lectures for S&R. (As little as Schmidt seems inclined to defend Dewey, it is hard not to sympathize with Schmidt’s evident sympathy for Benjamin Nelson, who was assigned the thankless task of preparing the manuscript of “Revival” for publication in 1944. Dissatisfied with Nelson’s performance, Horkheimer condescended that it was likely the result of Nelson’s sympathy for Sidney Hook.)⁸⁰ Schmidt’s charge that Horkheimer’s approach to the critique of pragmatism in S&R and Eclipse fails to meet Horkheimer’s own criteria of immanent critique is a serious one, and one which, to my knowledge, has yet to be sufficiently answered. Unfortunately, Schmidt’s discussion of the problem breaks off precisely where a critical examination of Horkheimer’s critical engagement with pragmatism in S&R and Eclipse should begin. This would require a survey of Horkheimer’s more and less sympathetic references to Dewey throughout the book, as well as a closer look at Horkheimer’s evident sympathy for Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is mobilized for a critique of later American philosophy several times throughout the book. Emerson is even elevated in the middle of a critique of Dewey to the pantheon of Horkheimer’s favorite anti-empiricists: “What has been consistently maintained with regard to empiricism by thinkers so antagonistic in their opinions as Plato and Leibniz, De Maistre, Emerson, and Lenin, holds for [empiricism’s] modern followers.”⁸¹

Critical Marxism. If the received wisdom in the reception of early critical theory is that Adorno and Horkheimer’s more orthodox Marxist preoccupation with class domination in capitalism in the 1930s gives way in the 1940s to a generalized historical pessimism over the necessary connection between the domination of nature and civilization itself, then the first draft of LII—along with the 1942 schema, co-authored with Adorno, “On the Relation Between The Domination of Nature and Social Domination,” which the first draft of LII repeats almost verbatim—is one of the strongest pieces of evidence to the contrary. The conventional interpretation of Adorno and Horkheimer’s theoretical development in the 1940s as a ‘farewell to Marx’ is not only unsubstantiated by extant archival materials for Dialectic of Enlightenment and Eclipse of Reason but repeatedly contradicted. Even Adorno and Horkheimer’s emphasis on pre-history—as indicated here by Horkheimer’s opening thought experiment about the “group of primitive families, prior even to the crystallization of “tribes,” […] forced, by fear of wild animals, to cross a relatively deep creek with a strong current”—is indebted in part to their reception of the late ‘anthropological’ works of Marx and Engels (e.g., in: The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State [1884]). In a letter to Marcuse dated 10/14/1941, Horkheimer writes:

[O]ur intellectual ancestors [viz., Marx and Engels]⁸² [were] not so foolish with their lasting interest in prehistory. You might look out some useful books on ethnology and mythology. All we have here is Bachofen, Reinach and Frazer, as well as Rohde and Lévy-Bruhl; Malinowski and Lowie's Cultural Anthropology are the up-to-date literature we have. We don't have Morgan's Ancient Humanity. …⁸³

Just as the “synthesis” in the 1942 schema locates Marx on both sides of the antithesis (thesis: “The domination of nature can be explained by social domination”; antithesis: “Social power-relations can be explained by natural ones”), Marx should be located on both sides of the dispute between the “utopian” and the “realist” in the following manuscript (the thesis and antithesis of the ‘42 schema, respectively).

The core idea of the first draft of LII is the unity of the domination of nature and of social domination—that is, of class domination. As Horkheimer condenses above (§II.), in the ‘Outline’ to LII:

The domination of nature in human society is implemented as class domination. It is impossible to say which comes first. Self-preservation rebounds on the self.

If taken seriously, this idea would require nothing less than a reinterpretation of Eclipse and the Dialectic against more than half a century of broad consensus about the development of critical theory in the 1940s.

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Lecture II. [First Draft]

We have devoted our first lecture to the concept of reason and the basic relationship between reason and nature. Today, we shall attempt a first approach to the problem of reason and society, or more concretely, how self-preserving reason makes itself felt in social development and social structure.

(A) Our major hypothesis is that the social equivalent to reason’s domination over nature is [the] hierarchical order of society, up to now inseparably bound up with the principle of organization which alone makes it possible to cope successfully with nature. To give you a very simple example: let us imagine that a group of primitive families, prior even to the crystallization of “tribes,” if forced, by fear of wild animals, to cross a relatively deep creek with a strong current. There arises a divergence of opinion on how it best can be effected, though there is unanimity with regard to the final aim which is deemed reasonable by all and actually corresponds to the principle of self-preservation. Some of the younger people may advocate swimming through the river, others may suggest putting some trees and loose wood from bank to bank to form a makeshift bridge, others may assume that the current is too strong for such an attempt and therefore suggest the construction of some sort of hanging bridge from jungle to jungle, of the kind we still find today in places like Ceylon. Let us make some more assumptions which can hardly be regarded as arbitrary constructs; first, that the last method is the most reasonable one insofar as it promises the safest crossing to the greatest number of people; second, that it requires a rather strenuous effort from the whole group, much more than taking the chance of a swim would, and that the majority of the group are not used to hard labor, living only from moment to moment, as it were, and that they are therefore reluctant to undertake the building which appears to them a tremendous enterprise that they fear they could never finish. Let us further assume that the advice to build the bridge comes from some of the elders of the group, having accumulated a certain experience in similar cases—they are acquainted with the dangers of the easy way—dangers which may well be greater for the old and infirm than for the youth. However this may be, the plan to build the bridge is finally accepted. The purpose of domination of nature by reason, namely, the overcoming of the natural obstacle by planned action, immediately calls for some organization. The elders whose plan has been accepted are probably best acquainted with the system of bridge building, while they are unable to do the manual work as effectively as the younger people. As far as the youngest are concerned, they are prone to give up the work as soon as something else, such as some game, catches their attention. If the work is not sped up, however, the whole group is in danger of annihilation. Thus a hierarchical order of primitive managers, of “supervisors”, who might well terrorize their underlings, and of actual workers, seems to be almost a matter of course. If the plan succeeds and the organization proves to work out satisfactorily, it may be maintained in similar situations and eventually become an institution. As a matter of fact it is even more likely that it has become institutionalized automatically before such a “rational test” takes place. This may be due to magical reasons, or to certain indifference of the primitives, which makes them accept any state of affairs when it has once come into existence. Thus, reason, as the guiding principle of the group’s relationship to nature, has led more or less automatically to a rudimentary social order. Since the rank and file workers of the group are naturally reluctant to work but are forced to do so by this organization, we may regard it as an immediate continuation of the domination of nature within the human sphere: the “nature” of the members, namely their readiness to follow every stimulus that attracts them momentarily, is brought under control by the rationality of the whole plan, namely by the survival interests of the whole group. At the same time, it is easy to see that in this rational hierarchical order the necessary maintenance of privileges, the development of antagonisms within the group, and thus an “irrational” state of affairs is almost implicit. We should regard history in much too harmless and too rationalistic a light if we interpreted this process as a deviation or deterioration of the aboriginal free cooperation of the group. For the primary solidaristic action is bound up indissolubly with the element of non-solidarity and privilege, and we cannot brand these elements prima facie as unreasonable. Thus, for example, the interest of the elders in building the bridge is stronger than that of the youngsters who might swim or jump, and yet, it might also be safer in the interest of the latter to build the bridge in order to avoid greater losses. However, the sacrifices required by the work are unequal. The youngsters have to work much harder and some of them may even drown while the elders sit and whisper [] and control the whole process. Yet at this stage, when there is not the remotest idea of an all-comprising organization of society, when, as a matter of fact, there is not even a knowledge of the concepts of society or organization, the whole thing might fail without this archaic division of labor, with all the irrationalities and injustices it necessarily entails. It is open to discussion whether there actually is at such an early phase such an impasse as represented in our imaginary case, or whether the assumption of this impasse is due to later patterns of thought which strive to justify the hierarchical structure of society as being reasonably unavoidable. However, such a question easily induces us to assume that what was primary and aboriginal is also good and justified—a thesis to which we should be careful not to subscribe. I wanted only to show you how deeply the concepts of reason and unreason are logically interrelated, and to show you with a simple example whose elements are open to common-sense understanding, what has grown through actual history into gigantic proportions and is practically impervious to immediate understanding—namely, that the rational organization of society has terminated in an irrational state of affairs. This fact of the intrinsic contradictions involved in the relationship of reason and society is the problem on which our attention will be focused in these lectures. If philosophy is more than the idle spinning of thoughts and has any true bearing upon our actual existence, it consists of a consciousness of such difficulties instead of skipping them by easy formulas and prescriptions.

(1.) Our original thesis that domination of nature by reason is concomitant with a hierarchical organization of society calls, on the basis of our previous discussion, for a certain qualification. This qualification refers to the relationship of domination of nature to societal domination. We cannot simply say that the latter follows automatically from the former, but we must admit at least that we do not know which of these comes first, whether historically or logically. This may appear to you as mere hair-splitting, since the fact of the interrelationship between those types of domination remains undisputed. Yet on this question whole philosophies ultimately depend. We all know the famous statement of Hegel that everything [actual] is also reasonable. No matter how we evaluate the statement, it is based entirely on the assumption that intra-human domination, and with it, all the sufferings inflicted upon mankind by history, are unavoidable, since they follow from the essence of reason itself insofar as it means self-preservation and the domination of external nature. Unless you recognize the primary formation of class relationships as reasonable in the sense in which we characterized the division of labor in our example as reasonable, the whole assumption of the reasonableness of history with all the apologies for the [actual] world must collapse. But although we have been forced to recognize the deep inter-action of extra- and intra-human domination, we have not reached any definite conclusion with regard to priority. For example, we have suggested that the plan of that archaic bridge-building came from a group of more experienced elders. If we reformulate our example in accordance with anthropology instead of leaving it entirely arbitrary, we may well assume that the authority of these elders, [...] a kind of priesthood was established, in some way or other, before the critical stimulation of the creek arose. We have mentioned that these elders happened to be more experienced than the rest of the group. If this experience, however, refers to something like a precedent of bridge-building—and otherwise [a precedent] could hardly be helpful [for us to consider] right now—the hierarchical order itself must have been precedent to the technological requirements which have been justified in our example as being rational, that is to say as expressing an adequate relationship between means and ends. All this, of course, is merely speculative, but it at least shows how intricate the relationship between reason and social order is at its very root. I wish to summarize the problem in two contradictory theses without suggesting a decision:

(a) Organization of men and all hierarchical and therefore repressive social forms are immediately necessitated by the struggle of man against his natural environment. They are inevitable, stem from the very earliest cases, and consequently can be overcome only by a gradual process of necessary steps which may finally terminate in a truly rational order.

(b) Repressive hierarchical relationships between men are prior to the domination of nature and the latter in its radical form is merely a consequence of [the former] or, as the psychologists would call it, a “projection” of intra-human features upon extra-human reality.

If the latter thesis be true, the idea of the necessity and inevitability of class relationships is a myth. The formation of such relationships might be attributed to some mishap, bad fortune, or catastrophe, rather than to any intrinsic logic of historical development. Hence the idea that this type of relationship may be overcome only step by step, according to the objective conditions prevalent in each epoch, is untenable. If some inexplicable illness has befallen mankind at a very early phase, it might be remedied at any time if only mankind as a whole would take its fate into its own hands.

I have sketched these two theses with a particular purpose, namely, in order to show you that an apparently highly abstract philosophical problem such as that of the original relation between reason, nature and society is of the utmost relevance for the most pressing and immediate problems of our own lives. We are accustomed to call one man a realist, and another a utopian. What is meant by such terms and whether the value judgments they imply are justified or not depends entirely on the solution of our philosophical problem. Obviously, the realist is one who believes in the inherent logic of that which is and in the necessity of adapting any improvement to the [actual]. Such a realist is always prone to regard as a utopian anyone who does not subscribe to his major thesis—this is true of both businessman and radical marxist. Yet, the definition of a realist, particularly with respect to the hatred of the utopian, is justified only if thesis (a) can be accepted as unambiguously true. Otherwise it is an arbitrary assumption serving ideological purposes.

Probably most of you will subscribe to the “realistic thesis” and are ready to reject the opposite thesis as airy and unfounded. Without going into the merits of the problem, I should like at least to say that domination and organization within society generally lead to a more uncompromising attitude towards nature, to less mercy and sympathy for animals, and this not only with regard to a truly rational control of nature—which might even improve the lot of animals, the perennial victims of human society—but also in a rather irrational and dark way. Thus, the catholic organization of the world—and catholic means comprising the whole, one is tempted to say: totalitarian—which represents the first decisive step toward the organization of mankind as a whole, always was emphatically disinterested in the fate of animals.⁸⁴ This attitude is reflected in southern, Catholic countries by the prevalent cruelty of peasants and drivers toward their cattle, their horses, and donkeys. Something very similar may be said about the attitude of a highly centralized economy toward the animals it makes use of. The slaughterhouses of our big meat-packing [industries] are actually factories where the animals are treated as “raw material.” The expansion of rational organization in society has not improved the lot of extra-human nature, but has worsened it far beyond any degree of reasonableness. The very fact we have everywhere societies for the protection of animals bears witness to a deep-seated awareness of this state of affairs. Here I leave the subject to your further consideration, but I wish you to keep in your mind that the way in which the inner progress of rational character is reflected negatively in our attitude toward nature, is a definite argument in a direction utterly alien to our more or less rationalistic persuasions. We shall come back to this issue when we discuss the romantic advocacies of nature against rationality. […]⁸⁵

However, no matter what stand we take in regard to this ultimate problem of social philosophy, we may well give a somewhat more concrete idea of the interconnection between self-preserving reason and inter-human power-relationships.

(a) The concept of pragmatic rationality, the bond between reason and efficiency, has been as close throughout actual history as we depicted it in our little construct of an archaic situation. We should well bear in mind that reason itself is, from the very beginning, a social category rather than a mere capacity of the isolated individual, unrelated to others. What is already visible in our hypothetical example certainly holds good for historical times: the human being can fulfill his natural wants only through social channels. It may well be in our example that no member of that group may have crossed the creek safely without the cooperation of all, and that this fact is the [cost] of their planning together, and thus of rationality itself. Reason may have been bound up from the very beginning with the weighing of divergent interests—it may always have had a give-and-take basis. In historical times this is a certainty, if for no other reason than that the wants of the individual himself, as soon as they go beyond the most immediate and primitive maintenance of life, are socially produced and reflect the developmental status of the community as a whole. Hence, the human being can fulfill his “natural” wants, which always contain a social component, only through social channels. Use is a social category, and reason follows it up in all phases of competitive society; through reason the individual asserts or adapts himself and gets along in society. Reason induces the individual to subordinate himself to society whenever he is not powerful enough to pattern society on his own primary interests—this controlling, disciplinarian, repressive element is prevalent in reason itself throughout history, quite apart from any group-relationships, as long as no full identity exists between the interests of the individual and the interests of the whole. The mark of this fact is impressed upon reason itself: it tends to limit it, to narrow it down, to make it particularistic rather than the contrary, for in most cases the idea of solidarity, and its straightforward pursuit, is opposite to the individual’s own, most urgent interests. Among primitive peoples, the individual’s place in society is supposed to have been determined by instinct, in modern society by reason, and the latter means, first of all, the individual’s consciousness of where his advantage lies.

(b) Philosophy has attempted, since the early days of Greek idealism, that is to say, since Socrates identifies the good and the advantageous, to overcome the all-too-egotistic, narrow character of pragmatic reason. By its inherent antagonism to “the” reason of others, Reason is always in danger of turning into absurdity—a twist most clearly expressed in those philosophical doctrines which teach, by skeptical agnosticism, that there is no truth at all. Philosophy, then, in its proper sense of love for reason, has always tried, in rationalistic as well as in empiricist schools, to strike a proper balance between what is good for the individual and what is good for the totality. Harmony was supposed to come about through the sphere of universal law. But this idea of integration also enhances the repressive element of reason mentioned before. Whoever desires to live among men has to obey their laws—this is what the secular morality of Western civilization comes down to. But rationality in the form of such obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think, and thus becomes as dangerous to its own principle as the particularistic egotism of self-preserving reason mentioned before. I shall give you an example for this second, and in reality, even greater danger. You all know that the great French Revolution was based upon the teachings of the French enlightenment, of the encyclopedists and particularly of Rousseau. Foremost among their ideas was that of reason. Voltaire, for instance, called it “God’s incomprehensible gift to mankind,” and “the source of every society, institution, and order.”⁸⁶ The French revolutionist who made the most of the idea of reason was Robespierre. But it was also he who introduced a cult of Reason, thus giving a religious meaning with a touch of blind subservience and veneration utterly alien to the original concept of reason. This has been noted even by the historian A. Mathiez, the foremost apologist for Robespierre among later writers. He suggests that the “religion of reason” had as much intolerance in it as did the old religion: “(...) It admits of no contradiction, it requires oaths, it is made obligatory by prison, exile, or the scaffold, and, like religion proper, it is concretized in sacred signs, in definite and exclusive symbols which are surrounded by a suspicious piety.”⁸⁷ If narrow, egotistic reason makes for hard-boiled and ultimately stupid individuals, dictatorial, all-pervasive, and totalitarian reason, set up in the name of the whole, or at least, of the nation, makes for terror. This was seen only too clearly by the reactionary foes of the French Revolution, and their heirs, modern irrationalists of all shades, still make the best of it.

(c) In the name of the latter type of rationality, the universal one, the individual must do violence to himself and learn that the life of the whole is the necessary precondition of his own. His own reason is “his own” only in a limited sense. True, it operates within him and is supervised by his ego, but it operates even more against him. It teaches him to master rebellious feelings and instincts, where inhibition is supposed to make human cooperation possible. Inhibitions originally imposed from without have to become part and parcel of the individual’s own consciousness. This principle already prevailed in the ancient world. Progress, throughout the Christian era, lay in the social expansion of this principle. But this expansion of self-renouncing yet self-asserting reason, which induced everyone to bear the cross voluntarily in order to survive better here or in[to] the world beyond, was never too reasonable itself. That is to say, for those at the base of the social pyramid, the harmony between the universal and the particular interest remained merely a postulate. They had no full share in that common interest which they were asked to make their own. It was never quite rational to them to renounce their instincts. For the maintenance of their lives and of their families and the security they hoped to gain by denying themselves the fulfillment of their momentary wishes, and through tiresome existing labor, was by no means guaranteed to them. In spite of their renunciation of the happiness of the moment, they had at each moment to face the threat of unhappiness. It was by no means clear that the fulfillment which they postponed, as it were, by the application of reason, ever reached them in any form whatsoever. It is hard to say whether the English factory worker of the period of industrial revolution who wasted his wages for gin behaved so very irrationally after all. For, it is doubtful that if he had saved his pennies, he ever would have been able to secure that small amount of happiness that he bought on Saturday night. The fact that reason this always remained irrational to large numbers of the population, that it never really “paid” to suppress their instincts, accounts for the fact that reason never totally triumphed within them, that they never were totally reached by civilization which is, after all, nothing but the comprehensive system of reasonableness. The underlying population was always made sociable by force. This fact is what dictatorships have always been based upon. This fact again and again has made it possible for dictators to rise and to maintain themselves. Conversely, the happy few, the members and fellow travelers of the ruling groups, have rightfully regarded the political and spiritual powers that defy civilization as agencies of their own. They fulfilled for themselves the idea of a rational civilization insofar as their sociability was derived from knowledge of their individual interest. Reason has not been impartial so far: it has decided in favor of the strong. When Hitler admonishes some small nation to be reasonable—that is to say, to give in and join the axis—he only expresses cynically what in a less blunt and more complicated way was always true of reason. The very fact that reason has been pragmatic reason throughout the ages—that is to say, deliberate adaptation—has had an important effect: that man fares best who controls the most power. Since every rationality depends on this man, or rather on his group, power is to be found at the hub of rationality throughout its historical development. One may well say that the fate of mankind depends on whether the link between power and reason is finally going to be broken.

(B) It ought to be stressed that reason itself has an inherent tendency to crystallize agencies which oppose such complicity with power. Reason is essentially a societal category, engendered by the interaction of men, not an abstract quality due to the individual in himself. It expands with the expansion of society. This makes for a trend of universality within reason which cannot be altogether oppressed by its privileged representatives. Supposing even that the elders of our example form an exclusive group, guard [] the little technological they may have as a secret, and consciously or unconsciously combine their knowledge with their hierarchical status as priests. Even then they are forced to communicate their decisions to the rest of the group, to give them certain instructions so that they would be able to fulfill their functions. The elders may also have to justify the usefulness of their devices to the others. It is hardly too rationalistic to assume that no matter how much they are respected as magicians, they would not have been in a position to get the others to work unless they had shown them [in] some way or other, that this plan serves the interests of the majority. Even if this claim is untrue, or only a half-truth, it contains within itself an appeal to the reason of the others. The implicit assumption that truth is universal and that what is true is accessible to all others transcends even the lies of the priestly caste. Not even the most secluded and selfish individual could “reason” without this implicit universality: the whole apparatus of thinking, concepts, inferences, causal relations and so forth, is built upon the idea of subsuming individual cases under general [unities] which reflect somehow more general social [unity]. You cannot organize a small group of workers without knowing that 2x2=4, but knowing this means the realization that 2x2=4 is valid for all, and once the proposition has been formulated, the postulate of universality has been formulated, too. I hardly need to mention that this claim to universality is strongest in language, which, at the same time, is an indispensable means of pragmatic self-preservation—the medium of command. This claim of reason to universality survives even under the most ruthless and anti-humanistic modern dictatorship. The very fact that Hitler and his racket have to speak disavows in a certain sense the privileges which they hold and the injustices which they proclaim. The intrinsic universality of reason is enhanced by the potential or actual counter-pressure of the underlying population. The potential pressure must be taken into account by the privileged, who always feel compelled to convince those whom they rule, while actual resistance of the underlying population may grasp the weapons of rational thinking and turn them against the rulers. Thus, it must be understood that reason not only allies itself with injustice and un-solidarity, but also simultaneously and ceaselessly represents the case of justice and solidarity. With regard to this problem, we formulate two theses which we shall go on to discuss:

1. The claim of reason to universality, expressed by universal concepts of philosophical “ideas”, remains ambiguous within the framework of a non-solidaristic society which has a deep-rooted tendency to use just the universal as a most effective veil of the particularistic.

2. Reason itself, through the logic of its own development within the framework of prevailing power relationships, undermines and, finally, abolishes the very same universal concepts it has evolved as a safeguard against naked power.

[1a.] The universality inherent in rational thinking and language is a truism. It is taken for granted to such a degree that it is essential to point out that this universality which we are accustomed to associate with democratic concepts in the broadest sense is not only a certain safeguard against autocratic, but also has been, and still is, allied with repression. This is certainly valid historically. If it is true that even the most elementary and abstract forms of thinking, the forms of pure logic and particularly of the universal concept, reflect social relationships between men, it is no less true that they also reflect the hierarchical structure of society. The great French sociologist Durkheim has pointed out that the whole “order” of logic, dependence, interconnection, volume and synthesis of our concepts is grounded in corresponding relationships of social reality, that is, in the social division of labor.⁸⁸ Durkheim, who is an apologist of straightfoward, unbroken enlightenment, interprets the social character of our forms of thinking as nothing but an expression of cooperation and solidarity.⁸⁹

As certain as it is one of the means by which society maintains and reproduces itself, however, logical universality has also a quite different meaning. It bears witness to the almost [un]impenetrable unity of society and domination. As we have pointed out in our construct, the division of labor itself is of a hierarchical nature, and we may add that it is most likely that it already presupposes, historically, the existence of a hierarchy. The fact that the division of labor helps the totality, that is to say the ruled as well [as] the rulers, to maintain itself, leads to the strange result that the victory of so-called total interest—and I mean the real total interest, not a mere ideology—enhances the particular interests, namely, the privilege of the rulers. Domination presents itself to the individual not always in the crude form of immediate violence and compulsion, but also as the “universal,” as that reason which is inherent in the indispensable requirements of reality, and which calls for a division of labor. This is the meaning of the example of our elders, who, while whispering and deliberating, are exempted from the hardships of manual labor. We may say that the rule of the particular is brought to bear upon mankind by the intermediary agency of the universal. What is ultimately done to all by the few privileged ones, happens in most concrete cases through the overpowering of some few persons by many. Social repressiveness always has the features of repression through a collectivity. It is this unity of collectivism and domination which has determined the forms of our thinking, the categories of reason. Anyone who ever has tried seriously to think about something difficult and significant, particularly anyone who has attempted to think within the forms and control mechanisms of organized science and scholarship, is sure to have had the experience, [no matter how] inarticulate [it was], that the forms of thinking he applied, while guaranteeing a certain security of results and even enhancing his own power of thinking, also brought with them a certain repressive effect. We all have the feeling that the logic to which we must subject ourselves and without which we actually could think no sensible thought, functions at the same time as a kind of inhibition which does not allow us to think what we really want to think, forces our ideas to deviate from their original motives and conceptions, and [cannibalizes] them so that they become utterly alien to ourselves. Our academic education makes this particularly clear to us, since we enter it with experiences and impulses not yet totally disciplined by systematic logic, and we all know the feeling of losing something essential while gaining command of the necessary technique. Thinking itself functions as shackles of our own thoughts—this is a paradox rarely confessed, but inevitably experienced, the paradox of that stupidity of thinking which we can notice in the faces of people who are forced to think intensely under compulsory conditions, let us say, a class writing a mathematical paper. This very simple experience bears witness to the point which I want to make, namely the element of repressiveness within the universal, not only through its misuse for particularistic purposes, but through its own essence which so far seems to be tied up with coercion.

[1b.] In case this assumption of mine seems to you a little far-fetched, I shall illustrate it to you by referring to a characteristic trick of fascist propaganda, which, like most fascist devices, brings to the fore certain elements which were more or less hidden throughout the history of Western civilization. Fascism is the most highly organized system of social repression we know of, yet this very system constantly refers to solidarity and, by its own organizational impact, in a certain way really makes for a tremendous solidarity. But this solidarity implements oppression. If Durkheim had lived to see Nazi Germany, he might have been forced to modify considerably his notion of solidarism. Hitler’s own newspaper, the Völkische Beobachter, bears on its front page the imprint of Geme ihn utz geht vor Eigennutz, the advantage of the community goes before the advantage of the individual. The appeal to unity, solidarity, and community spirit ranks foremost among the Nazi-stimuli. Today things have gone so far that, whenever a political group makes passionate appeals for unity and attacks the party system, there is a strong suspicion that the movement is fascist. Whenever the variety of parties, the jealousy of professional groups of bureaucrats, the intrigues of self-seeking politicians are attacked and exposed, we know that the aim is a system that is both universal and repressive. This paradox could not be formulated more strikingly than one of the favorite terms of the Nazis: one-party-system, which blandly confesses that the party has been abolished for the sake of universality, not in order to allow for true solidarity, but in order to help one party, the strongest one, into the saddle. Some element of this one-party-system has been inherent in universal concepts throughout history. Let us take, for example, the concept of justice which is universal, insofar as it does not differentiate between individuals and groups, and punishes the same crimes with the same punishment. True, this idea of justice has been a safeguard against the most brutal forms of violence and oppression. But it was early recognized that the abstract universal idea of justice applied within a non-solidaristic society works a totally different way, even without being perverted for any private purposes, for the impact of the law is felt mainly by those who are likely, because of their objective situation, to react against it, and to safeguard those property relations which make for the difference of social power. The French revolutionary [Mingnet] in particular has emphasized this point.⁹⁰ An English saying goes: The portal of justice is open to all, like the door of the Ritz hotel. What the Nazis have done is to accept this critical observation as the positive maxim of their own administration. Their portal to justice bears the inscription: Du dem sind hier nicht erwünscht. [You are not welcome here.]

We may summarize the result of this discussion as follows: Universal concepts, through which rational thinking exercises its role most radically, since they express the claim of objective truth without admitting any other agencies but reason itself to control this truth,—these universal concepts, such as justice, freedom, or love, have exercised in Western civilization a twofold function. On the one hand, they have safeguarded an existence and an unfolding of life [for] the individual and, to a certain extent, of the ruled classes within society, against being overpowered by the rulers or, more generally, by the impact of social organization as such. On the other hand, the universal concepts have worked against the individual and against the underlying population through their inherent involvement with the interests of those who control the social process. Thus, the concept of justice has freed the individual from the bondage of guilds, feudal lords, absolute kinds, and so on, and has led to such decisive protective mechanisms for the individual as the right to habeas corpus. Conversely, in the economic field, the principle of equality, which underlies the universal concept of justice, has led to such tremendous disproportionalities between different groups of the population that the unchecked play of the mechanism of equal chance for all ultimately denies chance to the overwhelming majority of the population and enhances the privileges of the few. Apart from this, the universal concepts [applied] not only [to] a relationship of the individual to society, but also the composition of the individual within himself. By bowing to the standards expressed in universal concepts, the individual internally is made comparable to the prevailing patterns of society, curtailed in innumerable directions and ultimately reduced to a mere specimen of the concept of himself.

[1c.] It may be good to follow up the latter idea a little more closely, and to have a glance at the social function of religion. Today, we are accustomed to regard religion as being a principle essentially opposed to rational thinking, based upon revelation, faith, or emotional fear, and severed from autonomous and rational knowledge. This has not always been the case. In the early phases of mankind, the crystallization of fixed theological concepts was one of the ways to organize and articulate experience and thinking. [Ultimately] this led to the development of that scientific rationality which we think of first when we speak about reason today. The establishment of monotheism in particular has worked in this direction, by concentrating the diffuse metaphysical entities of archaic ages into one unified, highly abstract being. It has, on the one hand, made one of the most decisive steps in the direction of spiritual universality. It has, on the other hand, [delivered] the world [and all it is said to be] as an object [for] rational investigation unhampered by any magical imagery which might stand in the way of autonomous thinking. Though the relation between rationality and religion became highly complicated throughout the Christian era, there was by no means such a primitive dichotomy between the two realms as unhistorical thinking may lead us to believe. The doctrine that there are two truths, a rational one and a religious one, independent of each other, cropped up again and again, but was also rejected again and again. Thomas Aquinas, to whom the Catholic Church owes the official formulation of its doctrine, energetically maintains the ultimate identity of natural and supernatural truth. It was only since the reformation, and particularly through Martin Luther, that the break between knowing and believing was definitely established. The societal function of religion has been to enhance the power of universal concepts in both the positive and the negative sense throughout the ages in which the masses were not yet fit for rationality in its completely abstract, purified form. Religion has exercised this function even after the reformation had brought about a surface antagonism which itself was early and easily manipulated for rational purposes. Rationalism has no right to complain about Luther. He called reason a beast only because at his time reason could not cause the individual to suppress his appetites. The religious reformation trained men to subordinate their lives to more remote ends. Instead of surrendering to the moment, they were taught to learn objective reason, consistency, and pragmatic behavior. Protestantism promoted the spread of that cold rationality which is so characteristic of the modern individual. It was iconoclastic and did away with the false worship of things, but by allying itself with the rising economic system, it made men dependent upon the world of things to an even higher degree than before. This led to a tremendous increase of rationalism. The whole world, void of any specific meaning of its own, was transformed into a mere “material,” both in reality and ideology: in reality, since men were stimulated by the Protestant doctrine to an unlimited effort in their worldly activities, in ideology, since nature was ultimately reduced into nothing but the raw material on which men could test their all-embracing reason. If the new spirit served as an anodyne for the people, it at least eased the surgery, ordained by rationalism, which the industrial system worked on their bodies and minds. It produced the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality. Calvin’s theocratic irrationalism eventually revealed itself as the cunning of technocratic reason in the shaping of men. Today, at the end of this process, which originated in renaissance and reformation, the rational form of self-preservation boils down to an obstinate compliance which has ultimately become indifferent to any political or religious contents. Thus, religion has fulfilled its function as the servant of reason and is done away with by society when it is no longer needed.

It would be a worthwhile undertaking to analyze the doctrines of Christianity under their double aspect, closely related to rationality: On the one hand, the distance between the individual—exalted by the concept of personal immortality—and the underlying population—exalted by the New Testament emphasis on the poor –, on the other hand the reinforcement of the hierarchical order, discipline, and obedience. The expansion of Christendom was rational insofar as it has done [?] more than any other single spiritual power to dispel mythology, the belief in demons, in blind fate, the involvement of life in struggles between dark mythological powers. If there ever was an expression of the innermost motive of enlightenment, then it is the intentions: Thou shalt not be afraid, and the command of universal love, of caritas, has translated this idea into a maxim, namely to act in such a way that fear becomes superfluous. The idea of the human itself, the most sublime universal ever achieved by thinking, is [?] almost entirely due to this impulse of Christianity, it is entirely lacking even in the greatest manifestations of ancient philosophy, which never has arisen to the universal concept of man and, therefore, always was bound up with barbarian and tyrannical constructs, such as the exemption of slaves from the definition of man, or the complete absence of the idea of mercy and compassion from any of the representative ancient writers, above all from Plato. The latter, in spite of his prototypical idealism and his hackneyed artistic sense, exhibits an entirely Spartan, coercive spirit in all matters of ethics and politics, and even with regard to art and religion. We are hardly capable of fully realizing what the concept of the universality of man must have meant in an epoch which was entirely frozen in patterns of domination by state authority, distinctions between in- and out-groups, cynical contempt for any kind of manual labor, and a coldness in calculating worth or worthlessness of human life matched only by the Caesars of modern fascism. Yet, Christianity from the very beginning has contained within its own universality repressiveness on a new level. He who does not adhere to its specific universality, the outsider, the non-conformist, is supposed to be tamed, and the borderline between the irrationality of faith and rational thinking drawn by Christianity soon assumed the function of fettering thinking while, at the same time, developing it: the denunciation of the Pharisees and St. Paul’s indictment of Greek intellectualism are among the earliest testimonies of a defamation of thinking which has followed, like a shadow, the rise of modern, “rational” civilization. The destructive idea of keeping men down, of breaking them, was enhanced by the tremendous exaltation of the divine which became so immeasurably strong and, at the same time, so alien and aloof from human existence, that nothing was left to the humans but a self-humiliation which always served the mundane purposes of the powers that be. The whole imagery of nationalism,—eternal punishment and hell, the recommendation of death and sacrifice, in the name of the imitation of Christ—have emphasized these tendencies which have proved to be fateful for the development of our whole civilization. This danger was enhanced since religious destructiveness always had to be rationalized, to operate in the dark, as it were, and thus was imbued with the quality of hypocritical and resentful hate which comes to the fore in today’s crisis of civilization, when very little is left to Christianity but this semi-hidden destructiveness—the vengefulness of those who were forced to suppress themselves and always longed for transferring their own suppression to others. It is this point at which the progress of Christianity over antiquity, decisive as it was, becomes doubtful again. This was seen most clearly by Nietzsche, who has devoted the major part of his work to point out the repressive element in Christianity, but it has been recognized even so by so sober and skeptical a psychologist as Freud, who says in one of his late writings: “After the Apostle Paulus had made universal love of men the fundament of his Christian community, the utmost intolerance of Christianity against those who remained outside had become an inevitable consequence. Conversely, the Romans who had not founded their republic, their state community, upon love, were free of religious intolerance, although religion was with them a matter of state, and although the state was permeated by religion.”⁹¹

[2.] I have hinted at the double function of religion because religion was the most important intermediary agency between the development of civilizational reason and the populace, and it is our contention that what has taken place with regard to religion, namely, its gradual dissolution and the survival of its destructive rather than its reconciliatory features, ultimately applies to the development of reason itself which seems to have terminated today in the self-abdication and self-destruction of reason. This may best be demonstrated through the fate of universal concepts which were the means by which reason used to assert its own universality. The rule of those universal concepts, their superiority over the factual and over experience, in brief, rationalism in its specific sense, never was undisputed throughout history. Since there never was a real harmony between the universal and the individual, and since this harmony, as we pointed out, always served largely ideological purposes, thinking was always forced to concede its own limitations, the gap between its general categories and the factual items which were comprised under these categories. This trend, the empiricist or skeptical one, was bound up with the innermost impulse of thinking itself, the impulse of demythologization. Thinking has dissolved all sorts of supranatural entities from the vague and inarticulate mana of the preanimistic stage to the demons of nature in the magical era and the gods of patriarchal civilization. It was not too difficult for reason to discover that its own universal concepts, by which it criticized those entities, were at the same time their heirs. Even as early as in the poems of Homer we find that some of his gods, such as Eos, or Helios, approach allegories of concepts of natural phenomena, such as dawn, or the sun, and in Plato the universal concepts and the gods are virtually identified. Reason, on its ceaseless hunt of mythology, undertaken in order to expand domination, thus discovered mythological traces within itself and in the very sphere through which it tried to destroy mythology, namely that of universal concepts. Enlightenment has ultimately done away with not only the symbols, but also their successors, universal concepts. No concept remains safe, not even those which find favor with modern logical positivism, such as the concept of probability. Even here anthropological critique has discovered traces of mythology: “Our vague ideas of probability and of quintessence are but pale survivors of a much richer notion, to wit, magical substance.”⁹² Finally, every concept that is more than a mere abbreviation of the facts it comprises, which shows any traces of independence against empirical reality, becomes taboo and is treated as a remnant of superstition, as a ghost in rational disguise which has to be discounted altogether. This process, however, carried through by critical thinking, does not only affect and harm its instruments, the universals, but thinking itself, which is inseparable from the objectivity of concepts. Thinking itself is gradually being reduced to the business of subsumption, classification, and manipulation: the element of understanding a given reality rather than handling it is discounted as arbitrary and metaphysical and truth itself becomes meaningless and is reduced to the successful carrying through of intellectual manipulation, while the idea of truth (just as that of causality or justice or god) is thrown into the abyss of oblivion and shares the fate of all former mythological beings. Thus the whole process of enlightenment turns against its own stimulus and denounces thinking just as it formerly used to denounce blind belief or empty theoretical invention. It has gone so far that it has no effective substance left by which to fight the blind irrationalism and new, fake mythology, and it even prepares the way for the latter’s expansion and its political system, the totalitarian order, by glorifying the factual and investing it with a spell which prohibits any critical penetration of that which exists, and thus establishes the cult of that which exists, of naked power. Thus the development of reason throughout society comes back to that affiliation of itself with repression and social hierarchy from which it originated and which we have tried to sketch in our fable of the archaic bridge.

[C.1.]⁹³ The world reached at the end of reason is that of complete demythologization, a world in which nothing is recognized by the factual, power expressed by mere existence, and prudent adaptation to it. The name of reason itself (the work of which has consummated this development) is held to be a meaningless symbol, an allegorical figure without a function. All ideas that transcend the given reality are forced to share its disgrace. It is this state of affairs which makes true resistance against the spirit of fascism so appallingly difficult. Since the discounting of all universal concepts is by no means an intellectual phenomenon but has pervaded every stratum of our society and expresses itself in the cunning calculations by which the boy next door tries to make some extra pennies, no less than in pragmatic theories, it does not help very much to propagate freedom, the dignity of man, or even truth. Such ideas could become effective only by pointing to some existent power behind them, to some practical considerations which would make it recommendable to obey them. But it is the very substance of those concepts that they are opposed to any such pragmatic considerations, and that they are diluted and perverted as soon as they are subordinated to the universal rule of the factual. Hence the impasse confronting their application. If they are followed, they are followed as mere ideologies behind which hides some reality which one has to respect and they are thus rejected through the nature of their very acceptance, and are transformed into propagandistic slogans. They become societal traffic signals which to follow is a mere matter of convenience and which may be abolished as soon as the political system is changed. If they are not backed by material interests, however, they are regarded as outdated phrases and raise only the suspicion that the true reasons behind them are either shrewdly held back or are entirely lacking. Thus reason seems to be forced to abdicate in our completely rationalized world which is rationalized with regard to all its means and irrational with regard to all its ends. This, however, means that in this enlightened world of ours, mythology, of which it boasts to have got rid of completely, has migrated into the very mundane empirical reality which has been established through the expulsion of mythology. Existence has been purged thoroughly of all demons and their scions, the universal concepts. But its absolute and blunt naturalness assumes the very spell which our ancestors ascribed to transcendent beings. Under the title of brutal, stubborn facts, social injustice is ultimately at the hub of this brutality, is sanctioned and is regarded as inevitable and as a sacred tribute of existence itself. We mention only three of the most blatant symptoms of this situation.

(a) Whereas our machinery of production has reached a height never dreamed of and has become rationalized as it never was before in the sense of planned, all-comprising organization, it is totally inadequate to satisfy, in its present form, human wants. May it suffice to state that it needs a war, in itself the most irrational and destructive phenomenon we can think of, in order to overcome unemployment and postpone the ever-threatening crisis. The contradiction between a technological rationality allowing for an industrial output which could make a paradise not only of this country but of the whole world, and the unreasonableness of the same world which forces to direct this output into an entirely negative direction, and which would boil with self-righteous indignation about the unrealistic spirit of political dreamers at the very moment one would try to make available the industrial capacities developed during the last years to the needs of the people—this contradiction between total rationality and total irrationality not only, one beside the other, but actually and literally one within the other, is a symbol of the end of reason we have reached. It is an end in a double sense: the end as the perfection of reason, and the end as its abdication.

(b) The sphere of culture in its more specific sense of art, contemplative thinking, poetry, music, and religion, which used to maintain the elements of the universal or the humane against the exigencies of practical daily reasonableness, has been swallowed up completely by the latter. Culture has become one branch of industry among the others, an all-comprising apparatus of production of luxuries which becomes more and more an agency to administrate leisure time. First of all, it is the adjustment of culture to industrial and business methods which accounts for this development. I remind you only of the ever-increasing role played by standardization which affects not only entertainment in its trivial sense—each movie, each hit song, each magazine story—but also reaches through innumerable channels the so-called and apparently autonomous production [process]. It is here that business organization makes itself felt most emphatically in culture. The writer who starts a novel thinks, voluntarily or involuntarily, of the movie rights, of the adaptability of his “plot” to the screen, and if he were incautious enough to simply follow his independent intentions, he would be taught at his publisher’s office that his book is unreadable, that it is too heavy, too modernistic or badly organized, and that it requires rewriting by an expert on the publisher’s staff. After this rewriting has been done, we may be sure that the artistic backbone of the novel is broken and that it has submitted to standardization. The concept of genius has become more and more that of a writer who accomplishes on his own action and free will all that adaptation which in minor cases the expert is supposed to achieve. Recently I had a discussion with a college student on Edgar Allen Poe. When I expressed to her my admiration for the poet, she politely contradicted me and pointed out quite seriously that the real genius must have two qualities, creative imagination and [a] sense of business. Since Poe lacked the latter, he could not well be regarded as a genius. What the system amounts to is a total [form of] control. The apparently democratic, and utterly pragmatic, idea that an artist, a writer, or a thinker has to serve the wants of the public immediately leads to a complete shackling of the productive power which ultimately prohibits him to transcend the borders of the customary, the established, the right thing to do. Since the so-called wants of the public are determined by the tremendous business and advertising apparatus, the apparent freedom of choice on the part of the customers actually only reproduces the material interests of those in command of the business apparatus, and the supposed democracy becomes, through this universal control, perverted into a means of intellectual domination which does away with the last remnants of intellectual independence, of reason in the sense of real, spontaneous self-determination of man. This danger has been clearly foreseen by Tocqueville hundred[s of] years ago.⁹⁴ Today it has developed into an immediate threat of mass manipulation which may assume the open form of political fascism as soon as the social and political development calls for the strong hand. The abolition of the age-old antagonism between culture and practical life has not led to the materialization of the humane with empirical reality, but to the complete subservience of all intellectual activities, the last vestiges of the humane, to practical-material interest.

(c) We have strong reason to believe that under the material conditions of monopolism and the spiritual wants of organized and manipulated mass culture that a new type of man is growing. He may be defined as completely rational and utterly incapable of thinking. Qualities such as imagination, the pursuit of aims unrelated to pragmatic ends, independent expression, uncontrolled pleasure and unchecked speculation become more and more taboo. This refers primarily to the life of any individual who is forced to make his living and get away with [this under] existing conditions. Those few, however, who are fortunate enough to be independent, are not only becoming more and more “exceptions,” and, therewith, ornamentations of the prevailing standardized man, but are for material reasons in most cases unwilling to exercise their independence. We shall devote more attention to this problem in our fourth lecture, which will cope with the rise and decline of the individual throughout civilization. At this point we may content ourselves with the statement that this development is not the “fault” of the individual, or, as we hear more often and just by so-called critical thinkers, the “fault of the masses” that bring down the level of mankind. The concept of the inarticulate, practical-minded, and yet irrational mass itself is a historical category, the complement of all-pervasive economic organization in the service of vested interests. The decline of reason within the individual, his fanatical conformism, is not the result of the so-called revolt of the masses but of the huge economic and ultimately political monopolies which, as we may say, “create” the masses by enforcing their human standards on mankind just as they enforce their commodities. People become masses because they live in a world in which they have to give themselves up totally if they want to retain a minimum, namely the continuation of their mere existence. Under monopolistic rule the standardized patterns of behavior are impressed upon the individual through the innumerable agencies of mass production and its culture. Theta appear to the individual as the only ones which are natural, decent, or reasonable. The individual knows himself merely as a thing, as a statistical element, a $300 man, a success, or a failure. The sole criterion of this “reason” is self-preservation, adaptation to the function he holds within the objective set-up and to the models he is forced to imitate. Whoever does not conform is disciplined by the collective units to which everyone somehow belongs, from the school class and sport team to the union or social club. Yet the threatening collectivity supervising every individual impulse is only part of that illusory veneer which hides the powers that manipulate it and stir up again and again its potential violence. If we mentioned the appalling difficulty of overcoming the spirit of fascism, it is a concrete expression of this difficulty that today a principle becomes all-comprising which we pointed out in the dissolution of our archaic model situation—namely that social oppression, the subjugation of all for the sake of some very few is exercised bot by a visible minority but by a majority that imposes its will upon any minority which might represent the true interests of the community as a whole. It would be fallacious to assume that the danger of today’s situation is that one day big business, tired of democratic opposition, takes the government into its own hands and rules over the rest of the population. The danger is rather that big business has increased to such an extent that it has seized the consciousness of the population through the most subtle psychological ramifications so that it can mobilize at will the majority which it finally intends to oppress, and can turn the rebellious instincts of the masses against anyone who advocates their objective interests. This, indeed, is the social triumph of technological reason: it tends to make men mere appendages of the machinery of their own exploitation and domination and is thus ready to perpetuate its own injustice by expanding over the human field and becoming all-comprehensive psycho-technics.

[2.]⁹⁵ Ordinarily at this point of a lecture, you would expect the solution, the final “however” which revokes every negativity pointed out before and confesses directly or indirectly some formulas by which all difficulties may be overcome. I beg you to dispense me of this well-established philosophical custom. The certainty that every problem can be solved, if it is tackled in the right way, that there are no real antagonisms left, and that one only needs to use one’s common sense, one’s reason, in order to rectify conditions, has become part and parcel of the very same existent which makes things look so desperate now. Such an easy way, for instance, the recommendation that one only has to pursue the path of reason in order to master social conflict and threatening barbarism, overlooks the intrinsic difficulties in which reason itself entangles itself in its development—a process which you may allow me to call, after I give you a sufficiently clear idea of what it looks like, a dialectical process. The worst thing anyone can be called today is a pessimist. In this respect, there is unanimity between those who believe in an infinite expansion of business culture, in ever-new frontiers and ever-new successful pioneers, and those who radically reject the existent and advocate a better, more sensible, less wasteful organization. The former ones regard the pessimist as a discontented and grumbling intellectual, the latter ones as a decadent, tired bourgeois. The universal taboo against so-called pessimism appears to me as a hint that any philosophy which is truly non-conformist, which has no respect for productive powers as such, organization as such, exploitation of nature as such, must have the courage to face a desperate impasse, if any hope should be retained, and if one does not wish to subscribe to that current of reason whose irrationality has become so blatant. Such a pessimism in the sense of a strict and uncompromising denunciation of any patent solution [], of any hope that arises automatically out of the present historical development, is by no means resignation. It does not mean that one subscribes to the inevitable and gives up any resistance because it is supposed to be of no avail, anyhow. It means rather to challenge the concept of necessity and inevitability itself so closely associated with the expansion of self-preserving reason. Or speaking more concretely, it means to express sans peur et sans reproche, without any restrictions and any considerations, the negative aspects of the present situation and the entanglement of rationality. Such an expression must not be sentimental lamentation about so-called better days when the rule of reason was not established so thoroughly as it seems to be today. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, we shall cope with this aspect of the critique of reason in our next lecture. Our own method, however, should be to oppose reason not by conjuring the irrational but by intransigent thinking. Reason has always sufficed to design concretely its own shortcomings, limitations, and antinomies. It is true that the relationship between reason and society was, and is, throughout the history of civilization, that of servant and master. But reason is that servant who cannot be checked by his master at will. If there is any chance of overcoming today’s embroilment of reason and society, of emancipating reason from repression and making society itself more reasonable, this chance lies only with the critical consciousness of reason itself and the ceaseless effort to drive its innermost impulses beyond the state of petrification that has been reached today. [fin]

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Max Ernst. Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden of Eden. 1946–1947.

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V. The Revival of Dogmatism (1943).

Editor’s Note.

Though this text has never been published in its original form, it is mentioned by name in the “Preface” to the 1944 printing of the Philosophische Fragmente, and cut from the “Preface” for the publication of Dialektik der Aufklärung in 1947:

In selecting the fragments from the work of the previous two years we opted for those with clear internal coherence and unity of language. We excluded all English works produced in the same period, regardless of their thematic connection to the fragments. We would mention the lecture series “Society and Reason”; the essays “Sociology of Class Relations” and “The Revival of Dogmatism”; the extensive analysis of anti-Semitic propaganda, “The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas' Radio Addresses,” and our other studies in contributions to the project on anti-Semitism. Collaboration in this study carried out in New York, Los Angeles, and Berkeley took at least half our time. —Of the German preliminary studies to the whole work, which include the fragments themselves, we left out the pieces on logic, among others. The already formulated parts of the planned section concerned with a critique of sociology are also omitted.

If the good fortune of being able to work on such questions without the unpleasant pressure of immediate purposes should continue, we hope to complete the whole work in the nor too distant future. We are encouraged to believe this by the confidence, undeflected by the vicissitudes of the time, of the person to whom the part completed so far is now dedicated.⁹⁶

In MHA Na [806], the 58-page manuscript, with extensive handwritten notes by Adorno, is listed as the draft for what would become Chapter 2 of Eclipse of Reason (1947): “Conflicting Panaceas.”⁹⁷ However, “The Revival of Dogmatism” was written in the fall of 1943,⁹⁸ more than a year before Horkheimer seems to have decided that the S&R lecture series should be published as a book.⁹⁹ Adorno was an early and enthusiastic reader of “Revival” and repeatedly pressured Horkheimer to publish it independently before he became involved in the process of revising the S&R manuscripts in Spring 1945.¹⁰⁰ Apart from the incredible opening section which develops the need for a critique of both ‘panaceas’ through an imagined encounter between a ‘Western’ soldier finding himself an ally with the Russians in the military campaign to destroy Nazism, other notable differences with ‘Conflicting Panaceas’ include: (1) the extended treatment of heresies within the Medieval church that traces the debate between Neo-Positivism and Neo-Thomism to St. Thomas’ own critique of the Parisian Averroists, in the course of which Horkheimer invokes the authority of St. Thomas to judge the Neo-Thomists for falling into the Averroist heresy; (2) Horkheimer’s profession of dialectical materialism, “a philosophy presenting reality under the aspect of its change in the direction of social emancipation” that inherited the impulse of “[t]he most consistent enlighteners like Mandeville, Sade, and Nietzsche” in their refusal of harmony with the status quo, as a counterposition to the opposite, but complementary, reconciliations to the world each of the ‘panaceas’ promises.

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The Revival of Dogmatism. Remarks on Neo-Positivism and Neo-Thomism.

At no time in history have systems of thought seemed to play a more transitory and futile role than in these days. In the period before this war there was hardly a political conviction more generally shared by Americans than rigid pacifism in the sense of avoiding foreign entanglements. Deeply rooted as the principles of Democracy may have been in the mind of the common man, there was no particular longing to establish them universally. The idea of making the world safe for Democracy had become identified with a silly, mendacious, obsolete ideology. However, in a very short span of time a superior leadership has accomplished so complete a change of attitude that the people today are fighting under a charter whose aim is the acceptance of democratic principles all over the globe. Up to 1940, the average man, for instance a bank clerk, thought of Russia as a dark power of evil, a symbol of crime, vice, and corruption, the deadly enemy of Western Civilization; in 1941 he was instructed that in America the accounts of practically all Europeans, with only the Russians accepted, had to be frozen. In 1943 he is perhaps dying on a battlefield for a cause which unites his country with Russia. The enemy is Germany, a country which not long ago represented to him the model of civic virtues, decency, artistic creativeness, “Gemütlichkeit”, and romance.

Such changes concern specific elements of thought. But even the highest, most general intellectual patterns according to which the mind of the average man is shaped have been shifted in recent years. Today the pursuit of individual happiness, security, success and profits is exalted to a lesser extent by the agencies responsible for the propagation of the right spirit. Such ideas are imposed by devotion to a common cause, postponement of each and every private business and willingness to die for a national ideal. To be sure, such ideas have always had a certain part in education, but the pace-setters of former days were much closer to rugged individualism than to self-denial. Today, however, self-sacrificing, public-spirited doctrines not only permeate propaganda but also take possession of the people themselves. The majority of the younger generation may simply be conforming to an overwhelming reality. Others, however, have changed their minds seriously and wholeheartedly. These people certainly find the moral problem involved in such change far more fundamental than does the movie hero who fights “for money, a girl—and a better world,” changing from one to the other without moral conflicts. Human substance is not indifferent to the stability or futility of ideas. The present impotence of philosophy is paralleled by a real crisis within man no less than within society.

Ideological shifts have been even more frequent and striking in other countries. Italian fascism started by demanding that religious education be limited and the Cross removed from the walls of classrooms. Later on, Fascism rendered greater services to the Vatican than any of the governments it had criticized for obedience to the Holy See. During more recent years, Italy accepted the anti-religious racial policies of the German Reich and threw herself upon the mercy of the leading triumvirate of National Socialism rather than that of Catholic Trinity. Now we hear that Mussolini, during his short imprisonment by the pro-Allied government, found it timely to dedicate himself to the Roman Catholic Church.¹⁰¹ A most striking example of the debasement of ideas is the German manipulation of beliefs as concocted in the Ministry of Propaganda. Goebbels’ scientific regimentation of convictions is symptomatic of the whole period of monopolism. Under its impact the weakness of the rationalistic credo that the supreme tenets of our society are “supra-sociological” and eternal is demonstrated to the masses by the spectacle of planned production and consumption of ideas in guided economy.

Changeability with regard to ideas is universally accompanied by its opposite, fanatic adherence to them. In totalitarian countries[,] adoration of the leader, as long as he is successful, is as ardent and violent as the veneration of a thousand year old idol. The silly doctrines of race superiority which, in early centuries, were practiced in the colonies, are today the devoutly embraced gospel of whole sections of populations—and this not only under the rule of Fascism. There are millions of people in democratic countries longing for the day when their own communities will be ready to sacrifice hecatombs to the moloch of Nativism. Under totalitarianism people were ready to suffer and to make suffer for any slogan belonging to the newest phase of imperialistic politics. And these same people would easily forget the slogans, abandon leader and party and race once those ideas had been deserted by the majority or by those who set the pace. The more such absolute beliefs lose consistency and become mere symbols of a political or professional racket, the more their followers become devotedly religious with regard to it and tend to persecute and destroy every dissenter. The fervor of ideological beliefs increases with their irrationality. One cannot believe in lies in the same way as one believes in truth. The more tenuous the ideas one has to follow the more desperately one has to cling to them with firmly closed eyes, in order not to lose one’s spurious creed. Such faith becomes stubborn, spiteful and malicious.

Real philosophy in comparison with such attitudes is less dogmatic. It does not manifest itself in terms of exclusive rules of reasoning or of reality. Rather, it assimilates and develops even alien ideas if they express a partial truth.

[Crossed out: “Every honest intellectual response to reality (the world as it is) should be incorporated (has a right to be made an element of cognition, even the paradoxical one).”]

Wherever philosophy encounters an intrinsic antagonism between reason and society and religion or any other objectified historical phenomenon, it allows such conceptual conflicts to unfold.¹⁰² The task of philosophy is to sustain such conflicts rather than to reconcile them prematurely. Resistance to an untrue ideology is identical with recognition of whatever truth it may contain, although in a perverted form.

[Crossed out: “The less thought yields to untruth the more it tries to recognize the truth in it.”]

Thought may become a force when taken up by powerful social trends, yet it may have to go on for a long time without even a probability of achieving the slightest change. It certainly has a bearing upon action but an extremely delicate analysis is often necessary to determine the exact relation in a specific case. True, a good society depends on a good philosophy, but this very function is jeopardized wherever the services rendered by philosophy to social progress are considered criteria of truth. Truth is not an instrument, but an aim. By being subservient to political aims, philosophy would sacrifice the very element by which it can guide practice—namely, its freedom to determine the aims themselves; moreover, it would hamper its own effort in each theoretical field. Philosophy cannot be gauged by heteronomous criteria. Spinoza’s idea that verum index sui et falsi is certainly much too simple, yet it makes more sense than the presumption that the sign of truth is direct applicability to the world as it is. Today the idea of truth has become completely integrated into the social process. Its operational value, its role in the domination of nature, has been made the sole criterion. Concepts have been reduced to abbreviations for the qualities several specimens have in common. By denoting similarity, concepts save [us] the labor of enumerating [] characteristics and thus serve better to organize the material of knowledge. Any use [of concepts] transcending the function of auxiliary, technical abbreviation of factual data has been eliminated as a last trace of superstition. Concepts have become “streamlined,” rationalized, labor-saving devices. It is as if thinking itself were brought to the level of industrial processes, submitted to a close schedule, and finally made part and parcel of production in its present form. This streamlining excludes waste of costly time and energy as well as difficulties of communication. However, a heavy price has to be paid for the rationalization of the thinking process. Any general concept originally was meant to designate not only a logical class but the essence of its specimens. This latter meaning of concepts was justly criticized by Nominalism and the Enlightenment. The metaphysical principle of conceptual Realism was indeed problematic. However, the use of a concept as a mere symbol of functions has led men to forget the other function, namely to translate the true nature of their object into language. The more automatic instrumentalization of ideas has become the less anybody reflects upon them as thoughts with a meaning of their own. They are considered things, machines. Correspondingly, the pursuit of truth is brought under social control, and is thus curtailed. Everyone is called on the carpet for what he says or does not say. Thought and talk are accomplished actions. There is a quick classification and labeling of everything and everybody. To call someone a red, a Jew, a reactionary, recognizes in him no “metaphysical” quality of humanity which could forbid such complete identification of individual and class. One’s abstract name becomes one’s real fate.

In the very era of relativism, at a time when each child looks at an idea as either an advertisement or a rationalization, the very fact that language might still harbor mythological residues has endowed words with a new mythological character. As in the days of magics, each word is regarded as a dangerous force which possibly could destroy society and for which the speaker must be held responsible. In becoming completely operational and practical words have again assumed the character of fetishes. True, ideas have been radically functionalized and language is considered a mere tool, be it for the storage and communication of the intellectual elements of production or for the guidance of human masses. But at the same time language takes its revenge, as it were, by reverting to its magic stage. Complete instrumentalization, aiming to transform words into counters, terminates in making them fetishes. This result apparently contradicts the critical, anti-metaphysical attitude of pragmatism. Yet fetishism, in a way, is implied by it. As soon as a thought has become a tool, one can dispense with actually “thinking” it, that is, with executing the logical acts expressed by its verbal formulation. The use of a word replaces its mental realization. It has been pointed out often and correctly that the advantage of mathematics - the model of all neo-positivistic thinking—lies in just this “intellectual economy” (“Denkökonomie”),¹⁰³ whereby complicated logical operations are performed without actually carrying out all the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical or logical symbols are based. Such rationalization is indeed essential to the expansion of human industry, but if it becomes the characteristic feature of minds, if thought itself is altogether alienated, it follows necessarily that the instrumentalized, reified thought obtains a kind of materiality and blindness, the psychological reflection is that it becomes a fetish, a magic entity which is accepted rather than intellectually “experienced”. The rule of machinery over men makes itself felt today in the development of thought, no less than in the development of the material elements of production.

Modern positivism, or logical empiricism, is the school of thought which has pushed pragmatism of language to the extreme. For fear of mythologies posing as eternal truths, they meant to abolish even the notion of truth itself, and by that radicalism they abolished the concept of concept. They are, so to speak, the philosophical executory officers of technological progress or, in broader historical terms, Jahvist priests who forbade people not only to pray to heathen idols, but also to make an image of their own God. Philosophical concepts and mediation fell as the last idols of paganism under the blows of the positivistic ax of logistics. And now, when they have cut down the hallowed grove and can raise their eyes from the good work, they are amazed to see that the forest of prejudices, superstitions, and ferocious instincts has grown denser and more menacing than ever. It is indeed a strange phenomenon that in the realm of culture all the conquests of science and technology, the mechanization of production down to housework, the process of urbanization, the gigantic apparatus of information and communication have brought about the delivery of mechanized amusement and religion to the last village, but have not swept the most stupid beliefs from the brains of men. All the processes of enlightenment have not cured men of their inclination to follow any false prophet, if only he promises an outlet for the fear and rage of which large parts of all nations seem to be obsessed. In this respect, change as compared with the Middle Ages does not go very deep. The difference is that now there are other victims. Witches, sorcerers, and heretics have been replaced by negroes or reds or Zoot-suiters, while the Jews are still the Jews. The old mechanism of domination still functions. Dominated masses adjust themselves to domination by developing an implacable desire to persecute. This desire in turn is utilized to maintain the system which produces it. The relation of thought to this mechanism has two divergent aspects. On the one hand, the mechanism has been an element of industrialization and, as far as industrialization is accomplished under the form of monopolism, is used to strengthen the impact of irrational forces upon humanity. On the other hand, it may play a role in disrupting such interconnection. The materialization of the latter aspect depends on whether those irrational tendencies which are stirred up and perpetuated by the process of civilization can be made aware of their own causes, of their genesis in the process of domination. This would bring about a fusion of intellectual and social trends which has been the aim of all great political activity. Such awareness would make for unity of theory and practice. Positivism tries to establish the fusion simply by subordinating theory to practice. It castrates theory by depriving it of its intellectuality, its relation to truth as different from factual reality. Conversely, practice is so thoroughly emptied of meaning that it becomes an utterly private issue where or in what direction one wants to change it. Reduction of theory to the role of a pure assessment of political practice implies that political practice is left to the expediences of partisanship.¹⁰⁴

The positivists ascribe the failure of progress to a “Failure of Nerve”. There are many faint, weak-hearted intellectuals, they say, who profess a distrust of scientific method and invoke other methods of knowledge, such as intuition or revelation. According to the positivists, what we need is abundant confidence in science, whose herald is scientific philosophy, positivism. Actually, however, the loss of that confidence is not entirely due to the malicious will of obscurantists, even though the matadors of intuitionism, ever since Bergson’s stand in the Dreyfus affair and Husserl’s affiliation with the German Vaterlandspartei, have made common cause with political reaction. In spite of all this, intuitionism is not necessarily romantic: it contains a definite element of resistance against the dehumanizing impact of capitalist, industrial mechanization. It unknowingly protests against the shackling of intelligence, of the right to think, which results from adapting thought entirely to the practical exigencies of technology, subordinating it to the kind of verification typical in the given set-up of culture. [?] [It] exposes the preconditions of observation and language by that same everyday life which thinking should overcome. The non-conformist element of intuitionism should not be underrated by its opponents, but rather should be incorporated into their own critical endeavors. What, in the framework of capitalism is recognized as science was a progressive force [only] as long as capitalism advanced. Its consequences have caused just as much suffering as the expansion and later decay of that economic system. But neither the objective progress of science and of its application, technics, nor the state of mind of the majority of its representatives, has justified the idea that only when it is perverted does the spirit of science assume the destructive role so largely allotted to scientific exploits. The antagonism of science, as well as of other productive forces, to reaction, and its inherent potentiality of shaking the world which it serves, can certainly assert themselves. But this realization is not necessarily parallel to its progress along its present road. The neo-positivists seem to forget that natural science as conceived by themselves is above all an auxiliary means of production, one element among others in the social process. Hence, it is impossible to determine a priori what role science plays within the actual advancement or retrogression of society. Its effect in this regard is as positive or negative as is the function which it assumes in the general trend of the economic process. Science today, its difference from other intellectual forces and activities, its division into various specific fields, its procedures, contents, organization, can only be understood in connection with the society for which it functions. Positivist philosophy which considers the tool “Science” as the automatic protagonist of progress is as fallacious as other versions of technocracy. Economic technocracy expects everything from the emancipation of the material means of production. Just as Plato wanted to make philosophers the masters of the universe, the technocrats want to make engineers the ruling board of society. Philosophical technocracy, i.e. positivism, specifies as the prerequisite for the membership in that board exclusive faith in mathematical methods. The rulers, as conceived by the Greek eulogist of mathematics, were the experts of administration, engineers in abstracto. Correspondingly, according to Mr. Hook and his friends, engineers are philosophers in concreto, since they apply science of which philosophy is but the classification of methods [for]. Despite all their differences, Plato and the modern positivists share the idea that the way to save humanity is to subordinate it to the methods and rules of scientific reasoning. But positivists, in contrast to Plato, have paid the price for their aspiration. They have adapted philosophy to the requirements of current social practice before adapting social practice to philosophy. For them, making thought the rector mundi becomes identical with the functioning of thought as ancilla administrationis.

The equation of science and truth is again put forward in a series of articles by the leading positivists. Mr. Sidney Hook points out that the actual cultural crisis arises from “a loss of confidence in scientific method.”¹⁰⁵ He sees great numbers of intellectuals aiming at a knowledge and a truth which have nothing to do with science. Instead of relying on honest research, experiment, and scientific induction, they refer to self-evidence, intuition, Wesenserschauung, revelation, and other doubtful sources of information. He denounces the promoters of all sorts of metaphysics, rebukes Protestant and Catholic philosophies and their conscious or unconscious alliance with the reactionary powers of the world. While maintaining a critical attitude towards liberalistic economy he advocates the “tradition of the free market in the world of ideas.”¹⁰⁶ Mr. Hook’s article is followed by an attack by John Dewey on Anti-naturalism which has “prevented science from completing its career and fulfilling its constructive potentialities.”¹⁰⁷ Ernest Nagel deals with the Malicious Philosophies.¹⁰⁸ He discusses and refutes several specific arguments by which metaphysicists deny that the logic of natural science is a sufficient intellectual basis of moral attitudes. The three polemic articles, like many other statements by the same authors, merit the greatest respect for their uncompromising stand against the various heralds of intellectual authoritarianism. Dewey is one of the very few in our day who make philosophy a symbol of the eyes of the world, of a courageous, human spirit. Our critical remarks pertain strictly and exclusively to objective theoretical differences.

The positivistic attack on certain scheming and artificial revivals of obsolete ontologies is more than justified. The promoters of those revivals, particularly the neo-Thomists, are betraying the last remnants of Western culture by making a philosophical profession out of saving it. Fascism revived old methods of domination which under modern conditions prove to be unspeakably cruder than the originals; these philosophers revive authoritative systems of thought, which, under modern conditions, prove to be unspeakably more naive, arbitrary and untruthful than the originals. Some professional Thomists, by their semi-learned demonstrations of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful as eternal values of scholasticism, ruin the last attractiveness such ideas might have for independent spirits who could have been tempted to oppose the powers that be in their name. In being advertised as guaranteed and everlasting, such ideas are totally integrated into the commercial culture which they once had the force to denounce. The philosophy which promotes them, honest as it may be, is unconscious of the fact that lofty opposition to pragmatism has always been one of the logical patterns of a pragmatic civilization. Today, use of the formula “it is different” invariably reveals that a brand of merchandise is exactly like the other brands. Therefore, to emphasize that an academic philosophy is different from pragmatism is certainly no sign that it belongs to a different level. A leading Thomist occasionally describes his own metaphysics as a wholesome or useful supplement to the pragmatist spirit. The current philosophical adaptations of established religions tend to transform into workable devices of mass culture the remnants of unadapted thought which still survive. The conservatism of such revivals with regard to cultural elements is adaptation or self-delusion. Like the churches, the movie industry, or other social agencies with whom these philosophers want to be connected, they cannot help furthering the pragmatization of life and thought. They help dissolve indigenous beliefs and make faith a matter of expediency.

In Western Civilization the difference between official theological doctrines and scientific theories has never affected the former’s belief in domination to which science has been a faithful ally all along. Quite the contrary is true. Exploitation of nature, the same purpose which has given science its shape, can be traced back to the first chapters of the Bible. All creatures, the whole of nature, are to be subject to Man. Only the methods and expressions of that hierarchy are changing. Because in the Middle Ages exploitation of nature had depended on a relatively static economy, science in that era had a more static and dogmatic character. In consequence, the differences between the physicist’s and the Neo-Thomistic doctrines of nature consist of the latter’s uncritical use of categories such as cause, telos, force, soul, entity. All these concepts had played a legitimate role in older forms of subjugation but, in the meantime, have become problematic. In Thomas’ era, these metaphysical ideas still represented scientific knowledge at its most advanced stage, but in modern culture their function has completely changed. Unfortunately for the Neo-Thomists, the concepts which they are able to derive from their theological doctrines no longer form the backbone of scientific thought. They cannot integrate theology and contemporary natural science in a hierarchical intellectual body, as Thomas did in emulation of Aristotle and Boethius. The findings of modern science contradict too blatantly the scholastic ordo and Aristotelian metaphysics to allow such integration. Today no education, even the most reactionary, is permitted to look at quantum-mechanics and the theory of relativity as things apart from the main principles of thought. Thomists must therefore invent all sorts of intellectual gadgets so that they can be in harmony with present-day natural science, opposed as it is to the philosophy they have chosen to revive. Maritain, for instance, deviating from Thomas, uses the device of differentiating between two kinds of natural studies.¹⁰⁹ There are, on the one hand, those practiced by physicists and made use of by the different branches of industry, and, on the other hand, those conducted by philosophers. In this scheme insights are derived from self-evident axioms which by happy chance correspond with the Catholic teaching that the universe, created as it was by God, forms a rational system. Philosophy, which describes this ordo and derives its details from the highest principles, is said to result from meditation, not from practical need to dominate nature or human beings. Indeed, ontology does not serve industry directly, like natural science, but helps it indirectly, by giving support to the church and all sorts of hierarchical patterns.

The distinctions of methods made by the Neo-Thomists of the second world war call to mind the catalog of unrelated types of knowledge constructed by their more profound predecessor of the first world war, Max Scheler. His list included pragmatic knowledge (Herrschaftswissen), intellectual culture (Bildungswissen), and religious insight (Heilswissen). Such a multitude of disciplines and correlated static essences which are open only to isolated acts of intuition, actually amounts to a non-committal pluralism approaching its opposite, cynical relativism. The authoritarian pattern comes to the fore in the privilege allotted to ontology of determining in each case what degree of reality may be claimed by a scientific description. Modern Thomists do not, like their master, take the pains to deduce the contents of contemporary physics from the cosmology of the Bible. The intricacies of the electronic structure of matter [?] indeed make the undertaking a different job. Thomas, if he lived today, might have faced the issue and have either condemned modern science for philosophical reasons or built a philosophy adequate to its results. In the meantime, the power of his conception and the seriousness of his approach have so diminished that his epigones can no longer take such a stand. Scheler still had the strength to abandon Catholicism altogether, but the latest Neo-Catholics negotiate between heavenly and earthly, ontological and empirical physics. Their method is to agree in abstracto that even non-ontological descriptions may have a certain degree of truth, or to attribute rationality to science insofar as it is mathematical, or to make similar doubtful concordance in the theoretical realm. By this procedure ecclesiastical philosophy gives the impression that modern physical science is integrated in its perennial system, whereas that system is nothing but an obsolete form of the very theory which it pretends to integrate. In fact that system is patterned according to the same ideal of domination as is scientific theory. There is the same purpose of giving a practicable description of reality and by no means its critique.

The social function of these manipulated religious revivals is to abolish any antagonism between individual thinking and the prevailing society. In this respect the effects of the philosophical Renaissance of Christianity are not so different from those of the revival of heathen mythology in Germany. In the 19th century, German mythology had been a force of secret resistance against bourgeois civilization. Old pagan memories smoldered as a folk-creed, under the surface of consciously accepted dogma and order. Thus they inspired German poetry, music, and philosophy. Once they were rediscovered and manipulated as elements of mass education, their antagonism towards the prevailing forms of reality was destroyed. Something analogous is being done to Catholic tradition by the Neo-Thomist campaign. Like the neo-pagans, the Neo-Thomists are streamlining old ideologies, trying to adapt them to modern usage. By doing so they compromise with the bad existent, as religion has always done. Involuntarily they also dissolve the last remnants of that spirit of binding faith which they promote. They formalize their own religious ideas so that they may fit present reality. They necessarily urge the formal justification of religious doctrines much more than their specific contents. Unlike missionary work in the traditional sense, their teachings do not consist as much of Christian stories and dogmas as of reasons why religious beliefs and modes of living are advisable in our menacing and supposedly chaotic historical situation. But religious concepts are not indifferent to such formalization. The Neo-Thomist ontology, made to order, deadens the core of the ideas it proclaims. The religious end is perverted into a mundane means. Neo-Thomism is little concerned with the belief in the Mater dolorosa, that inspiration of so much great European art and poetry. It concentrates on belief in belief as a good remedy for today’s social and psychological difficulties. To be sure, there is no lack of exegetical efforts devoted, for instance, to the “Wisdom that is Mary.” Conversely, the heritage of medieval Christianity since early patristic days, particularly Thomas Aquinas, show a strong disposition to formalize the basic elements of Christian faith. This tendency may be traced back to so august a precedent as the identification of Christ with the Logos at the beginning of the fourth Gospel. The primary religious experiences in the days of the early Christians became adapted to rational schemes throughout the history of the Church. Thomas Aquinas marked a decisive phase in this development: he achieved a synthesis between Greek rationalism and Christian dogma by amalgamating Christianity with Aristotelian philosophy. The latter, with its inherent empiricism, had become more timely than Platonic speculation.

From the very beginning of ecclesiastical history, the process of Enlightenment was by no means extraneous to the Church, nor was it forced into heresy. Largely, it took place within the framework of the Church herself. Thomas fulfilled his task of absorbing the new scientific movement into Catholic reaction through a reinterpretation of the contents of Christian religion. He made lavish use of such logical methods as analogy, induction, conceptual analysis, and deduction from seemingly evident axioms, and employed Aristotelian categories which, at his time, still corresponded to the stage of empirical science. His tremendous theological apparatus, his philosophical build-up of Christianity, gave religion an appearance of autonomy. For a long time the church remained independent of, and still compatible with, the intellectual progress of urban society. Thomas’ deductions in the purely theoretical plane tended to prove that Catholicism offered a conceptual framework well-adapted to the continuous growth of natural science. In the same way, his doctrines on social problems assured the economically powerful that the Church offered an institutional framework well-adapted to the continuous growth of their wealth. He proved that ecclesiastical bureaucracy was qualified to function as a kind of superior administrative agency, ruling and bleeding the underlying population. The period was critical, the structure of control shifting. Elements of the middle class became [partners] in domination. It became more and more difficult to keep the masses in their physical and mental subordination. Thomas’ writings were evidence of the Church’s ability to stifle the desires of the masses in the interest of older rulers and at the same [time] to compromise with the rising economic forces. On the one hand he derived from the prophecies of the Bible the claim that the Catholic Church was incapable of error. On the other hand, he showed that after all the Pope could always determine the precise control of belief. This theoretical construction was very practical. It showed that Catholicism was authoritarian as well as realistic. A further example of the subtlety of the Church was the comforting reassurance that slavery is perfectly tolerable even though incautious fathers like Gregor of Nyssa had thought it irreconcilable with the spirit of Christianity. In this regard also, Aristotle offered incomparably better guarantees than other Greek schools of thought, such as the Cynics. Thomas’ doctrine of the Universe is the ideological projection of the power relation within the patriarchal bourgeois family and within a society dominated by the Church. Even the celestial bodies are supposed to be created to serve the human species.¹¹⁰ No wonder that Feuerbach is the materialist philosopher most strongly attacked by the Neo-Thomists; his interpretation of religion as a mirror of human, particularly familial, relations is not applicable to religion in general but certainly comes close to the truth with regard to the Thomistic standpoint. Thomas’ cosmology, his doctrine of nature and supra-nature, endorses the social power-hierarchy by transposing it into superhuman dimensions. The justification of medieval social reality is carried down to the most dreadful details. He does not hesitate to supply philosophical and religious argumentation [for] the terrible penal system of his day: in scholarly refutation of some scruples emanating from certain quotations of the Fathers, he warrants penalties of death, mutilation, and even castration.¹¹¹

For the next centuries society entrusted the clergy with the administration of its highly developed ideological instrument. The Church became transformed into a board of experts in logic and domination with a perennial function in the bourgeois division of labor. In spite of its ideological preparation of religion, however, high-scholasticism did not turn religion into a mere ideology. Thomas paid tribute to the postulates of truly autonomous thought. He did not yet try to emancipate faith from the historical facts concerning the life of Christ. For instance he made the trustworthiness of the documents referring to the historical reality of Jesus and his miracles a necessary presupposition of any valid act of faith. This factual basis of religion and the validity of the rational scholastic apparatus has been shattered by Enlightenment. Since then, Thomism has become a theology with a bad conscience. This is clearly reflected by the twists of its modern philosophical version. The problem of private property, for instance, has become so intricate that Thomas’ simple device of deriving it from the Lord as the highest and most powerful proprietor seems to need some supplementation. One of the Neo-Thomists sought reinforcement in the artistic side of human nature. Others find it appropriate to prove, under the impact of democratic environment, that the enslavement of men can never be justified even though the greatest authorities defended it. Time marches on. By the thirteenth century the niceties of Catholic philosophy were a well-established part of reactionary diplomacy. Today its agents must exercise great circumspection in selling certified religion to the people. This is the background of their pedantic controversies about whether the demonstration of God’s existence is to be achieved in terms of causa fiendi or causa essendi. They seem to be aware that the inductive ways of reasoning favored by Aristotelian orthodoxy must be left exclusively to secular research, in order to keep theology strictly aloof from embarrassing investigations. The basically irrational relationship of Thomism to scientific spirit, brought about by complete formalization, allows for the acceptance of religion by both intellectuals and the unlearned. The more Neo-Thomism retreats into the realm of spiritual concepts, the more it becomes a mere servant of profane aims. In politics it can be used to sanction all kinds of undertakings, in daily life a handy medicine. In spite of the apparent difference in cultural levels, reconstructed Catholicism resembles Christian Science; belief in revelation becomes a wholesale prescription for social health and specific religious teachings are subordinated to those human and natural aims which supra-naturalism is supposed to denounce. By thus losing its theoretical spine, philosophy is transformed into a kind of theological instrument, and becomes fit to serve any hierarchical order, whether of wealth or of direct power. Hook and his friends are right in contending that in view of the ambiguous theoretical foundations of these dogmas, it is mere chance whether they are used to justify democratic or authoritarian policies. Without doing any harm to their highly formalized principles, Neo-Thomists can derive from them whatever form of society they want to be recognized. And each such demonstration can be used as the merciless condemnation of anyone whose idea of a good society differs from that which the metaphysicist has linked to the holiest principles. This is particularly true if the latter’s deductions happen to coincide with the political ideologies in vogue at the time. The concept of democracy, in such a context, becomes almost as sinister as that of dictatorship.

Neo-Thomism, like other [warmed-over] faiths, is just one spiritual panacea among many. Each tries to suppress thinking at certain points in order to create a preserved area for some isolated and therefore absolute Being, Fate, or Value. The more dubious all these Absolutes become the more staunchly do their adepts uphold them, the less scrupulously are they inclined to promote their cults by non-intellectual means, if necessary, by the sword in addition to the pen. Because the absolutes are not convincing by their own merits they must be vindicated by being elevated to supremacy in some kind of hierarchy. The effort toward such vindication expresses itself in an almost spasmodic desire to exclude any negative element, any evil, from the concept that is deemed absolute. At the same time, the urge to establish it as a hierarchical power leads to the endowment of the absolute with reality; only if the supreme value has the power to realize itself can it be regarded as truly absolute. By the very nature of the hierarchy the reality of the absolute also represents the highest degree of goodness. This identity of goodness, perfection, power, and reality defines the specific nature of European philosophy. It has always been the philosophy of groups which held or aimed for power. It is clearly expressed in Aristotelian thought, and forms the background of Thomas’ philosophy despite his truly profound doctrine that the absolute can be called being only by analogy.

[Crossed out: “Through the identification of the real with the good, the negative element, suffering, is excluded from the ideal natural pattern of reality. This, however, evolves an insoluble contradiction: there is no reality, …”]

While according to the Gospel, God has suffered and died, he is, according to the philosophy of Thomas, incapable of suffering and of change.¹¹² But every reality, whether finite or infinite, implies a negative element. The interpretation of any real being as “absolute” makes for a renunciation of this element, an arbitrary sacrifice of the intellect. Thus, Aristotelian Thomism even in its classical, rationalistic form, not to mention its present dilutions, terminates in irrationality. The faithful who build a philosophy on such fundaments adhere to a special kind of positivism utterly opposed, however, to Naturalism. They must stop thinking at an isolated and therefore contradictory concept. By doing so they come to idolize it.

This much should be touched upon in order to appreciate fully the opposition expressed by the real positivists. But are Mr. Hook and his friends exempt from bringing thought to a standstill at a given point? Is not their doctrine as dogmatic and pretentious and primitive as the eulogy of any absolute? They try to make us accept “a scientific or experimental philosophy of life in which all values are tested by their causes and consequences.”¹¹³ They confer responsibility for the present intellectual crisis upon “the limitation of the authority of science, and the institution of methods other than those of controlled experimentation for discovering the natures and values of things.”¹¹⁴ It would seem as though enemies of humanity, like Mr. Hitler, have not shown extreme confidence in scientific methods. It would appear that the Germany Ministry of Propaganda has not been an outstanding agency of controlled experimentation, testing all values by their causes and consequences. Science is not second to Protestantism or Catholicism in its ability to be of service to diabolical social forces. Scientism is no less narrow-minded than militant religion, and Mr. Nagel merely expresses the doctrinary intolerance of his standpoint when he states that any effort to limit the authority of science is obviously malicious. It appears to be doubtful whether science should claim a censorial power whose exercise by other institutions it had denounced during its revolutionary past. Anxiety that scientific authority may be undermined has taken hold of scholars at the very time when science has become generally accepted and even repressive. The works of the enlighteners, not to mention the older humanists, were devoted to a great extent to general philosophical problems and even to the vanity of science. But the positivists would discriminate against any kind of thought which does not conform perfectly to the postulate of organized science. They transfer the principle of the closed shop to the world of ideas. The general trend towards monopolization does not stop even at touching the theoretical conception of truth. The antagonism between this trend and the concept of a “free market in the world of ideas,” advocated by Mr. Hook, is a superficial one. Both notions pertain to a businesslike attitude towards the spirit, aimed at position and success. The measurement of research by competition has long been a tool not only subordinate to the requirements of monopolistic production but even closely supervised by its representatives. Conversely, if authority accrues only to patterns approved by the power bracket of the scientific industries, the competitive molding of research is permanently handicapped. Such interference may be wholesome for production of the best baby foods, superexplosives, and propaganda methods—that is, for the mass production of natural or human elements—but it means sure distortion of any real comprehension. In present-day science as in present-day economy, there is no distinction [between] liberalism and authoritarianism. Instead, there is an interaction that helps to establish an ever-more-rigid rational control by agencies which reflect an irrational society.

Despite its protest against the accusation of dogmatism, scientific absolutism must fall back on unrelated self-evident principles just as does the “obscurantism” it picks on. The only difference is that Neo-Thomism is aware of such presuppositions whereas positivism is completely naive about them. What matters is not so much that any theory may involve self-evident principles—one of the most intricate logical problems—but rather that neo-positivism practices the same thing for which it attacks its adversaries. As long as it continues this attack it must account for its own ultimate principles. The most important of these principles is the identity of truth and science. They must make clear why they recognize certain procedures as the scientific method. This is the philosophical issue which will decide whether “confidence in scientific method,” Mr. Hook’s solution to today’s menacing situation, is a blind belief or a rational principle. The three articles in question do not enter into this problem. But there are some indications of how the positivists would like to answer it. Mr. Hook points to one difference between scientific and unscientific statements. The validity of the latter, he says, is decided by private feelings while that of scientific judgments “is established by methods of public verification open to all who submit themselves to its disciplines.”¹¹⁵ “Discipline” denotes the rules codified in the most advanced manuals and successfully employed by scientists in laboratories. Certainly these procedures today represent what is to be done in order to achieve scientific objectivity. The neo-positivists, however, seem to confuse such procedures with the idea of truth itself. Science should expect philosophical thought, whether it is put forward by philosophers or by scientists, to account for the nature of truth rather than simply to boost scientific methodology as the ultimate definition of truth, but the neo-positivist dodges the issue by contending that philosophy is merely the classification and formalization of scientific methods. The postulates of scientific criticism like that of relatedness (Verbind-barkeit) or of reduction of complicated statements to elementary propositions (Protokollsätze) are presented as such formalization. By denying an autonomous philosophy and a philosophical concept of truth, neo-positivism hands science over to the incidents of historical developments. Science has become institutionalized, it is an element of the social process. Hence, its investiture as arbiter veritatis would subject the idea of truth itself to changing social conditions. This would deprive society of any intellectual means of resistance against a bond which materialist critiques have always denounced. It is true, even in Germany, Nordic mathematics, physics, and similar nonsense a greater role in political propaganda than in the universities; but this is due to a certain blind force of gravity of science itself and to the requirements of German armament rather than to positivist philosophy which, after all, is nothing but a reflection of science. If organized science had altogether yielded to the Nordic requirements, and had accordingly crystallized a consistent methodology, neo-positivism would finally have had to accept it, just as, elsewhere, it has accepted patterns of empirical sociology shaped by administrative wants and conventional restrictions. By docilely making science the theory of philosophy, neo-positivism disavows the spirit of science itself. Mr. Hook says that his philosophy “does not rule out on a priori grounds the existence of supernatural entities and forces”¹¹⁶ (by the way, to rule out supernatural entities on “a posteriori” grounds would be a contradictio in adjecto). If we take this admission seriously, we may expect, under certain circumstances, the resurrection of exactly the same entities or rather spirits, the exorcism of which is the core of scientific thinking as a whole. Neo-positivism would have to give its consent to such a relapse into mythology. Or does positivism limit its recognition of scientific rules to those practiced by scholars in enlightened democracies? This would certainly be an arbitrary decision, too irrational to be the foundation of a philosophy.

Mr. Dewey indicates another way of differentiating that science which is to be accepted from that science which is to be condemned. He says that the naturalist (in his article, Mr. Dewey uses the term naturalism in order to contrast the various positivistic schools to supra-naturalism), “is one who of necessity has respect for the conclusions of natural science.”¹¹⁷ Modern positivists seem inclined to accept natural science, primarily physics, as the models for right thinking. Perhaps Mr. Dewey expresses the main motive for this irrational predilection when he states “that modern methods of experimental observation have wrought a profound transformation in the subject matters of astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology” and “that the change wrought in them has exercised the deepest influence upon human relations.”¹¹⁸ This statement which, according to Mr. Dewey, “nobody save perhaps the most dogmatic supernaturalist will deny,” is either a truism or a part of an idealistic philosophy of history which Mr. Dewey himself probably would not endorse. If the statement implies only that science, like a thousand other factors, has played a role in bringing about good or bad historical changes, it can in no way motivate praise of science as the only power by which humanity can be saved. If it means that scientific changes are usually the cause of changes in the direction of a better social order, it misinterprets the interaction of economic, technical, political, and ideological forces. Such an intellectualistic theory, such a shallow assuredness, is refuted by every glance at the [progressions / regressions] of reality.

The positivists reduce science to the procedures employed in physics and its related branches; they deny the name of science to all theoretical efforts not in accord with what they abstract from physics as its legitimate methods. Such dogmatism becomes quite clear by a scrutiny of the ultimate legitimation of their principle, although they might consider such an attempt completely devoid of sense. They object that Thomists and all other non-positivist philosophical tendencies use irrational methods, especially intuitions not controlled by experimentation. Conversely, the positivists claim that their own insights are scientific. They hold that their cognition of science is based upon observation of science. That is to say, they claim that they treat science in the same way in which science treats its own objects: by a method of experimentally verifiable and falsifiable observations. The crucial question however is how it is possible to determine what justly may be called science and truth, if the process of such a determination simply presupposes the methods of science and truth which are to be determined. Any justification of scientific method by observation of science may be subject to the same question: how is the principle of experimental observation itself to be justified? When a justification of this principle is requested, when one asks why experimental observation is the process that guarantees truth, positivists simply appeal to observation again—with closed eyes, so to speak. Instead of interrupting the machine-like functioning of research, the mechanisms of fact-finding, verification, classification, etc. so that they may reflect upon the meaning of these processes and their relation to the idea of truth, they rather reiterate the fact that science proceeds by observation and describe circumstantially how it should function. Of course, the positivists will say that it is not their concern to justify or prove the principle of verification, but that they merely want to talk scientific sense. Without doubt the vicious circle involved in their philosophy is but an expression of their worship of institutionalized science. Nevertheless, this circle should not remain unnoticed, since the positivists always assert the particular cleanliness and logical purity of their statements. The impasse into which the ultimate justification of the positivist principle of empirical verification leads is an argument against the positivists only because they term every other philosophical principle dogmatic and irrational. While other dogmatists at least try to justify their highest principles by what they call revelation, intuition, or primary evidence, the positivists try to escape the circle by a naive and unconscious use of such methods and a denunciation of those who knowingly stand by them.

‘Axiomatism’ is no way out. Certain methodologists of natural science claim that the highest axioms of science can and should be arbitrary. This principle certainly cannot be applied when the meaning of science and truth itself is the object of the controversy. Even the positivists cannot take for granted what they want to prove unless they join in with the intuitionists who cut short the controversy by declaring that those who don’t see are not blessed with grace. In the language of the positivists, the reproach would read: ideas that do not fit into symbolic logic are devoid of sense. If science is to be the authority which stands firm against obscurantism, philosophers must establish a criterion of the true nature of science. It is essential that such a critical concept be so stated that its validity is not affected even by a possible deterioration of scientific practice into a pragmatistic mythology and, finally, into madness. To be the absolute authority, science must be explained as an intellectual principle, not [used] as the name for empirical processes as they take place in reality. Otherwise the rule to which positivist iconoclasts adhere becomes something astonishingly close to Catholic hagiography. The Catholic doctrine, after all, is but a system of ideas accepted by a body of acting cardinals and exposed to future adjustments to reality by the same body. Just as the layman cannot appeal to any spiritual principle against the cardinals, so it is a consequence of positivism that nobody can appeal to reason against official science no matter whether it may be drifting. If the layman should argue that science is no longer science because its theories are not continuously evidenced by experiments, established science could reply that its own intrinsic development had surpassed the method of experimentation. The layman could then appeal to no third agency, spiritual or empirical, which might overrule the verdict of organized science. All the acute volumes of the positivists of today dealing with the logical structure of science would then be worthless because their meaning is strictly empirical. Unfortunately the principle of observation is no principle at all, but a pattern of behavior, a modus procedendi, which at any time may lead to its own abolition. Once one could no longer observe observation taking place in actual science, one would have to modify the “philosophical” principle of observation and revise empirical logic. This weakness of positivism is covered by the positivists’ implicit assumption that the general empirical procedures used by science correspond naturally to the ideas of reason and truth. This belief is perfectly legitimate for any scientist engaged in actual, non-philosophical research work, but in the case of a philosopher it is the self-delusion of a naive absolutism. In a way even the irrational dogmatism of the Church is more rational than a rationalism which is so ardent that it cannot even adhere to its own rationality. The conclave of scientists, according to the theory of positivism, is even more independent of reason than the college of cardinals, since the latter must at least refer to the Gospel. If, in 1950, the conservative positivist should cite the logic of Mr. Dewey he could be refuted by the hint that Mr. Dewey now represented a hopeless minority.

As long as the positivists are engaged in scientific activities, they are in accordance with their own principles. However, when they explain the meaning of science, they contradict these principles. According to them, science should speak for itself, but according to them, science is a mere tool, and tools stay mute, even though their achievements may be overwhelming. Whether the positivists like it or not, the philosophy they teach consists of ideas and is not merely a tool. The basic idea of their philosophy is that words, instead of having a meaning, have only a function. The contradiction that their philosophy has meaningless as its meaning could indeed serve as an excellent beginning for real thought. But this is the point where the expressiveness of their philosophy comes to an end.

[Crossed out: “Since the days of Plato such criticism has been raised time and again, but modern positivistic teachings have not in the least absorbed these negative considerations; essentially they still proclaim the narrow thesis of the sophists.”]

Mr. Dewey seems to sense this weakness when he states: “Until naturalists have applied their principles and methods to formulation of such topics as mind, consciousness, self, etc., they will be at a serious disadvantage.”¹¹⁹ It is an empty promise that someday positivism will solve those essential problems which it has been too busy to solve up to now, for being busy rather than meditating—[as] to meditate would mean to challenge their own dogmatic physicalism—is the essence of positivist philosophy. It is not accidental that positivism, after some straightforward declarations by Carnap and others in the direction of crude materialism, has developed a certain reluctance to tackle such delicate matters. Neo-positivism is a philosophy circumscribed by a totality of categories and methods which by their own structure prohibit doing justice to the problems indicated by “such topics as mind, consciousness, self, etc.” Dewey’s consolation amounts to the vague expectation of something that the spirit of the positivist movement in its broadest sense excludes—namely, confronting such notions with the essence of their own philosophy. In the meantime they have no right to look down on intuitionism which, indeed, is affected by positivism’s own shortcomings. They both cut off thought by certain authoritative statements, whether they concern the Supreme Being or Science as its substitute.

Judging from the three articles in question, neo-positivists realize to a much higher degree than do Neo-Thomists that their doctrine cannot overcome an intellectual crisis which is indicated by the futility of fanatically embraced philosophies. Both neo-positivism and Neo-Thomism are limited truths, ignoring the contradiction inherent in their radical claims. By that very fact, both try to assume a despotic role in the realm of thought. Since positivism overlooks the fact that its deficiency lies in its basic principle, it attributes its ineffectiveness before the present intellectual crisis to certain minor omissions, for instance to its failure to offer a theory of values. It would like to present a positivist counterpart to the doctrine of values produced by metaphysics. Mr. Hook maintains “the competence of scientific inquiry to evaluate” the claims of all vested interests in social life, of inequitable privileges, and of everything that claims to be “a national class or racial truth.”¹²⁰ He wants the values to be tested. Mr. Nagel admits that “knowledge of biology and hygiene are indeed not sufficient for an adequate conception of the moral life.”¹²¹ In spite of this insight he postulates that “all the elements of scientific analysis, observation, imaginative reconstruction, dialectic elaboration of hypotheses and experimental verification—must be employed.”¹²² The article gives no particular reason for such warning, nor does it explain in what connection all these mechanisms are to be applied. We suppose Mr. Nagel has in mind the testing of the “causes and consequences” of values referred to by Mr. Hook.¹²³ He probably means that we should know exactly why we crave a thing and what will result if we act accordingly; ideals and credos should be examined carefully with regard to what would happen if they were fulfilled. That was the function of science with regard to values as defined by Max Weber, a positivist at heart, at a time when positivism still had some concrete relation to the philosophy of history. Max Weber, however, was quite convinced that such analyses of relations between values and their causes and consequences would not alleviate the antagonisms of evaluation. He differentiated sharply between scientific knowledge and values and did not believe that experimental science could itself overcome social antagonisms and politics. The opinion of the neo-positivists is quite different. What Dewey calls organized intelligence, the feel, will be able to settle the problem of social stability or revolution.¹²⁴ This confidence shows a greater political defeatism than the pessimism of Weber, who hardly believed that the interests of social classes could be reconciled by mere science. Such an ideology, however, lies behind the neo-positivist conception of evaluation. Despite its assertion that science rests on social reality, neo-positivism seems to see in science an agency above social conflicts, which can reduce them to a manageable size. But here positivism’s realistic attitude not only serves the critical function so strongly emphasized by Dewey, but also displays objectively and involuntarily the opposite of a critical spirit. Here is overconfidence [?] not in reality as such but in organized science, one of the derivatives of reality.

Science is much more intrinsically involved in reality than merely by sometimes serving [] repressive or ideological purposes. Modern science, as positivists understand it, essentially refers to statements on facts, and therefore presupposes reification of life in general and of perception in particular. It looks upon the world naively as a world of things. Positivism by its identification of cognition with science restricts intelligence to functions necessary to the organization of material already patterned according to that very business culture which intelligence is called upon to help criticize. Such restriction makes intelligence the servant of the apparatus of production rather than its master, as Mr. Hook and his friends would like to see it. The contents, methods, and categories of science are not social conflicts, nor are they conflicts of such a nature that people would agree to unconfined experimentation with regard to basic values just in order to straighten out those conflicts. Only in a harmonious state of affairs could progressive historical changes be brought about by the authority of science. The positivists are just as over-idealistic in their judgment of social practice as they are over-realistic in their concept of theory. Theory is in danger of being confined to the role of a tool of that same reality which is justified by the pretense that it follows theory. As an instrument of present-day reality, theory is deprived of all elements transcending it, as though they were metaphysical nonsense. By the same distortion reality, thus glorified, is conceived as devoid of all objective structures which might lead to a better reality by their inner logic. As long as society is what it is, it appears to more [] honest to face the antagonism of theory and practice than to cloud it by the concept of a working organized intelligence. This idealistic and irrational hypostatization is closer to the Weltgeist of Hegel than his malicious critics think. Their own absolute, science, is made up as the Truth, while in fact it is only an element of truth. In the positivist philosophy, science has even more traits of a holy spirit than the Weltgeist, which, after all, expressly includes all the negative elements of history. We do not know if Mr. Hook’s concept of intelligence implies the definite prediction that social harmony will result from experimentation, but we are perfectly aware that even the recommendation of tests and studies in this regard depends on an intellectualistic theory of social change. With regard to their moral philosophy the positivists, epigones of the 18th century enlightenment as they are, prove to be the disciples of such an authority as Socrates, who taught that knowledge necessarily produces virtues just as ignorance necessarily implies wickedness. Socrates tried to emancipate virtue from religion. In Christianity, he reappeared as the Briton Pelagios who doubted that grace was a condition of moral perfection, and maintained that doctrine and law were its fundaments. The positivists probably would deny this august pedigree of theirs. They would certainly subscribe to the common-sense experience that well-informed people may commit terrible actions. But if this is so, why expect intellectual salvation simply from more thorough information? Their expectation makes sense only if they maintain the Socratic equation of knowledge and virtue or some similar rationalistic principle. Today’s controversy between the prophets of observation and those of self-evidence is a weakened form of the dispute 1500 years ago concerning gratia inspirationis. Modern Pelagians stand against Neo-Thomists as their predecessors stood against St. Augustine. However, it is by no means positivism’s problematic naturalistic anthropology which makes it a poor philosophy; it is rather its lack of self-reflection, its incapacity to understand its own philosophical implications in ethics as well as epistemology. This is what renders its thesis just another panacea, ardently defended but futile because of its abstractness and primitivity.

[Insert from the back of S. 41: Neo-positivists insist stringently on the unbroken interconnection of sentences, on the complete subordination of each element of thought to the abstract rules of scientific theory. But the foundations of their own philosophy are laid in a most desultory manner. They look with contempt upon the great philosophical systems of the past and seem to think that the long trains of empirically unverifiable thoughts are more uncertain, superstitious, nonsensical, in short, more metaphysical than relations by isolated assumptions which are simply taken for granted and made the base of one’s intellectual relationship to the world. This preference for uncomplicated words and sentences which can be grasped at a glance is one of the anti-intellectual, anti-humanist tendencies apparent in the development of modern language as well as in cultural life in general. It is one of the symptoms of that same failure of nerve against which positivism intends to react.]

The category of value made its entrance into modern philosophy after the decay of classical economy, once the proper realm of value-theory. Today that notion still shows the mark of its origin. There was no particular necessity for positivism to take it over. But it appears that Mr. Hook and his friends are eager eventually to present the world with officially tested values, as a kind of counterpart to metaphysical hierarchies. Such values, of course, would lack eternal guarantees, but monopolism can dispense with Hell, at least in the transcendental sense. People have become accustomed to secular advertising. Since they buy “independently” tested cigarettes, why shouldn’t they adhere to scientifically examined [ends]? These [ends], according to positivism, are, anyway, nothing but “certain things and relationships”¹²⁵ cherished during a certain period of time. The test results will show how they are produced and how pleasing they are. There may be “comparative judgments as to the happiness of men… based upon objective measures of well-being.”¹²⁶ Consumers may waver between values sanctioned by clergymen and those examined by lay-experts. Different brands of values will be advertised as new Chrysler and General Motors series are promoted. The yardstick of the value series will be the advantage in this or another world. We do not think that such practices will cure the illness which affects the minds of intellectuals as well as of others. As far as the development of reason is concerned, we believe that what really matters is not so much the expansion and multiplication of testing methods but, rather, the building up of an intellectual resistance against the mechanisms of mass culture. Among the most powerful of these mechanisms is advertising, which, as we know, functioned in many parts of the world [that show] the logical transition to autocratic regulation and plain terror. Laboratories are good but do not abolish destruction. Instead of assimilating problematic metaphysical categories to their own pragmatistic vernacular, the positivists should evolve and determine their own principle through recognition of the philosophical elements it contains. Otherwise their opposition to such powers as Catholicism will remain essentially ambiguous. On the one hand positivists resent science being called “mere natural knowledge,”¹²⁷ on the other hand they speak of “humane, just, and liberal relationships.”¹²⁸ In opposition to his own principles the naturalist philosopher seems to take it for granted that the attitudes corresponding to such relationships are superior to a world conqueror’s planning of mass slaughter based upon mere empirical knowledge of cause and effect. On the one hand they repudiate moral distinctions as unfounded, on the other hand they treat them as self-[evident].

The contention that the positivistic principle has a greater affinity to the ideas of freedom and justice than other philosophies is almost as grave an error as the respective claim of the Thomists. It is true that many representatives of modern positivism work for the realization of these ideas; the three articles with which we are dealing are new documents to this effect. Precisely their love of freedom seems to strengthen their hostility to its vehicle: theoretical thinking. Dialectical materialism was a philosophy presenting reality under the aspect of its change in the direction of social emancipation. This theory was transformed into a new instrument of dogmatism and the reaction of many an honest person was disillusionment with regards to theoretical thinking as such. He developed an ardent desire for the intellectual independence denied to him by today’s organized collectivities. But so far as power politics is concerned, neo-positivism is certainly no more autonomous than is dialectics. The stand of positivists on social matters may have been one of the causes for their embracing that seemingly uncompromising philosophy. But their philosophy itself is certainly not the logical reason for their social thought. It is therefore astonishing to hear them accuse their opponents of inconsistency. “None of the specific proposals of social reform,” charges Mr. Hook, “that issue from religious conclaves or even the principles sometimes offered to justify them, follow from the theological dogmas that preface their announcement.”¹²⁹ The highest criterion of Thomist philosophy is harmony with the teachings of the Gospel. [C]ertainly then Thomism can claim a more direct relation to the ideal of human understanding and community than the puristic principles which positivism cites as its standards of reasoning. But the whole dispute is vain. The content of a doctrine offers no clue to the role it will play in society. Draco’s code, which gives the impression of bloodthirsty severity, has operated as one of the greatest forces of human civilization. Conversely, the doctrine of Christ from the Crusaders to modern colonization has played a predominant role of bloodthirsty severity. Positivists would indeed be better philosophers if they would [realize] the contradictions between any philosophical idea and social reality, and therefore emphasize the anti-moralistic, not just the immoral, consequences of their own principle. [T]he most consistent enlighteners like Mandeville, Sade, and Nietzsche did not insist upon the easy compatibility of their philosophy with official ideologies. In fact the denial of that harmony was the core of their work.

The crime which intellectuals today against society lies not in staying aloof but in sacrificing contradictions and complexities of thought to the exigencies of common sense. The expertly prepared mentality of this century shares with the cave man’s genuine psychology a hostility towards the stranger. This is expressed not only in hatred of those who have skin of a different color or wear a different suit, but also in hatred of strange and unusual thought, nay, even of thought itself insofar as it follows truth beyond the boundaries delimited by the requirements and needs of a given social order. Thought today is compelled to justify itself by its usefulness for some established group rather than by its truth. Even if revolt against misery and frustration can be discovered as an element in every consistent work of thought, instrumentality in bringing about reform is no criterion of its truth. Putting intellectual activity under the control of such expectations may prevent it from fulfilling them. The positivists tend to overlook this probability because to them prediction is the essence not only of calculation but of all thinking as such. They do not differentiate sufficiently between judgments which actually express a prognosis—“tomorrow it will rain”—and those which can be verified only after they have been formulated, which naturally is true of any judgment. Present meaning and future verification of a proposition are not the same thing. The judgments that a man is sick or humanity is in agony are no prognoses even if they may be verified. They are not practicable even though they may bring about recovery. Their truth is not based upon the possible effect but the effect upon their truth.

Any pragmatistic evidence of Neo-Thomism misses the real point. Neo-Thomism fails democracy, [but] not, as positivists seem to suggest, because its ideas and values are not sufficiently tested with regard to prevailing interests. Nor is it because Neo-Thomism delays the use of “methods by which alone understanding of, and consequent ability to guide, social relationships can be attained”¹³⁰—Catholicism is famous for such methods. The failure is rooted in its half-true doctrine. Instead of developing its teachings without caring about their usefulness its expert propagandists have always adapted them to the changing requirements of domination. At present they are adapting them to the use of modern authoritarianism, which may possess the future in spite of its defeats. The failure of Thomism lies in its ready acquiescence to pragmatic aims rather than to its lack of practicability. Hypostasizing an isolated principle which excludes negation predisposes a doctrine to conformism. This is the danger of both neo-Thomist and neo-positivist teachings and also corrupts the latter’s interpretation of history. Like all ideas and systems which, by promising to be cure-alls, tend to dominate the cultural scene for a while, both philosophies charge all evils to doctrines antithetic to their own. In 19th century Germany, naturalists like D.F. Strauss and Haeckel accused Christian philosophy of weakening national morale by supra-naturalist poison; in turn, Christian philosophers hurled back the same reproach at naturalism. Today the hostile schools in this country charge each other with exactly the opposite crime: namely, sapping democratic spirit. They try to bolster up their respective arguments by doubtful excursions in the realm of history. Of course, it is hard to be fair to Thomism. It has seldom failed to lend a hand to oppression when oppression has been willing to take in the Church, yet now it presents itself as a pioneer of freedom—at least to Americans.

Nevertheless, it is naive to speak of its “systematic disrespect for scientific method.”¹³¹ Mr. Dewey’s allusion to the reactionary religious stand against Darwinism does not tell the whole story. The concept of development expressed in such biological theories needs a great deal of development, and it may not be long before the positivists join the thomists in criticizing it only too strongly. Many times in the history of Western civilization, the Catholic Church and its great teachers have helped science emancipate itself from superstition and charlatanism. Mr. Dewey seems to think it was particularly the persons of religious belief who withstood the rise of the scientific spirit. This is a most intricate psychological problem, but if, in this connection, Dewey cites “the historian of ideas,” the latter should remind him of the fact that after all the rise of European science is unthinkable without the Church and its functionaries. Their positive role can hardly be overestimated. The Fathers of the Church carried on a relentless struggle against all kinds of “failures of nerve,” among them astrology, occultism, and spiritualism, to which some positivistic philosophers of our era have proved less immune than Tertulian, Hippolytus, or St. Augustine. The relation of the Catholic Church to science varies according to the Church’s alliance with progressive or reactionary powers. At a time when the Spanish Inquisition helped a rotten court prevent any sound economic and social developments, certain Popes cultivated their relationships with the humanistic movement all over the world. Galilei’s enemies had difficulty in undermining his friendship with Urban VIII. Their eventual success was due to Galilei’s excursions into the realm of theology and epistemology, and not necessarily to his astronomical views. Urban himself seems to have regarded Copernicus’ theory as a worthwhile hypothesis: What the Church had feared was not natural science in itself but any idea, superstition as well as truth, that competed with the contemporary official interpretation of her doctrine. In Galilei’s case she was doubtful with regard to the proofs offered by Copernicus and Galilei, and therefore she could at least pretend that her case was based on the defense of rationality against hasty conclusions. Intrigues certainly played a great role in Galilei’s condemnation. But an advocatus diaboli might well say that the reluctance of certain cardinals to accept Galilei’s doctrine was due to the suspicion that it was pseudoscientific like astrology, or, today, race theory. In contrast to any kind of empiricism and skepticism, Catholic thinkers have espoused a doctrine of man and nature, as contained in the OId and New Testament. This doctrine offered a certain protection against superstition in scientific and other disguises. It could have prevented the Church from surrendering to the bloody opinions of the mob which pretended to have observed sorceries. She did not have to surrender to the majority like a good democrat. Yet the participation in witch-burnings , a bloody mark on her escutcheon, does not prove her opposition to science. After all, if James and Schiller could be mistaken about ghosts, the Church could be mistaken about witches. What the burnings do reveal is an implicit contempt for her own religion. That the ecclesiastical torturers had some inkling of this fact is shown by many instances of their bad conscience, such as their miserable excuses that burning people on the stake is no bloodshed.

The inferiority of modern Thomism as compared to its model becomes obvious in its attempt to maintain the dogmatic content of Catholicism by linking it to science. The limits are some superficial and even fallacious distinctions and an untenable epistemology. It does not bring the findings of natural science into an intelligible connection with the content of its beliefs, nor does it apply its principles in order to demonstrate the faultiness of the assumptions of scientific methods and results. In their escape from this difficulty and their reluctance to overcome it by responsible rational thought, our Thomists are not so far from the concept of twofold truth as found in Averroism, the target of their master’s classical attacks. It is true that certain neo-Thomists, among others the eminent scholar Gilson, have tried to prove that there never was such a thing as the doctrine of twofold truth. However, the ideas of certain Parisian Averroists condemned by ecclesiastical authorities a few years after Thomas’ death came very close to such teachings.¹³² Some of these Christian disciples of Averroes probably used the concept of twofold truth, or, as it sometimes was put, of the logical and theological approach, simply to veil their naturalistic convictions. They were already positivists at heart and even anticipated Mr. Dewey’s thesis that the Christian doctrine hampers scientific progress.¹³³ In general, however, Christian Averroists in one university department kept to the practice of dealing with a topic according to religious categories while in the other departments the same topic was treated under scientific categories. The manifest contradiction of the result was consciously overlooked. In this respect they did not undertake “the action of the notion” which would have meant linking the two realms of thought in detail by logically conclusive steps and not merely by expedient and general phrases. Here, the neo-Thomists follow the Averroists rather than Albert and Thomas who, like the other great bourgeois philosophers from Plato to Hegel, penetrated and transformed the knowledge of their days with the help of certain speculative categories. In Neo-Thomism philosophical ontology is made independent of and superior to the actual progress of science. This philosophy becomes a kind of supplementary discipline with a more or less optional role despite all its seemingly stringent demonstrations. One can believe in it without any risk because in the life before death all crucial events take place in empirical reality which may be handled according to exact science. One ought to believe in it, because in the life after death, the record of such belief may come in handy.

The Thomists, by reviving and promoting the old doctrine seemingly unchanged, change it into an element of a strictly pragmatistic attitude. However, the greatest shortcoming in their relation to science is not peculiar to the modern version of Thomism. It lies much deeper, and can be traced back to Thomas and Aristotle. It lies in making truth, reality, and goodness identical. Whenever a philosophy makes actuality the pattern of potentiality, it must present a theoretical system in which true reality is adequately represented. Both positivism and Thomism pretend to put forward such a system, and seem to feel that the adaptation of man to what they call reality would lead out of the present-day impasse. Critical analysis of such conformity, as well as of the relation between theory and practice as it forms an a priori in both philosophies, would probably bring to light the common foundation of the two schools of thought: both accept as the pattern of human behavior an order of things in which temporal failure or eternal hell play an integral part. Without being able to prove our point in a short article, we may say that this doubtful concept of an adaptation of humanity to what theory recognizes as reality is one of the roots of the actual intellectual decay. The hectic wish of people to adapt themselves to something which has the power to be, whether it is called a fact or an ens rationale, has led to a state of irrational rationality. Ideologies follow each other so rapidly that each is regards as just another ideology, yet each is made a temporary reason for repression and discrimination.

Present-day society has subordinated the minutest details of human life to conditions manipulated by private and public administration. Everyone knows that not only material commodities but motion pictures, current opinions, all cultural manifestations are standardized and circulated by the experts of powerful social groups. Early in his life the individual is made aware that serious theoretical thinking cannot help him at all; it only leads him into hopeless difficulties. Even the position of an individual worker in today’s economy does not generate independent feeling and thinking. It is better for him to follow the leaders of his organization since their removal would only bring in other leaders and cliques with slightly less competence and would entail the same expenses. The division of labor has led to a division of thinking and almost of living, so that the intellectual functions of the individual are reduced to his clever adaptation to circumstances. And economy develops in a way that circumstances do not allow time and leisure for useless divagations of the mind. Education does the rest. Everyone must come down to earth in his thoughts and decisions. It is perfectly down to earth if one goes to church on Sundays, but it would be an extravagant, useless and foolhardy attempt to reflect responsibly and seriously about the truth of her doctrines. For anybody whose particular racket or hobby is not religion, it would be a mere waste of time. This contempt for thought has brought about a state of affairs in which the more prominent and representative bodies of men, even more than the common cliques, have lost the habit of meditation. They have become accustomed to abhor as “metaphysical” any reflection of no immediate use and purpose. If the eventual result of an idea is not clearly visible, it must at least have sure propaganda value for some established group. Otherwise it is not even understood. Thinking which transcends the realm of practicability is in disrepute. At a time when legal documents are still worded in such a way that even the intellectual layman in law is unable to understand the page-long sentences without reading them a dozen times, the authors of appeals to the legislators of nations are urged to use short sentences with only an occasional three-syllable word.

At one time humanism dreamed of uniting humanity by a common understanding of its destination. It intended to realize a good society by theoretical criticism of contemporary practice. This criticism was supposed to shift into the right political activity. This seems to have been an illusion. Today words are supposed to be blue-prints of action. People think that the requirements of being should be enforced by philosophy as the servant of being. This is as much of an illusion, and is shared by neo-positivism and neo-Thomism. The constant command to conform to bare facts and common sense instead of to utopias is not so different as the call to obey clerical institutions, which are after all bare facts too. At the heights of medieval urban culture the whole conception of truth represented a kind of synthesis of Christian religion and the maturing reason of the middle classes. Neo-Thomism, in spite of its scholastic industriousness, is no longer in a position to bring about such a synthesis. By its own blind adherence to authority in spiritual matters it offers itself as instrument of the world [ancilla mundi] rather than of truth [veritatis]. It simply obliterates the antagonism of its dogma to the greater knowledge of today and indolently maintains the dogma. Positivism, on the other hand, particularly in the version of Hook and his friends, has inherited from religion the task of resisting the world. But in order to consummate such independence it must give up its naive and self-contradictory agnosticism. It must represent the idea of truth which once was embodied in religion, but has long since migrated into the realm disdained by both positivist philosophy and positive religion, that of unbridled thinking which is not afraid of itself.

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Max Ernst. Nuit claire. 1943.

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VI. Society and Reason. Lectures I-V (February-March 1944).

Invitation card to the lecture series “Society and Reason”

Editor’s note.

The revisions made made to the Society and Reason manuscripts between the delivery of the lectures in February-March 1944 and the manuscript that was finally submitted for review to Oxford University Press in early 1946 were so exhaustive that it would be difficult to find a single identical paragraph, transferred over word-for-word and line-by-line, between them. In his survey of the manuscripts for Lectures I-V of S&R, James Schmidt (2007) notes the variable degrees of continuity between each lecture and its corresponding chapter in Eclipse. Lectures III-V seem to have the most, while little of anything “survived the revisions that produced Eclipse” from Lectures I-II.¹³⁴ The ‘disclaimer’ at the beginning of LI, “Reason as the Basic Theoretical Concept of Western Civilization,” that identifies the crisis of reason with the crisis of ‘European socialism’ and the question of its legacy is replaced in Chapter 1, “Means and Ends,” with a presentation of the distinction between subjective and objective reason that culminates in the critique of American empiricist and pragmatist philosophies. LII, which was almost entirely rewritten as a critical ‘Excursus’ on John Dewey to respond to audience objections raised in the discussion following LI (see the ‘Editor’s Note’ to §IV., above), is replaced by a different text entirely—a heavily pruned version of “Revival” (see the ‘Editor’s Note’ to §V., above). “These two revisions,” Schmidt concludes, “resulted in a work that opened not with a lament for […] European socialism but with a critique of recent trends in American philosophy.”¹³⁵ Even Eclipse Chapter 4, “Rise and Decline of the Individual,” which retains the most of the text from its corresponding lecture in S&R, was drastically restructured by the integration of more than 20 paragraphs, heavily revised, from “The Sociology of Class Relations,” giving LIV’s schematic “phenomenology of the individual in the history of Western culture” a much different ending in Eclipse—it is not the outbreak of fascism, but the defeat of radical internationalism of the worker’s movement and the consolidation of labor organization as a “corporate enterprise” that “completes the process of the reification of man.”¹³⁶ Through the integration of “Sociology of Class Relations,” the ‘disclaimer’ identifying the crisis of reason with the crisis of European socialism that was cut in the revisions to LI is reintegrated into the book at the end of Chapter 4 in the context of this abridged history of the defeat of organized labor.¹³⁷ Though I have not been able to finish a systematic overview of the differences and similarities between the S&R lecture manuscripts and Eclipse, some of the more striking are an explicit redefinition of “self” that encompasses Freud’s concepts of ‘ego’ and ‘super-ego’ (LIII), as well as a remarkably lucid account of how ‘spirit’ ought to reconcile itself with ‘nature’ without falling prey to the Scylla of false identification of the two terms and the Charybdis of falsely absolutizing their opposition (LV). The early drafts of the manuscripts are filled with reeling digressions—e.g., on Rousseau’s metaphysics of the majority principle, on Kantian autonomy and the dialectic of enlightenment (LI)—and sharp asides—e.g., on ‘the life of the migrant laborer,’ on ‘organized eugenics’ in the logic of modern sex life (LIV)—that would be cut in some of the first rounds of revisions. In a stunning passage from the manuscript of the concluding lecture which seems to have partially survived the revision process, appearing in another variant in Chapter 5 of Eclipse,¹³⁸ Horkheimer defines the critical-interpretive task of philosophy by invoking the memory of Walter Benjamin:

One of the crucial tasks of true philosophy is to plumb the layers of experience preserved in the comprehensive and constitutive concepts of our vocabularies. Philosophy has to deepen its sensitivity to the muted testimonies of language. Each national tongue conveys a message, embodying the thought-forms and belief-patterns rooted in the evolution of different peoples. It is the repository of the variegated perspectives of prince and pauper, poet and peasant. Its forms and content are enriched or impoverished, as the case may be, by the naive usage of everyman. Yet, it would be an error to assume that we could discover the comprehensive meaning of a word by simply resorting to the people who use it. Gallup-polls are of little avail in this search. In the age of formalized reason even the masses abet the decomposition of concepts and ideas. The man in the street, or, as it has become more fashionable to say, the man in the fields and factories is learning to use words almost as schematically and unhistorically as the experts. The philosopher must avoid this example. To the passion for lucidity gained in the course of truth’s progress, he must join a sensitivity to those traits of life which lie below the surface of available definitions. [...] He must not utter the words “man, animal, society, world, mind, thought” without recalling their twilight-zones and opacities. At no time may he take refuge from complexity by surrendering to the illusion that he can climb to a higher level of truth by simply insisting on the transparency of such ideas. Concepts and categories should neither enter nor leave his workshop looking clear-cut and freshly-shaven. This may serve to explain why some of my answers during our last discussions may have appeared cryptic. Some of you asked me—and in so doing you were entirely justified—what I mean by nature, self, mind, existence. Do “ego” and “spirit” exist, and so on? The tentative definitions I offered in my responses were intended to be simple abbreviations of my understanding of these concepts. Some of the deeper implications, it was hoped, would be found embodied in the explanations and illustrations presented in the course of the lecture. In my opinion a satisfactory philosophical definition of a concept can be supplied by nothing short of the farthest advance of the philosophical theory itself. Each concept must be seen as a fragment of an embracing truth, in which it finds its true meaning. It is precisely such building of truth out of fragments which is philosophy’s prime concern. I am compelled in this connection to recall the eloquent formulation of my great and all-too-soon departed friend, Walter Benjamin. …

If Eclipse is the prolegomena to the Dialectic, Society and Reason is its ‘workshop,’ which neither concepts nor categories enter or exit clean-cut or freshly-shaven. The incompleteness of Society and Reason is an invitation to participate in building an embracing truth out of the fragments it collects. That is, it has the potential to be our workship too.

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I. Lecture [Reason as the Basic Theoretical Concept of Western Civilization.]

The title of these lectures may be misleading. Many of you may expect that I am designating those elements in our society which are irrational, so that I may proceed to suggest how to overcome the irrational ones and to achieve the identity of society and rationality. This was the program of important schools of social and political theories and of political parties, particularly of European socialism. But the period in which these theories originated is ours no longer. It was the time of the free market, universal competition, the so-called anarchy of production and those theories advanced the principle of rationality against the prevailing anarchy. I do not say that these categories have lost their validity under the conditions of present-day economy, but a new problem has arisen in the meantime; rationality has permeated human life to a degree which those older schools did not anticipate. Not only are large sectors of production and trade regulated and coordinated, but there are countries in which the entire economy is synchronized to fulfill well defined aims in war and peace. The methods applied to post-war problems by sociologists, economists, statesmen, in particular, and public opinion, in general, show that economy and with it the fate of whole nations can be dealt with in a far superior and more efficient way than ever before. Not only have production or the life of social groups become subject to regulation, but the individual himself, his physical and intellectual qualities, have become more and more the products of rational social processes, of planning. In view of this situation the concept of rationality with regard to society acquires a new problematic aspect. What has this kind of rationality done to the human being? Does it correspond to the idea of reason as we used to conceive of it? Which forces has it developed and which has it shackled? It is this kind of problem that will be the subject of the five discussions—in which I hope to learn at least as much from you as I contribute myself. I am ashamed to say right now that I cannot offer the slightest suggestion which would resemble a social program, as to how to change the outlook which to many of us will not seem to be very bright. I don’t have any philosophical post-war plan. Therefore, I want to state right now that I think the first step and perhaps the decisive step in these intriguing matters is to become aware of them, to face them without fear and, I might add, without any haste to reach practical conclusions. We might even find that the pressure put upon thinking to serve practical means and ends, to get results, is one of the main symptoms of our difficulties.

My first lecture today will set the problem. I shall analyze the meaning of reason as it is conceived today both in common and scientific discourse. I shall then confront it with the historical meaning of reason. Later on we shall begin to analyze the process of rationalization which threatens to become so fateful for our world: i.e., the transformation of all general concepts into mere signs and instruments, the elimination of so-called metaphysical elements from language and thought. I shall end with the enumeration of some important cultural effects, changes due to the spread of rationality in its modern sense.

These effects will be treated in detail in our following lectures. The second lecture will deal with the relation between rationality and domination of nature. I shall try to show that the progressive emancipation of the human subject, due to the economic process and philosophical enlightenment, which is the expression of that process, is necessarily linked to a blindness of nature within and without man. In the third lecture I shall trace the ideas of various important philosophical schools which express the reaction against progress. I have in mind those movements of romanticism and irrationalism which, as we know only too well, have a tendency to become the forerunners of totalitarianism. There is nothing more pernicious than the transformation of a critique of historical progress into any kind of social recipe. The fourth lecture will deal with the dissolution of a particular metaphysical concept, that of the individual, and in the last lecture we shall try to summarize our view and determine the fallacies in the modern idea of rationality.

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In any discussion of Society and Reason, it may be taken for granted that the concept of Society is fairly familiar to those who engage in such a discussion. Even without consulting a textbook in Sociology or the Encyclopedia Britannica, which solves the problem in its own way by simply omitting the topic, we may assume that we understand one another at least roughly when we use the word. If we should speak of “our” society, however, difficulties would soon arise. For the concepts themselves, and not only the value judgments involved, would vary according to the education, profession, religion, political party adherence, economic and social position of the participants. True, there would be two categories of people who would understand the same thing by the term “our” society: the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce and an orthodox Marxist. Both would define it as Capitalism. To be sure, one would like to perpetuate it, and the other to abolish it. But such slight differences of opinion should be neglected in Science,—or shouldn’t they?

We cannot, however, take for granted the content of our second concept—Reason. Regardless of how often people use it in daily life, as well as at notable occasions, they feel uncomfortable when asked to explain it. Their hesitation should be cause for some concern to those interested in the fate of rational civilization. Let us not mistake it for wisdom too deep, thought too abundant to be expressed. Actually, this hesitation betrays the feeling that there is nothing to ask about, that the concept is sufficiently clear, and the question itself superfluous. The things that obviously should be done are considered reasonable things, and every normal man is supposed to be capable of determining what he should do. Naturally, in each particular situation the individual must take into account the material circumstances, as well as the existing law and certain religious and other traditions. But the decisive agency with regard to his action lies within himself, and that agency is called Reason. Reason is our faculty of determining what is best for us. This is the line the average man would take in answering the question, should we succeed in overcoming his reluctance to talk about such useless, abstract stuff.

We might call this concept of reason subjective, in contrast to any theory which maintains that there is reason not only in the individual’s mind, but also in the object: in relations between human beings and between social classes, in social institutions, in Nature and its manifestations, in human and pre-human history. The objectivist view implies the necessity of discovering the features of reason in all things and beings, and of reconciling our way of life with the natural processes around us. There is a clear-cut distinction between Reason as objective reality and the prevailing tendency to accept Reason as a subjective faculty of the human mind exclusively. If we speak of an institution or of any other reality as being reasonable, the word is usually understood in an indirect sense. It is supposed to mean that men have built the institution reasonably, that they have put something of their own mind into it. According to the subjective concept of reason only the subject can genuinely have reason.

If we further insist upon overcoming the unwillingness of our friend to discuss what he means by Reason, he might describe it as the ability to relate the right means to a given end. Here he is in accord with many outstanding philosophers, particularly in England since the days of John Locke. Of course, Locke was not blind to other mental functions which might fall under the same category. He mentioned the faculties of deduction, discernment, and reflection. But all these processes certainly concur in achieving the coordination of means and ends. Such coordination is, after all, the social function of Science, and, so to speak, the “raison d’etre” of theory in the social process of production.

I called this notion of Reason subjective. I could also have called it formalistic, since no particular content, no reality can appear as reasonable. I should, perhaps, mention at this point that the terms formalistic and formalization of reason will be used frequently in these lectures as an all-over term to indicate this subjective view of reason in general, as well as those positivist and empirical trends in particular that express a subjective and common-sense approach to the concepts of reason and value. If the word reason is used for a thing, or for an idea, instead of for a human action, it refers exclusively to the relation of such an object to a purpose, not to the object itself. It means that the thing or the idea is good for something else. There is no reasonable aim as such, and it becomes meaningless to discuss the superiority of one aim over another in terms of reason. From the formalist or subjective approach, such a discussion would be possible only if both aims were to serve a third and higher one; that is to say, if they were not ends but means.

The consequences of this common view are obvious. Reason after all denotes right thinking. Hence the formalization of reason excluded thinking from the most important problems, and therefore leads to the assumption that thinking cannot be of any help in determining any goal insofar as it is to be desired for itself. If this is true, we cannot judge a particular achievement or behavior in its own right by the process of thinking. The acceptability of ideals, the yardstick for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles in morals and politics—all our ultimate decisions depend on other factors than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection. Therefore, it becomes completely meaningless to speak of truth in practical, moral, or aesthetic decisions. In accordance with this position, thought serves any particular endeavor, good or bad. It is a tool of all factions of society, but it must not engage in setting the patterns of social as well as individual life, and must leave these activities to other forces. Perhaps to emotion and passion? But the modern mind, in general, regards them as detrimental to whatever we want to achieve. It has purged reason so efficiently of any specific trend or preference that the ultimate decision of man’s actions and way of life is consciously surrendered to blind and hazardous factors—to which our world seems to be abandoned anyway.

It would be a mistake to think that people do not understand each other in regard to the concept of reason. Theirs is no uncertainty, but rather too great a certainty. They take it for granted that reason is just a methodical principle, as obvious as day. Considered synonymous with procedures in scientific and practical undertakings, reason can be streamlined like any other instrument. They might well say that logic, if we must have such a thing, may indicate how reason operates in the different branches of science, and thus help to save intellectual energy; or that mathematics, by automatizing some of its activities, helps to save even more energy.

And there is still another scholarly way by which reason, in its modern sense, may be studied: by psychology. Psychology investigates the conditions under which this method called reason operates in the human mind, and examines the factors which promote or hamper it. Psychology enables us to overcome emotional and other inhibitions, and helps us to make the widest possible use of our rational faculties. Thus the agreement with regard to the concept of reason in general. Reason is an intellectual faculty of coordination, whose efficiency can be increased by methodical use, and by the removal of any factors in the human mind, such as conscious or unconscious emotions, which might hamper it.

In his book on the function of reason, Whitehead differentiates between two aspects of reason, “reason as seeking complete understanding, and reason as seeking an immediate method of action,” the reason of Plato and the reason of Ulysses. He also calls them the speculative and the practical reason. He thinks the former has only itself as its dominant concern, while the latter promotes other dominant interests. It is Whitehead’s conviction that the advance in technology during the last hundred years arises from the fact that the two kinds of reason have at least made contact. However, we may add, technology in itself is an expression of practical reason much more than of speculative or understanding reason. Technology is the science of outsmarting nature; it is the reason of Ulysses, the reason of the smart, successful, adaptable, versatile business man and leader—the man who already knows what he wants and uses his intellectual faculties to get it.

It may seem peculiar to give so much consideration to the various meanings of a purely theoretical concept such as Reason. You may think that after all we should define it according to our own wishes and the specific requirements of our topic, and then study the interaction of the phenomena so defined with certain social processes. But this procedure, it seems to me, would not help us. The meanings of reason, and the historical changes in the meanings, must be our concern, for to start with a personal definition would be a form of arbitrariness in view of the fact that the idea of reason has been deeply imbedded in the Western mind. We are interested in the connection of interaction of the past, the pronouncements of the pioneers of our civilization, the works of the greatest statesmen and philosophers are unanimous in attributing to reason the role of a leading agency or, we might even say, the leading agency in human behavior. A wise legislature was defined as one whose laws conformed to reason; national and international policies were judged as to whether they followed the lines of reason; reason was supposed to regulate our preferences, and our relationships to other human beings, to nature, to our business and to our government. It was thought of as an entity, a spiritual power living in each man. This power was held to be the supreme arbiter, and, more than that, the creative force behind the ideas and things to which we should devote our lives.

Today when you are summoned to a traffic court and the judge asks whether your driving was reasonable, he means whether you did everything in your power to protect your own and other people’s lives and property, and to obey the law. He implicitly assumes that these values must be respected. What he questions is only the adequacy of your behavior in terms of these generally recognized standards. It was different in the days when the concept of reason was established as one of the basic principles of civilization. Suppose the reports on the life and death of Socrates are accurate—he died because he submitted the most sacred and most familiar ideas of his community and his country to the critique of the Daimonion, i.e., to what Plato called dialectical thought. He undermined the sacred tradition of Greece, the Athenian way of living, and prepared the soil for radically different forms of individual and social life. According to Socrates, reason and not tradition had to determine our beliefs and regulate the commerce between man and man, and between man and nature.

The same thing is true in modern history. The concept of a life dominated by reason as the ultimate agency was expressed in sixteenth century France. Montaigne adapted it to individual life, Bodin to the life of nations, and de l’Hopital practiced it in politics. Despite certain skeptical declarations on their part, their work promoted the transition of the highest intellectual authority from religion to reason. At that time, reason assumed a shade of meaning which found its greatest expression in French literature, and which to some extent is still preserved in modern popular usage. It came to mean a conciliatory attitude which does not take religious controversies too seriously. It was opposed to killing in defense of any creed or ideology. No doubt this concept of reason was more humane and at the same time more formalistic than the religious concept of truth. With the decline of the medieval Church, religious differences had become ostensible manifestations of opposing political tendencies. They were more transparent and therefore more violent than ever before. Reason denoted the point of view of these scholars, statesmen, humanists who considered the conflicts in religious doctrine as more or less meaningless in themselves, and saw them as slogans or propaganda devices for the various political factions. The humanists conceived of a people adhering to different religions, yet living under the same government and within the same borders.

Such a government was a worldly institution. Its raison d’etre was not, as Luther thought, to discipline and castigate the human beasts, but to create favorable conditions for commerce and industry, to solidify law and order, to provide its citizens with peace inside and protection outside the country. This whole conception permeated the idea of reason, and gave it a definite content. At the same time, however, it was losing the meaningful and important function and the objectivity it had possessed in the medieval mind. Reason became now a philosophy corresponding to a sovereign state, concerned with the well-being of its people, opposed to fanaticism and civil war. In fact, reason and philosophy became synonymous. This attitude, which had been fostered during the bloody days of the religious wars, was elaborated in the great philosophical systems of Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. They made thinking the highest authority. The political implications of their ideas came to light in the eighteenth century, when the concept of the “Nation” became a guiding principle through the storms of the great American and French revolutions. This concept of Nation is inseparable from the idea of reason as emancipated from religion. A nation, in the sense of these revolutions, is a people united by its history, organized and guided according to rational, intelligent principles, and not according to some ordained system. The constitution was thought of as the expression of such rational principles. The ideas of justice, equality, happiness, democracy, property—all these were considered to correspond to reason—to be emanations of reason. Their superiority to other ideas was supposed to be self-evident, or at least to be demonstrable by reasonable argumentation.

In order to understand the intellectual situation of our day, we must realize that the prevailing subjectivist and formalist concept of reason is much more extreme than the one we have just discussed. Reason is at last purged of its last concrete elements—down-to-earth though they were. Let us examine the gravity of this purge, and its historical antecedents, a little more closely. As long as religion was considered to be the agency which laid down the great standards of human conduct, there was a body of values common to the Christian world. There was a common doctrine of history interpreting the world in such a way that the divergent interests of individuals appeared to be inferior to the spiritual interests which they shared. I am not considering to what extent this doctrine was true, or to what extent it was used by the rulers as an expedient to control the masses. What I want to stress is that the aims pursued in individual and social activity were linked to an objective truth. They were derived from a common belief. When, in that process of modern history which we have just mentioned, religion was superseded by philosophy, objective truth was not abolished. Since the period of the Renaissance human thinking itself tried to develop a comprehensive doctrine like theology, entirely by its own means, instead of accepting its ultimate goals and values from a spiritual authority. Philosophy thought of itself as a vehicle for explaining, developing and deriving the contents of reason, and for putting them forth as the right patterns of living.

In this capacity philosophy came into conflict with religion. The main issue at stake, the cause for which metaphysicians were persecuted and tortured to death, was not the question of God’s existence, or of an eternal truth. The standard bearers of philosophy in battle were quite as sincerely affirmative on this point as were their clerical opponents. The real problem was whether revelation or reason, whether the College of Cardinals or secular thought should be the agency to determine and express ultimate truth. As the Church defended the ability, the right, the duty of Religion to teach the people how this world was created, what its purpose was and how they should behave, so philosophy defended the ability, the right, the duty of the human mind to discover the nature of things, and to derive the right modes of activity or non-activity from such insight. There was no difference of opinion as to the existence of a reality into which we could possibly have such insight, Catholicism and European philosophy were completely in accord on this point; it was the common ground on which their struggles took place. The two intellectual forces which disagreed with this presupposition of the existence of reality were Calvinism, through its doctrine of the Deus absconditus, and Empiricism, through its notion that metaphysics is made up of pseudo-problems. But the Catholic church’s opposition to philosophy—by no means to science—was based precisely on the fact that the new metaphysical systems maintained the possibility of an insight which was itself to determine the moral and religious decisions of man. At a later time, this controversy was not solved, but simply ignored. Neither the Church nor philosophy separated wisdom, ethics, religion, politics as did the Protestant and positivist mind which split the realm of culture into clearly defined departments, each administered by experts with a different and specialized training. This mind did away with the idea of insight into an ultimate truth. Thus the conflict was avoided and the issues dropped. The Enlighteners of the XVIIIth century had attacked religion in the name of reason. What they finally killed was not the Church but metaphysics and the objective concept of reason itself.

Today the idea of reason as an organ of perceiving the true nature of reality and of determining the guiding principles of our lives[, let us call it speculative reason,]¹³⁹ is considered obsolete. To the modern mind, speculation is synonymous with metaphysics and metaphysics with mythology and superstition. We might say that the history of reason, or, if you prefer, the history of enlightenment from its beginning in Greece down to the present has led to a state of affairs in which even the name of reason is suspected of designating some mythological entity. The adaptable philosopher who uses the word reason had better hasten to make clear that he does not mean anything but the coordination of means and ends in general, or observance of certain rules commonly followed by successful branches of science in particular.

Reason is one of the generalities which subjective reason has abolished. In this way, reason has liquidated itself as an organ of ethical, moral, and religious insight. Bishop Berkeley, legitimate son of nominalism, Protestant zealot and positivist enlightener, all in one, directed an attack against these generalities two hundred years ago. The attack has come to be victorious all along the line. A few general concepts, such as mind, spirit, and cause, were maintained by Berkeley, in partial contradiction to his own theory. But they were efficiently eliminated by his great pupil, Hume, the father of modern positivism. [The result of the progress of reason is that reason is out as the guiding principle of our existence. Its equivalent, objective truth, as it is recognized by thinking or by philosophy, is similarly erased from the picture.]¹⁴⁰ Today we have on the one hand a science which classifies facts and data in order to serve the conflicting or non-conflicting purposes of individuals, groups and nations; on the other hand, we have religion which fulfills various important social functions, and is respected by the greater part of society. But with regard to its doctrine, religion lives its own separate life behind the borders of its cultural department. It is so well isolated that it feels immune to science, and science immune to religion. It has lost its only serious opponent, reason, metaphysics, or philosophical theory. Religion has thus acquired a security which may make it a most useful social tool, particularly in these hectic years. But at the same time, this neutralization means the wasting away of its real spirit, its relatedness to truth, which once was believed to be one in science and art and politics,—and for all mankind. The death of speculative reason, first religion’s servant, and later its opponent, may prove catastrophic for religion itself.

Let us consider some of the consequences of the elimination of reason. The ideas of justice, equality, happiness, tolerance, all the concepts which, as I mentioned before, were in earlier centuries supposed to be inherent in, or sanctioned by, reason, have become floating ideals without intellectual roots. These concepts are aims and ends, but, according to the new mentality, there is no rational agency authorized to judge our aims so as to link them to an objective reality. Such concepts may still enjoy a certain prestige. They are endorsed by venerable historical documents, and some of them are contained in the supreme law of the greatest countries of this earth. But this does not eliminate the fact that they lack any confirmation by reason. No one can say that any of them has a closer relationship to truth than its opposite. According to the philosophy of the average modern intellectual, which we will discuss in one of our future lectures, there is only one authority to decide what is true, and that authority is science. By the term science, the intellectuals refer to classification of facts and calculation of their regularities; the pattern of science is natural science, physics. However, it is not the physicists or scientists themselves, but the philosophical apologists of science, and with them a large and most important part of our society, who claim that only science in the sense mentioned has to do with truth, or we may say, has supplanted truth. This opinion is but the other side of the subjectivist concept of reason, for it abolishes any connection between the lofty ideals of our culture and the idea of truth. To say that justice and freedom are better in themselves than injustice and oppression becomes just as meaningless as to say that red is more beautiful than blue, or that an egg is better than milk. One, like the other, is ultimately a matter of personal like or dislike, or perhaps a matter of emotions. We shall find, later on, that various schools of thought are trying to remedy the intellectual situation by returning to metaphysics or to irrationalism. As we will see, these efforts to turn back the wheel must necessarily hasten the very dissolution which they pretend to fight.

I want you to realize that not only the guiding principles which we have already mentioned, such as liberty or justice or humanity, but all particular aims and ends are affected by this process, by this dissociation of human aspirations and potentialities from the idea of truth. It is almost commonplace to state that the activity of a good artist is no greater service to truth, is in no sense better or higher, than the activity of a good prison-warden or banker or housemaid. If we should try to argue against such a commonplace we would immediately be informed that it is meaningful to compare two housemaids with regard to their goodness, because there is a yardstick to measure it; the degree of cleanliness and honesty, the extent of skills, etc. There is also a yardstick to compare the goodness of two bankers, and even, though it is more difficult to find, a yardstick for the judgment of artists. This last, however, may already be questioned, unless it is assumed that the artist who earns more money is the greater one. Thorough analysis would show that in all cases the yardstick thus suggested is money, success, efficiency. And ultimately the yardstick is time, for goodness in the sense of a specific efficiency is measured by time. Therefore it may also be regarded as commonplace to state that it has become meaningless to call one particular way of living, one religion, one philosophy better or higher or truer than another. [Naturally, it is still an established tradition to speak in such terms. Members of certain social groups, of a certain religion or country, use the kind of language that is established by tradition, but it is no longer endorsed by the kind of knowledge which is recognized as such not only by intellectuals, but also in the minds of the masses. True, the uniformity of opinion on certain general issues has never been more outspoken than today. But this does not contradict the basic relativism which is typical of our situation. The less deep and honest a conviction is, the more violently it is asserted, and the more ruthlessly dissent is repressed, either by brute force or by more subtle methods of administration and public opinion.]¹⁴¹ We must face the fact that the split between reason and aims seems to make it equally impossible to say that an economic or political system, no matter how cruel and despotic it may be, is less reasonable than any other one. According to the formalistic concept of reason, despotism, cruelty, oppression are not unworthy in themselves; there is no rational agency which would possibly endorse a verdict against domination if, by chance, one is likely to profit by it. If anyone should speak of the dignity of man, using the word not in the sense of a hackneyed slogan, but quite seriously, he would be advocating metaphysics and mythology. If today a group of enlightened people is led into a fight against even the greatest evil, the formalization of reason would make it almost impossible to point simply to the nature of that evil and to the interests of humanity which demand a struggle against it. Many would understand this as a mere slogan and immediately ask what the interests behind it are. Therefore, it must be asserted that the fight is taking place for very realistic reasons, even though, for the mass of the people, these realistic reasons may be more difficult to grasp than the interests of humanity as a whole.

Here I should like to warn you against a misinterpretation of our analysis. We are trying to understand certain trends of the modern mind, certain connections between the concept of reason and social developments[, and we can achieve this only by giving very crude outlines and relatively vague indications, without engaging in more detailed reflections, without nicer distinctions, without the necessary examples and proofs. Therefore, ambiguities and misunderstandings are inevitable. But]¹⁴² it would be a great error to take our analysis as a suggestion [that we should promote their opposites. We are certainly not insinuating]¹⁴³ that the trends of which are talking should be reversed, or that they are purely negative, or even that they necessarily call for a dark prognosis. We are simply attempting to understand the intellectual situation of our day. Up to now, civilization has been living on the remnants of ideas which once were founded in reason, or in religion, or even in archaic mythologies. People have not believed in the merits of humility and neighborly love, in justice and humanity, because it was realistic to stick to such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate, nor because these maxims satisfied their tastes better than the others. They believed in such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they linked them to the idea of logos, whether in the form of God, or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle. Not only were the highest aims thought of as having an objective meaning, an inherent significance, but even the humblest pursuits and fancies depended on a belief in the general desirability, the inherent value of their objects.

All children’s plays and adults’ holidays carry the implicit memory of their origin in mythology, so each beloved activity was originally rooted in meaningful judgment. The pleasure of keeping a garden is connected with the archaic time when the gardens belonged to the gods and were cultivated for them. The sense of beauty in both nature and art is linked, by a thousand delicate threads, with these old superstitious beliefs. If the threads are cut, by modern man’s either flouting them or flaunting them, the pleasure may subsist for a certain period, but its inner life is extinguished; for even in the delight of a flower, or the atmosphere of a room, the taste did not create the fancy, did not precede the belief in its objective value. The belief was the motive, and the taste was the consequence. First was belief in the goodness or sacredness of the thing and second was enjoyment of it as being beautiful. This applies to such sublime entities as justice and humanity, and to such simple things as a flower or the view of the ocean.

All these cherished ideas, all the elements by which civilization is kept together, aside from force and material interest, still subsist, but are deeply affected by the process of formalization with which we are dealing. This process, as we have seen, attributes out aims, whatever they may be, to likes and dislikes, to emotions which in themselves are meaningless. Let us assume that this conviction really penetrates into the details of daily life—and it has already penetrated deeper than most of us realize. A hike which takes man out of the city to the banks of a river, or to the top of a mountain, would become in itself a completely irrational, idiotic undertaking. He would be devoting himself to an activity in no way better than oversleeping, gambling or bragging. Only the fact that it serves another purpose, say health or relaxation, which helps to replenish his working power, gives it reasonableness in the sense of formalized reason. In other words, the activity has meaning only through the connection with other ends—which makes it a sheer instrument. We cannot pretend that the pleasure the man gets, let us say, out of a landscape would long endure, if he should be altogether convinced that the forms and colors he sees are just forms and colors, and have no relation whatsoever to any possible meaning, that they simply and necessarily express nothing. If he has made a habit out of such pleasures, it may last for the rest of his life; or he may never fully experience the meaninglessness of the things he adores. Our tastes are formed in early childhood, and what we learn later on does not influence us as strongly. The next generation may still imitate the father who was addicted to long walks, but if the formalization of reason has progressed far enough in their minds, a half hour of gymnastics to the commands of a radio voice will do the trick.

In the terminology of 19th century England, the love of particular things which are craved though they have lost their objective significance is known under the name of “spleen”. Spleen expresses the existence of tastes and obsessions deprived of their rationality. Use of the word spleen indicates that the society in which it occurred was still conscious of that antagonism, and even preserved it against intellectual progress. The 20th century does not suffer from such difficulties. Meaning can be achieved in only one way, in service to an end. Likes and dislikes which have become meaningless must either be completely integrated by mass culture under the title of amusements, leisure-time activities, social contacts, etc., or be left to die out gradually for lack of opportunity to express themselves. The spleen was a last opposition to modern rationality. Today the spleen has been supplanted by the hobby. The hobby is not in contradiction with formalization, because the one who indulges in it shares the idea that there is no truth in it. When asked in a questionnaire—and questionnaires usually ask the question—what is your hobby, he will answer as he would answer the question how tall he is. Hobbies are recognized, rationalized predilections, which are considered necessary for the good humor of everyone. They have become an institution.

What goes for small delights, holds true for the higher aspirations with regard to the good and the beautiful. It would be a useful undertaking to combine sociological and phenomenological methods in order to study the differences between the meaning of a work of art in itself, and what it has come to mean, because of the subjectivization of reason.¹⁴⁴ Let us take a Beethoven symphony. Today the elements which it expresses can be explained, they may even be contained in the printed directions for use which accompany the program. It can all be put down in black and white—the tension between the moral postulate and social reality, the pathos of humanity which in France was able to manifest itself in the political realm, but which in Germany was cut off from so asserting itself, and retreated to the private, the spiritual realm, the allaying gestures, all the specific quasi-logical features of Beethoven’s music can be enumerated, and each quality accounted for. Beethoven’s music has become reified. What it expresses can be experienced either as sentimental emotions, or as historical implications. The work becomes a museum piece. Its performance becomes a leisure-time occupation, or an outstanding event, a star performance, or simply something one must know about in certain groups, because it makes for personality. This process is a typical aspect of this subjectivization and formalization of reason. It transforms works of art into cultural commodities, and their consumption into a series of haphazard emotions divorced from our real intentions and aspirations.

The origins of this process [which, as we will see later on, is closely connected with enlightenment,]¹⁴⁵ could be traced back even further than the travels of Ulysses, namely to the origin of organized society. Here it will be sufficient to point to the structure of middle class society. Productive work, toiling and laboring, have become respectable. Only such work, that is to say, a means to an end, is recognized as the right way to spend one’s life. Any occupation, any labor is called productive which eventually contributes to a profitable undertaking. The function of objective reason, authoritarian religion, or metaphysics is replaced by the anonymous economic apparatus. It is the price paid on the market, or, at the present time, the price fixed by the administration which determines the desirability of merchandise and thus the productiveness of a specific kind of labor. Activities are branded as senseless, superfluous, as luxuries, unless they contribute to profitable undertakings, or, as in wartime, to the maintenance and safeguarding of the general conditions under which such undertakings can flourish. The great theoretical inaugurators of middle-class society, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and others, called the remaining feudal lords and medieval clergymen parasites. They reproached them not for laziness, and they were not lazy, but because their ways of living depended on, without contributing directly to, production in its modern sense. The aristocrats and the clergy devoted their lives to God, to bravery, to a beloved lady. By their mere existence and doings, they created an imagery admired and cherished by the underlying population. Machiavelli and the others recognized that times had changed, and unmasked as illusions the inherent values of the things to which the old rulers had devoted their time. Veblen would have called it conspicuous consumption or honorific waste. Luxury is not ruled out, at least not by some of the outstanding factors of this civilization. But luxury finds its justification not in its own activities, but as an opportunity for making profit by commerce and industry. The luxuries either become standard items of education or mass guidance, necessary to keep production going, or are degraded to hobbies and means of relaxation. Nothing is valuable in itself, no aim as such is better than another, and all this because there is no rational agency, or thinking, or truth by which such differences could be realized. […]

Digression: Rousseau and the Metaphysics of Majority.

[If I should now engage in an analysis of these same processes as they concern not art but the basic moral and political concepts, such as liberty and justice, I would have to expect a very serious objection, one which we must consider most carefully. After all, we know very well that there is a whole group of ideas we have all learned to love, cherish, and respect from our early childhood to the moment of our death. These ideas and all the judgments and theoretical views which are usually connected with them do not depend on reason alone. Therefore it appears that they cannot be affected by the formalization of reason, by its transformation into a mere instrument. They draw their strength from the great historical past, from men who have shed blood (given their lives) in its name, from the respect we owe to the great founders of the few enlightened nations of our time. But does not this objection, instead of weakening our thought, rather show its full gravity. [It exposes the purely traditional character of our values—values that were once grounded in living insights.] These fathers of our civilization, in contrast to later generations, [and] in contrast to the common sense philosophy of today, believed in the objectivity of their concepts, believed that they were founded in the nature of things. I do not mean to say that they were all conscious of the philosophical implications of their creed. Probably this was true of only a part of them but of a very important part. Still, the conviction of the heroes of the American and French revolutions, that men are endowed with certain rights, was no phrase, nor slogan, nor sheer repetition of traditional beliefs. such a conviction was part of a living philosophy, rooted in that idea of reason which was the core of French seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy. It was the same idea of reason, as we saw before, which emerged, in our era, from the conflict of religion and politics, and which is descended from the classics and their logos. I have already mentioned that the supreme law of the nations, which these great historical figures inaugurated, not to speak of their solemn declarations, was founded in what Leibnitz called verites de raison, truths of reason, and not the reverse. These great men did not derive what is good from the law but tried to reconcile the law with the good. Their place in history did not permit them simply to adapt their words and actions to the text of documents already in effect, or to generally accepted doctrines. It was they who created these documents, and brought about their acceptance. Therefore the objection that the supreme concepts of our civilization are not affected by the cultural process of formalization is only apparently true. Today these concepts are accepted as things which are already in effect, and to which one has to adapt oneself, as to a pattern set by a power which is overwhelming with regard to both the number of people who believe in it and the length of time it has been upheld as an ideal. […] There is no longer any logical foundation for these beliefs. Even though some of us may think that these metaphysical matters are of no avail in reality, history has taught us that such spiritual developments, whether or not they have any substantiality in themselves, are at least the expression of most important and fateful changes in social reality. Whole nations, and I am not thinking only of Germany, awoke one morning to discover their most cherished ideals have turned out to be but bubbles and spleen. We cannot then say that tradition saves the most cherished ideals from the effects of formalization. This [contention, that tradition saves our most cherished ideals from decay,] often implies another one—that there is a principle which may well replace the idea of objective reason: the principle of majority. Since people are, after all, the best judges of their own interests, the resolutions of the majority are certainly as valuable to a community as the verdicts of a so-called superior reason. This statement and the theory behind it contain an most interesting logical contradiction, for, insofar as it tends to discard reason in the older sense, it must either itself appeal to a reason in the older sense or become an unfounded credo. We all know that there is no empirical, inductive way of proving the majority principle. Despite this logical difficulty, or perhaps because of it, the belief in majority expresses a great truth—but this truth, in order to be understood, must be developed. What is meant by saying a man knows his own interests best? How does he arrive at this knowledge? And what is the evidence that this knowledge is correct? If we meditate about these questions, we find that in this proposition “a man knows best…” there is an implicit reference to an agency in man which is not totally arbitrary and accidental—some sort of reason concerning not only means, but ends. If that agency should again turn out to be nothing but the majority, the whole argument would constitute a vicious circle. I may add that many of those who try to defend the great political ideals against complete formalization, and without hurting formalized thinking too much, often become unknowingly involved in just such a vicious circle. Great philosophy, which took a part in laying the foundations of modern democracy, did not become involved in this, for it based the principle of majority upon more or less metaphysical assumptions. Its validity, according to the spirit of this philosophy, depends partly upon the fact that the status of the various members of even the best community imaginable will never be absolutely identical, and partly on the consideration that, under the prevailing circumstances, the reason of a single individual does not directly coincide with what is understood by the expression reason in general. Indeed, the respect we owe to the verdicts of the majority was itself supposed to be founded on the relationship to the other principles of reason, for instance that each human being, in a way, was an incarnation of moral autonomy. In other words, respect for the majority was based on convictions which did not themselves depend on the resolutions of majority. Rousseau, for instance, decreed very naively, and without trying to give any philosophical motivation, that in society there is no right, no binding obligation if it is not derived from conventions and contracts. Since we see that there are rights without which society could not possibly exist, we must suppose, at least hypothetically, that they can be traced back to a social contract, a unanimous vote, by virtue of which all those institutions and regulations may claim the authority of laws instead of being only commands upheld by sheer force. Even if the principle that the majority prevails over the minority can be established only by an act of unanimity, that is, by the hypothetical consent of all the people. “Indeed,” Rousseau said, “if there were no previous convention where would be, if the vote had not been unanimous, the obligation for the small number to submit to the choice of the greater one… The law of the plurality of votes is itself established by convention and supposes, at least for a single time, unanimity.” There is no doubt that such explanations either are themselves arbitrary decrees or must be considered as founded in the substance of reason itself. That Rousseau almost unconsciously is referring to the latter becomes quite clear when he declares the renunciation of liberty to be void because “such a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man; and it would mean that his actions would be deprived of all morality and his will deprived of all liberty.” (I, 4) Rousseau knew very well that the renunciation of liberty was not against the empirical nature of man because he himself criticized individuals, groups and nations very bitterly for actually renouncing their freedoms. [He refers to the rational essence rather than to a psychological attitude. His whole doctrine of the contrat social is derived from a philosophical doctrine of man, according to which the principle of majority rather than that of power corresponds to human nature as discovered by speculative thinking. He appeals to Reason.] The foundation of any right in a general vote, then, is ultimately not a fact, or tradition, or even a religious doctrine, but an element of a philosophy of reason. The problems involved are supposed to be of such a nature that they cannot simply be decided by power, but only by reference to some kind of truth.]¹⁴⁶

In fact not only the defenders of value, but also its adversaries appeal to reason. But in general these adversaries appeal to material interests or to common sense. As far as political values, for instance liberty and justice, are concerned you will find confirmation of this if you study important historical controversies, such as the one which stirred up in this nation in years before the civil war. Having outlived the blessings of compulsory servitude, Charles O’Connor, celebrated lawyer, once nominated for the presidency by a faction of the democrats, argues, “From these undeniable facts, written in the great book of nature, proven by experience, and not without sanction from revelation, may reason draw the inference that Negro slavery is not repugnant to justice,—is not unprofitable to the white man—is not oppressive to the Negro, and is not inexpedient as a matter of social policy.” Here O’Connor still uses the words nature, reason, and justice, but almost as empty phrases; they are much more formalized and openly ideological than his references to experience, profit, and expediency. Another spokesman for slavery, Mr. Fitzhugh, who wrote “A Sociology for the South,” is much more conscious of the antagonism of his position to reason and philosophy. He says: “Men of sound judgments” generally give wrong reasons for their opinions because they are not “abstractionists.” “Philosophy,” he declares, “beats them all hollow in argument, yet instinct and common sense are right and philosophy wrong. Philosophy is always wrong and instinct and common sense is always right, because philosophy is unobservant and reasons from narrow and insufficient premises.” He is opposed to abstract principles, opposed to thinking as such, opposed to intellectuals and utopians. He prefers a down-to-earth and practical mentality—and slavery.

By all this, I do not insinuate that the appeal to common sense instead of reason is generally used to defend inhuman or just conditions. Not seldom do people advocate the most wholesome reforms in the name of common sense. But we must realize that the abolition of reason as a supreme arbiter of what is good or what is bad, what should be done or what should not be done, makes all discussions of the principles of civilization completely vain and meaningless; and people scent this meaningless long before they are able to formulate it. Before I come to an end, I should like to point to some phenomena in social life which illustrate the process of formalization. You may call them symptoms or consequences. They are just different aspects of the same cultural situation.

First, it would be a great mistake to assume that today people are not interested in moral or aesthetic values as they are promoted by the various institutions of public life, by religious and political organizations, by the different organs of mass culture, such as motion pictures, radio, and newspapers. But they have become patterns which are not judged by thinking, they are simply accepted or rejected. The more powerful the agencies, and the more exclusively they dominate the market of ideas, the greater will be the chance that the values advertised by them are accepted. The difference between selection of moral standards and selection of commodities becomes smaller and smaller.

Second, the process of formalization is closely related to, almost identical with, the process of emancipation of the human subject. But this emancipation is ambiguous, for by the modern definition, the nature of this subject is in no way an incarnation or incorporation of the universal truth. Man is conceived as being so completely free that his choice rests on his sovereign pleasure. Smart as may be his calculations about means, the choice of that for which the means are to be used is almost blind; extreme subjective freedom and blind nature are, in a way, identical. The more radically the subject purifies himself of all the remnants of dark mythologies and at last of the mythology of reason, the more sinister becomes the power of general patterns of thinking and acting. Economic and social forces assume the character of blind natural powers, of a mythic uncontrollable fate.

Third, enlightenment, the elimination of metaphysical clouds, took place in the social process of the fight of man against nature. It was the process of self-preservation. The triumph of technology was identical not with the destruction, but at least with the suppression of uncontrollable beliefs. The only content of reason which seems to have withstood complete rationalization is the idea of the ego or self and its material interests. The statement, however, needs immediate amendment. We shall see in a subsequent lecture that the concept of the human individual as a spiritual entity is in itself an historical phenomenon, whose rise and decline are closely connected with the rise and decline of certain social institutions. The individual is now succumbing to changing social conditions. In our time associations, corporations and unions, have become basic social units and the struggle of individual competitors is replaced by the competition of groups with concentrated power. The individual himself becomes an illusion, belief in the individual as an entity a provincial superstition. One element of the concept of self is left, but this element is not proper to the individual: this is the idea of survival at all costs. [The self is opposed to anything that possibly could harm it, particularly to nature, both within and without—nature within becomes a heap of emotions which must be disciplined, nature without becomes a heap of raw material.]¹⁴⁷ We may even say that the self, as it has resisted the purge, has no significance as an entity. Its significance is in just this attitude of transforming everything in heaven and earth into an instrument of its preservation, even at the cost of its own life. Efforts to get around this contradiction by referring to other concepts than the self, for instance to humanity, are doomed because all these other concepts are deeply compromised. What remains is, on the one hand, the empty self, and , on the other hand, nature, degraded to mere material, mere stuff. This antagonism between empty self and empty nature is the outcome of the formalization of reason. They are identical and antagonistic: identical because they are both meaningless, just signs, antagonistic because self is the opposite pole of nature, the subject of its pure domination inside and outside of man. Domination has become the idol to which everything is sacrificed, even those who dominate. In trying to obey the law of contradiction, to stick to formalistic logics, and to science, thinking has become an echo of the most gigantic contradiction in history, self-preservation as self-destruction.

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Insert/Excerpt—Re: Kantian Autonomy and Dialectics of Enlightenment.

[…] This state of affairs is indeed the outcome of the process of enlightenment, inseparable from the development of our society. Mythology and superstition, which for such long periods of history shackled human productive forces, had endowed nature with certain powers, inclinations and repugnances, with certain meaningful processes: in short, with some kind of reason of its own. Today nothing of such metaphysical elements, of such qualitae occultae seems to be left in nature, at least, not as far as the mind of the advanced groups of our society are concerned. Nature has become just the material of production, something to be changed into useful forms, something to be dominated, and reason, in turn, has become but another name for that domination. The philosophical doctrine that reason is autonomous, and the doctrine that it is a mere method, are basically identical. […]¹⁴⁸

[…] This appears at first sight to be a bold contention. The idea of autonomy, as it has been upheld by philosophers such as Kant, apparently attributes to reason the highest possible dignity. Here is what Kant taught: reason can not only determine the actions of the individual but supposedly also its ultimate aims. The apparent contradiction between our assertion and the Kantian concept of autonomy vanishes as soon as we ask for the nature of the ends which are supposed to be determined by autonomous reason. Kant never states positively any such ends of reason. His principle is rather that no end should be pursued under the mere compulsion of blind emotional or material necessities. The ultimate consideration controlling our decisions should be that they are reasonable, that is to say, that they can be recognized as rational by all thinking beings, not only by him who is to commit the action. This imaginary consensus functions as the sole criterion that the individual’s decision does not depend on natural, contingent factors, linked to his particular penchants, but on rational principles. The way to make sure that any action is in harmony with the concept of reason consists of the mental experiment of imagining whether all other subjects [that are] endowed with reason [would] possibly agree with the reflection that led us to our decision. They must be able to respect our choice as a reasonable one, and we, in our choice, must respect them as the possible judges of our action. Only if these two elements can be considered as being in harmony, our action is in harmony with autonomous reason. Thus the idea of the aim becomes so abstract, the relationship between reason and its ends so utterly formalistic[,] that it is impossible to actually distinguish the apparently metaphysical concept of reason, as developed by Kant, from the mere means-and-ends relationship developed by empiricism and pragmatism. These opposing schools of thought meet insofar as they recognize reasonable only certain qualities of the thinking subject or of its relation to other thinking subjects. The relation of the subject to nature is only considered in its negative aspect: nature must not interfere with human creativeness or, let us say, with production. Moral autonomy is tantamount to that boundless domination of nature by the human spirit which is also the principle of the modern, thoroughly unmetaphysical idea of reason. Kant himself has treated his autonomous reason as the faculty to govern the “natural” element in man—his freedom is but the radical domination of everything “irrational” by methodical, well-planned activity.¹⁴⁹

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II. Lecture [Civilization as an Attempt to Control Human and Extra-human Nature]

Let me begin today’s discussion by a summary. Last time, I tried to trace a cultural process which has its roots in the early days of Western Civilization but which has now reached the point where it has become a menace to civilization itself. I have called this process the formalization of reason. I understand by this term modern man’s inability to link the aims of life, the loftiest ideals as well as the less significant predilections to anything which can be called an objective truth.

During the Middle Ages, religious instruction as to the actions which people were supposed to perform or refrain from performing, the manner in which they were expected to deal with their neighbors or with foreigners, their entire way of life, was reasonable to them insofar as it was in accord with the word of the Supreme Being and, therefore, with the law of nature. It was meaningful to help people, to obey one’s superiors, to be peaceful, to do one’s own work, not simply because these acts were expedient but because they expressed a transcendental purpose. It was proper both to respect other people and to cultivate one’s own soul not because a pleasant personality entitled man to a better job or won him clever friends, but because God, who was truth per se and the expression of everything to be loved, had so ordained it.

I pointed out how philosophy, or let us say, reason, which during the Middle Ages had served religion, finally became emancipated. From that time, speculation took as its task the development of a doctrine of man and nature which could fulfill the same intellectual function, at least for the privileged sector of society, as religion had done in the past. Let us once again recall Spinoza. On his view, insight into the essence of reality, into the harmonious structure of the eternal universe, would necessarily evoke our love for this universe and all the aspects of nature in which it was manifested. His whole system may be said to present essential reality as identical to our own substance, and an object of inescapable love. Ethics for Spinoza is above all the attitude which necessarily follows from our insight into nature, not unlike the devotion to a person whose overwhelming kindness or beauty or genius we have been privileged to enjoy. The fears and petty passions unconnected with the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will, according to Spinoza, vanish once we gain a deep enough understanding of reality.

The other great rationalistic systems of the past, those of Descartes and Leibniz, for instance, share this emphasis on reason’s recognizing itself in the nature of things, and the right human attitude springing from such insight. This attitude is never absolutely the same for different individuals because the situation of each person is unique. There are the geographical and historical differences, as well as differences of age, sex, skill, social condition, etc. However, such insight is universal insofar as its logical connection with the attitude is considered to be transparent in principle for each imaginable subject endowed with intelligence. For the philosophy of reason, insight into the plight of an enslaved minority, for instance, might necessarily call a young man to fight for its liberation with arms, but would allow his father to stay at home and cultivate the land. Despite such difference in its consequences the logical nature of this insight is universal: it is felt to be intelligible for all people in general.

Although these rationalist philosophical systems did not fully gain the recognition formerly accorded to religion, they were appreciated as efforts to record the meaning and exigencies of reality and to present truths valid and binding for everybody. Their authors thought that the lumen naturale, natural insight or the light of reason, was sufficient not only to explain the origin, causes, and consequences of events, but also to penetrate so deeply into creation as to provide us with the keys for harmonizing our lives with our natures. They retained God, but not grace, they thought that for all purposes of theoretical knowledge and practical decisions men could do without any lumen supernaturale (supernatural light). Reason was supposed to be strong enough to synchronize our lives with the truth discoverable in objective reality.

What I have called the formalization of reason is the abandonment by reason of this belief in its own power. Today, the ideas traditionally connected with the idea of reason, such as subject and object, mind and cause, substance and appearance, eternity and being as such have been rendered obsolete by scientific development. Yet, it is science which in the minds of the advanced part of the population reports the truth. I should like at this point to make clear that I am not trying to identify all the doctrines of the positivist school of philosophy with the positivist spirit at large in the world today, or that I wish to hold the positivist philosophy responsible for the cultural shortcomings of modern society. I do, however, regard this school of thought and particularly its most radical wing, so-called logical empiricism, as the most articulate expression of contemporary habits of belief and behavior. Its nominalism is the key to understanding the problems of the modern mind. The metaphysical teaching that rational insight into things is identical with the knowledge of what should be done with regard to them is discredited. The only task that seems to be left for theory is to invent methods by which one can forecast what people will perceive at a given time and under given circumstances. In the context of such calculation all general concepts are considered to be mere instruments. Reason’s role has been reduced to the clever coordination of means and ends. The ends themselves have been left to personal choice and predilection.

I have said that this cultural trend was closely linked to social processes such as urbanization, the development of the means of communication, and the growth of the industrial sector of our economy. I admitted that I felt unable to indicate a philosophical program which could overcome the difficulties arising from the intellectual situation which I have been describing. The difficulty consisted in the utter separation of all the guiding ideals of Western Civilization from any theoretical foundation. The terminology connected with such ideals may be widely used, even more than in former days; the creed of the faith of the great masses of people who have been brought up to respect these ideals may appear to be unshaken, yet something has changed. The ideals have lost their roots in anything which might be called truth. They have become mere tastes.

I have been reminded that there is a concept in American philosophy which gives us the promise of leading us out of the impasse. This concept is that of experience notably in the form in which it has been described by professor Dewey. Indeed, I recognize that the theory of experience, as it has been recently developed, proves definitely that the difficulties of which we are speaking are intensely felt in this country. Although, as far as I can see, the desperate cultural situation has not yet been quite sufficiently analyzed, I find that the modern concept of experience contains at least the protest against the formalization of which we are speaking. In Mr. Dewey’s book on Experience and Nature we read the following: “The value of experience for the philosopher is that it serves as constant reminder of something which is neither exclusive and isolated subject or object, matter or mind, nor yet one plus the other.” (p. 28) “Experience,” says Mr. Dewey, “denotes both the field, the sun and clouds and rain, seeds, and harvest, and the man who labors, who plans, invents, uses, suffers, and enjoys… experience is history; and the taking of some objects as final is itself an episode in history.” (pp. 28-29) Mr. Dewey could certainly tell us that his idea of experience can overcome the purely subjectivistic concept of reason which we have found implicit in the positivistic attitude. He would repeat that he once replied to Mr. Reichenbach: “If the things of experience are produced, as they are according to my theory, by interaction of organism and environing conditions, then as nature’s own foreground they are not a barrier, mysteriously set up between us and nature. Moreover, the organism—the self, the ‘subject’ of action,—is a factor within experience and not something outside of it to which experiences are attached as the self’s private property.” (Dewey, Philosophy, p. 532) The belief in experience as the ultimate unity which comprises both men and nature is supposed to lead simultaneously both to a “doctrine of humility” and a “doctrine of direction”: “For it tells us to open the eyes and ears of the mind, to be sensitive to all the varied phases of life and history.” (Experience and Nature, p. 12) “Intellectual piety toward experience is a precondition of the direction of life and of tolerant and generous cooperation among men.” (Experience and Nature, p. 39) If we go through the works of Mr. Dewey and his followers, we find that all the values, which, according to our own view are affected by the process of formalization, are not only supposed to be a part of experience, but to be guaranteed, sanctioned, and upheld by it. More than that: our reason for calling them values is said to lie in the fact that ultimately they serve or enhance experience. This holds true even for democracy. “Can we find any reason,” asks Mr. Dewey, “that does not ultimately come down to the belief that the democratic social arrangements promote a better quality of human experience, one which is more widely accessible and enjoyed than do non-democratic and anti-democratic forms of social life? Does not the principle of regard for individual freedom and for decency and kindliness of human relations come back in the end to the conviction that these things are tributary to a higher quality of experience on the part of a greater number than are methods of repression and coercion or force?” (Experience and Education, p. 25)

This philosophy of experience recalls the early doctrine of Bergson. Both, indeed, may be said to stem from similar intellectual needs. By the beginning of this century belief in objective reason had been undermined. All general concepts were more or less degraded into mere instruments in the scientific process. Therefore, the philosopher wished to find some other being or entity which could give a meaning to human activity. Mr. Dewey calls this entity experience. It is perhaps due to my own inability to understand this concept—I should be most grateful if the ensuing discussion were to help me overcome this difficulty—that I must make the same critical judgment which once brought me Bergson’s personal acknowledgment that although he could not agree with me, he felt that it was the most lively and pertinent objection which he had yet encountered. Experience seems to mean just everything—perception and reason, man and nature, individuals and institutions. It seems simply to be identical with the intellectual as well as with the physical universe. We may well compare it to Hegel’s concept of being in general, which he himself, as you know, found so utterly abstract, so futile that he identified it with the concept of nothing. In order to give it meaning one must concretize it by a philosophical method, for instance, the dialectical one, which involves a definite concept of truth or reason. Even then, we might easily become victims of the danger which Hegel himself did not escape, namely, to deify that all-embracing process, however it may be called—be it nature, man, history, life or experience—and to say that what is real is reasonable and what is reasonable is real. Hegel’s thought, to be sure, is much more delicate and differentiated than the modern pantheistic philosophies of life and experience. Experience, as it appears in quotations given before, is chaotic, does not speak, but remains mute. If we want to differentiate between the good and bad in experience, we have to formulate a criterion which permits us to do so. We might, for instance, develop a eudaimonistic doctrine and pretend that the experiences which are agreeable to the individual, which make him feel happy, are good and the painful ones are bad. Or else we might decree that the experience of the beautiful is paramount and that in order to enable an elite in society to produce art and to enjoy it we might well accept an economic set-up which enslaves the greater part of a nation, or, if a whole nation were the elite, then the greater part of the globe. But such criteria would simply be arbitrary. There would be no rational reason for preferring one to the other.

Mr. Dewey’s implication that experience itself sustains the belief that democracy promotes “a better quality of human experience,” that the principles of regard for individual freedom, decency and kindliness are indeed higher qualities of experience, are, I am sorry to say, convincing only if they are granted in advance, that is to say, in a democracy. Not only the ordinary men but outstanding philosophers of other periods would testify to the contrary. Mr. Dewey’s assumptions would be denied by the British empiricist Hobbes no less than by the Italian positivist Pareto, and I do not know by how many contemporary Americans. The simple contention, that any political institution is tributary to a higher quality of experience on the part of a greater number, is based either on the kind of insight which Mr. Dewey and his followers repeatedly decry, or on some other theoretical process which his philosophy usually considers as metaphysical. Or it is simply naivete. The argument that we know by experience that the rule of conquerors has wrought mischief in the world and has finally failed is based upon a highly doubtful induction. The Jews overwhelmed the aborigines of Canaan and wrote the Bible. The Greeks annihilated the Pelasgians and a great culture was born. Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Europe, and her future might have been brighter if she had not been liberated by Bleucher and Wellington. It is true, Hitler will have failed—but since when is success a criterion of civilization? Induction, even if it is really scientific and not as crude as the examples we have mentioned, is not sufficient to support theoretically or philosophically any scale of preference. In short, the “experiential or denotative method” (Experience and Nature, p. 16), as Mr. Dewey calls his philosophical procedure, finally boils down to a more or less popular or common-sense use of scientific thinking and everything which we have said about the latter goes for his philosophy.

We started our animadversions by assuming that the word experience meant everything. It might be replied, however, that the term is more differentiated, indicating something like perception, like immediate sense-data, or certain primitive realities of life. The word seems to be used sometimes in a universal, and sometimes in a specific sense, sometimes with the connotation of l’evolution creatrice in general, sometimes with the connotation of duree in particular. It may also mean, to quote Mr. Dewey again, “the things that force us to labor, that satisfy needs, that surprise us with beauty, that compel obedience under penalty”—in short, the world as it is. (Experience and Nature, p. 16) But apart from the fact that such varying usage makes it very difficult to grasp its precise meaning, it again becomes apparent that Mr. Dewey deifies something which is mute in itself, that is mere existence, instead of trying to read the message which nature or history may convey to us. This was the task which, justifiably or unjustifiably, the great philosophies tried to achieve. The present intellectual situation is the consequence of their failure. If you ask me, as you did last time, what solution I propose, I must again confess that I am unable to answer. The slight contribution I might make would demand an occasion other than these five lectures. This is because it could not be effected by pointing to simple, although venerable and important concepts, such as experience, or life, or will, or being. If we cannot do better, we should rather stick to ‘God.’

The objections which I had expected to be raised against my analysis last time were different from those which I have just noted. I am going to raise them myself because they will lead us directly to today’s topic. One objection might be that there is a force which may well outweigh the formalization of reason in creating the current impasse in the basic concepts of our civilization. This force is tradition. After all, we know very well that there is a whole group of ideas we were taught to love, cherish and respect from our earliest childhood to the moment of our death. These ideas and all the judgments and theoretical views which are usually connected with them are not justified by reason alone but also by tradition. Therefore, it appears that they cannot be affected by the formalization of reason, by its transformation into a mere instrument. They draw their strength from reverence for the past, from men who have given their lives in its name, from the respect we owe to the founders of the few enlightened nations of our time. But does not this objection strengthen rather than weaken our contention? It exposes the purely traditional character of our values—values that were once grounded in living insights. The fathers of our civilization, in contrast to later generations, in contrast also to the common-sense philosophy of today, believed in the objectivity of their concepts, believed that they were grounded in the nature of things. I do not mean to say that they were all conscious of the philosophical implications of their creed. Probably this was true of only a part of them, but of a very important part. Still, the conviction of the heroes of the American and French revolutions, that men are endowed with certain rights, was neither a slogan nor a repetition of traditional beliefs. Such a conviction was part of a living philosophy, rooted in that idea of reason which was the core of French seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy. It was the same idea of reason, as we saw before, that emerged in the dawn of our era from the conflict between religion and politics, and which is inherited from the classical culture and its concept of logos. These pathfinders of modern mind did not derive what is good from the law, which, in a way, they broke, but they tried to reconcile the law with the good. Their role in history did not permit them simply to adapt their words and actions to the text of documents already in effect, or to generally accepted doctrines. It was they who created these documents, and brought about their acceptance. Today, these concepts are accepted as things which are already in effect and to which one has to adapt himself as to a pattern possessing an authority which is overwhelming by virtue of both the number of people who believe in it and to the length of time it has existed.

Contemporary philosophy no longer attributes any logical foundation to these beliefs though they survive in the public mind, their vital roots are affected, as it were, by a kind of illness. This illness is the formalization of reason. We should not take this too lightly. Whole nations, and I am not thinking of Germany alone, seem to have awoken one morning to discover that their most cherished ideals were merely bubbles and spleen.

The contention that tradition saves our most cherished ideals from decay often involves another implication—that there is a principle which may well replace the idea of objective reason: the principle of majority. Since people are, after all, the best judges of their own interests, the resolutions of majority are certainly as valuable to a community as the verdicts of a so-called superior reason.—This statement and the theory behind it contain a most interesting logical contradiction: insofar as it tends to discard objective reason, it must either itself appeal to such reason or become a mere credo. We all know that there is no empirical method of proving the majority principle. Despite this logical difficulty, or perhaps because of it, the belief in majority expresses a great truth—but this truth, in order to be understood, must be developed. What does it mean to say “a man knows his own interests best”,—how does he gain this knowledge, and what is the evidence that this knowledge is correct? If we meditate about these questions, we find that in this proposition—“a man knows best…”—there is an implicit reference to an agency in man which is not totally arbitrary and incidental—some sort of reason underlying not only means but ends as well. If that agency should again turn out to be nothing but the majority, the whole argument would constitute a vicious circle. The great tradition in philosophy which took part in laying the foundations of modern democracies did not become involved in this discussion, for it based the principle of majority upon more or less metaphysical assumptions. For instance that each human being, in a way, was an incarnation of moral autonomy. In other words, respect for the majority was based on convictions which did not themselves depend on the resolutions of the majority. Rousseau, for instance, almost unconsciously invokes reason itself. This became quite clear when he declared the renunciation of liberty to be void because “such a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man; and it would mean that his actions would be deprived of all morality and his will deprived of all liberty.” (I, 4) Rousseau knew very well that the renunciation of liberty was not against the empirical nature of man; he himself criticized individuals, groups and nations very bitterly for actually renouncing their freedoms. He referred to the rational essence rather than to a psychological attitude. His whole doctrine of the social contract is derived from a philosophical doctrine of man according to which the principle of majority rather than that of power corresponds to human nature as it is described in speculative thinking.

If a rational foundation for the principle for majority is lacking, the rule of the majority becomes exclusively dependent upon the so-called interests of people. As long as people find this principle practically useful, i.e., a good means to a social aim which corresponds to their wishes, they will find it reasonable.—In the period of the free market system, for instance, at a time when our economy was controlled not so much by big corporations as by a multitude of smaller business men, many of these may have accepted the principle of majority as a good instrument for controlling the government, maintaining peace, getting protection. If, in a changed economic situation, the interest of these businessmen comes into opposition with the interests of powerful economic forces, such as monopolies, there is not the slightest intellectual objection to be made against these forces if they abolish the principle of majority and set up a dictatorship. If they have a real chance of success, they would simply be foolish not to take it. The only concern which could prevent them from doing so would be the possibility that their own interests would be endangered, not the violation of a truth of reason. They stick to facts and verifiable statements about facts. Moral values, however, cannot be verified by scientific procedures and therefore they are considered arbitrary. The statement that dictatorship is bad is scientifically valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries.

Here I want to say some words about evidence and majority. It seems to me completely unimportant for the logical aspect of value judgments whether the evidence is public or private. Publicity of intellectual procedures, be they scientific or philosophical, is a very good thing. Indeed, the habit of framing the working hypotheses which are recognized by science in such a way as to be verifiable by any member of our culture marks a milestone in human progress. However, this does not prevent public consensus in many practical and theoretical instances from lacking any element of truth. A community may accept not only by majority but even unanimously certain doctrines of man, nature, God, and society, and they may still be false or perverted from the logical point of view. The one man who is considered mad and placed in an insane asylum or put to death because he has shocked all decent people may be right. The reason is that despite science’s well-justified habit of formulating its assumptions in such a way that they can be checked by everyone, consensus is, after all, a highly formalistic criterion of truth. The substantial criterion would be the apprehension in itself. There are many things in heaven and earth to which the average member of our society may be blind by education, habit or interest.

What I should like to discuss today is the relationship between man and nature as it results from the formalization of reason. We shall speak first of the specific intellectual requirements imposed on the individual by modern economic life. He has to discipline himself not in order to gain eternal life but to stand the pressure of monopolized society. In this context we shall treat the concepts of change and novelty. Later on, we shall speak about our relationship to nature as an outcome of human relationships. Ruthless domination of nature is an expression of culture in its latest stage. All this I must survey more sketchily than I planned since I have already devoted a considerable part of this lecture to answering objections.

The end towards which the process of formalization moves has previously been described as ruthless self-preservation. A man whose actions do not spring from any real insight into some kind of objective truth eventually becomes a mere function of social forces. If he wants to survive, he has to transfer himself into an apparatus which responds at every moment with just the appropriate reaction to the intriguing and difficult situations which constitute his life. No doubt, this has been true for the entire history of mankind. One may be tempted to say that civilization is the gradual overcoming of natural selection by rational action. In the former, the survival of the species depends on the fact that specimens are naturally endowed with relatively well-adapted organs and attitudes. In the latter, survival or, let us say, success depends on the individual’s own will and decision to develop such attitudes as will enable him to respond to the pressure exercised upon him by society. However, the character of the individual’s intellectual and psychological resources to fulfill social demands has varied with the means of material production. The life of a Dutch peasant or craftsman in the seventeenth century or of a shop owner in the eighteenth was certainly much less secure than the life of a modern employee or mechanic. But the great progress which we have made has placed new pressures upon each individual. The greater initiative which is needed in practically all walks of life demands at the same time a greater ability to adapt oneself to changing conditions. Everyone must be ready to do whatever new things the situation demands. This does not mean that these new things are really new. If a medieval artisan—let us assume that it could be done—were to adopt another craft, it would certainly involve a more radical change than should be the case today if the mechanic becomes successively manager of an insurance company, a salesman, and, finally, a bureaucrat. It is well-known that economic progress equalizes all manipulations in industry and commerce and by that very fact makes it easier to change from one post to another. This is one of the material bases for socialist theory and practice.

This leveling is true not only for manual labor, but for intellectual work as well. Today, we learn in school the many combinations which are possible with a series of set plots, and the successful writer is he who is most expert in making use of the various schemes. These schemes have been synchronized to a certain degree with the requirements of other agencies of mass culture, particularly those of the motion picture industry. The heterogeneity of the various cultural spheres and with it the idea of the radically new is vanishing. The piece of fiction is regularly conceived with its film possibilities in mind, the symphony with consideration of its propaganda value. But the fact that the transition from one activity to another becomes easier does not mean that the ensuring of self-preservation leaves more time to intelligence for metaphysics or other deviations. On the contrary, the necessity to be alert every second of one’s life, and the urge to conform have grown tremendously. The more devices we have invented to dominate nature, the more we must serve these devices in order to survive.

For the average man self-preservation has become identical with the ability to obey automatically the commands of changing situations. Reason itself becomes identified with this kind of ability. It might appear that we had a much freer choice today than in the past, and in a certain sense this is correct. Our freedom has increased tremendously with the increase in our capacity to produce commodities. A modern worker has a much greater selection of consumer goods than a nobleman in the ancien regime. This is a great thing which we should not consider of minor historical or human importance; but before we identify this increase in our choices with an increase in freedom, as some do, we should also see the pressure connected with this increase and the change in quality of this new kind of choice. By pressure I mean the constant coercion which social conditions exercise upon everybody. By change in the quality of choice I mean the difference between a craftsman of the old type, who selected the proper tool for a delicate piece of work, and the rapid deliberation of the modern worker as to which of the innumerable levers or switches he must pull. I have often thought about the different degrees of freedom involved in driving a horse carriage, let us say, a victoria, and a modern automobile. The first thing we have to take into consideration is, of course, the social progress expressed by the automobile. The percentage of automobile owners is very much higher than was the percentage of carriage owners. Second, there is greater spread and general efficiency, less need of personal attendance and perhaps even less danger than in driving horses. However, the enhanced freedom which we gain seems to change its character. Quantity changes into quality. It looks as though not we but the innumerable laws and signs and commands with which we have to comply were driving the car. It is not only the motor, but there is the regulated speed, the warnings to drive slowly, to stop, to stay within certain sections of the road, even the image of the curve which tells us how to follow it. In fact, our spontaneity is transformed into an attitude in which we discard every reaction, emotion, image or thought which might disturb our alertness to the anonymous demands assailing us.

The change which I have tried to illustrate by this example is typical of most branches of our culture. Compare the methods of persuasion used by the traditionalist businessman with the modern system of advertising, the neon signs, and mammoth placards and radio loudspeakers. Behind the words of such appeals we read an invisible text. It proclaims the power of the companies which are able to pay for this luxurious ugliness. By the very fact that the expensiveness of this idiotic baby-talk of advertisement, to which nothing is sacred, has become the entrance fee which an enterprise must pay when it goes to the market, the small newcomer is defeated before he starts. The invisible text proclaims also the interconnection and agreements between the dominant companies and finally the concentrated power of the economic apparatus as a whole. It is impossible to lose sight of the fact that, although there is a choice, the offers are skillfully synchronized. One does not get a penny’s worth too much for one’s money in either case. The difference in quality between two brands for which you pay the same price is as infinitesimal as the difference in the nicotine content of two kinds of cigarettes. The tested evidence for this difference is dinned into your head by posters illuminated by a thousand bulbs, by loudspeakers and whole pages of newsprint, as though it were a revelation changing the course of the world instead of an illusory fraction which does not make a real difference, even if you are silly enough to smoke a hundred cigarettes a day.—And don’t think that people cannot read this secret language, the language of power. They understand and adapt themselves. In Europe there were countries in which the surface differences boasted by the advertisement industry vanished completely. But what people had learned from it became very clear, namely, to adapt themselves quickly to existing power-relations, to read between the lines, to have just that kind of reaction which enables one to fit into the economic, social, political set-up. Before people learned to give up their political independence they had already learned to regard forms of government as another pattern to which one had to conform, in the same way as they conformed in their reactions to a mechanical apparatus in the workshop, or the rules of the road. No doubt, all this was also true to a certain extent in the past; the difference lies in the tempo, in the degree to which this attitude has permeated the whole being of people, and affected their power to think spontaneously.

We all know the story in which the child, looking up at the night sky from the balcony, asks his father: “Daddy, what is the moon supposed to advertise?” This anecdote is symbolic of what has happened to the relationship between man and nature in the era of formalized reason. On the one hand, nature has been completely stripped of any value or meaning in itself. On the other hand, man in society has become a pure self or, in the terms of our last lecture, a kind of dynamic center, consciously transforming everything in its reach into a means for its own preservation. Every word or sentence which pretends to express relationships other than pragmatic ones appears as a mere veil or haze. Whenever a thing, a feeling, an attitude, a person, is supposed to be respected or loved for its bare being, we think either of poetry, a sentimental escapade, or sales-talk. We have grown more honest than were our forefathers in the 19th century. At that time, idealism glorified the materialistic practices of society by means of a high-sounding vocabulary. That has become obsolete in our day, in which the voice inviting one to have a feeling for nature, or for the higher things in life such as art, friendship, or religion, is exactly the same as the voice inviting one to join the nation in using Ivory Flakes. And not only is the pamphlet which teaches one how to improve one’s speech, how to understand music, or how to be saved by Christ, written in the same style and announced in the same manner as the one which praises the advantages of Ex-Lax. Indeed, it may be the identical expert who has written the various texts. In the highly developed division of labor expression has become an instrument used by technicians in the service of industry. It once was the endeavor of culture, of art, literature, and philosophy to express the meaning of things and life, to become the voice of all that is dumb, to endow nature with an organ to express what it suffers, or we might say, to call reality by its name. Today, we have done the contrary. We have deprived nature of language. Essentially, each expression, word, cry or gesture has a connection with what it expresses. Today, words are signs or means, they serve a purpose. If we have a feeling, if we meditate upon something, we are immediately disturbed as to the use of any such impulses, and if we look at the horizon we may not actually ask ourselves what the moon is supposed to advertise but we cannot avoid thinking of it in terms of ballistics or aerial miles.

Newspaper clippings from: MHA Na [653], S. [376]-[377].

The conclusion which we draw from these facts is that man’s relation to nature is to a great extent the outcome of human relationships in society.¹⁵⁰ Naturally, the converse holds true as well. We know from history that different epochs are characterized by different methods of production. As long as the means of production are primitive, the forms of social organization are primitive. The undeveloped weapons of the Polynesian tribe are an expression of the fact that nature’s pressure is still direct and overwhelming. Their social organization is the immediate outcome of their material needs. The old people, who are weaker than the younger ones, but have more experience, lay plans for hunting, the building of suspension bridges, the choosing of a campsite, and so on. The younger people must obey. The bloody magical rites serve partly to initiate the youngsters, to inculcate a tremendous respect for the power of the priest and the elders. The women are weaker than the men and cannot take part in hunting. They have to collect plants and shellfish, and are not permitted to participate in preparing and eating the big game. The forms of domination are so to speak dictated by man’s relation to nature,—want is the origin of culture. This was already known to Democritus of Abdera, and what goes for the primitive stages of humanity is true for the later ones. The kinds of weapons or machines which man uses in the various stages of his development call for certain forms of command and obedience, certain forms of cooperation and subordination, and thus are also effective in bringing about certain legal, artistic, and religious forms. Groups of people who have to live on wild game hunting or on war will develop different relationships towards each other, towards man and animals than will agricultural populations or collectors of plants.

All this is familiar. But our analysis teaches us in addition that the forms of social organization themselves generate different ways of seeing nature, and of dealing with it. My point is that mankind during its long history has at times acquired such freedom from the immediate pressure of nature that relatively independent forms of thinking have arisen. Man was able to think about nature and reality without consciously or unconsciously thinking of self-preservation. These forms which Aristotle described as theoretical contemplation were particularly cultivated in philosophy. The philosophical approach aimed at an insight which was not intended to serve useful calculations but to understand nature in and for itself. This was the aim of speculative reason. No doubt, this activity was, from the economic point of view, a luxury possible only for a group of people exempt from hard labor, that is to say, possible only because of the existence of domination. Speculative thinking in the past as well as the existence of whole groups of intellectuals, of whom Plato and Aristotle are the first great spokesmen, is due to the very domination from which they tried to emancipate themselves in their ideas. The involuntary traces of this paradoxical situation can be discovered in the analysis of past systems of thought. Today, however, the dominated masses no longer regard the speculative mind and insight with superstitious admiration. They no longer believe in the superiority of the intellectual. On the contrary. This is certainly progress. But on the other hand, there seems to be almost no occasion in our civilization for fulfilling this intellectual function at all. Everyone, the intellectual no less than the non-intellectual, must be content to bear the terrific pressure which economy exerts upon him, to satisfy the ever-changing demands of reality. Speculative reason, which looked to eternity, is superseded by pragmatic intelligence, which looks to the next moment. Nature—and this is only the other side of the same process—has completely lost its awesome aspect, it has lost its qualitates occultae, it is just material for us.

The modern insensitivity to nature is indeed only a variation of that practical attitude which is typical of Western Civilization in general. The forms are different. The earlier trapper saw in the prairies and mountains only the prospects of good hunting, and we see in the landscape an opportunity for the display of cigarette posters. The fate of animals in our world was symbolized by a news item which appeared about a year ago. It reported that the landings of our planes in Africa were often hampered by herds of elephants and other beasts. Animals are here considered simply as obstructors of traffic. We know that this mentality can be traced back to the first chapters of Genesis. The few precepts in favor of animals which we encounter in the Bible have been interpreted by the most outstanding religious thinkers, St. Paul, Thomas Aquinas, and Luther, as applying only to the moral education of man and having nothing to do whatsoever with any obligation of man toward other creatures. Only man’s soul can be saved. Animals have but the right to suffer. “Some men and women,” wrote a British Churchman a few years ago, “suffer and die for the life, the welfare, the happiness of others. This law is continually seen in operation. The supreme example of it was shown to the world (I write with reverence) on Calvary. Why should animals be exempted from the operation of this law or principle?” (W. p. 388). Pope Pius IX did not permit a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to be founded in Rome because, as he declared, Theology teaches that man owes no duty to any animal (389). Goering, it is true, created such societies, but his theology teaches that man owes no duty to man. I quote these instances only in order to show that I do not think that pragmatic reason is wholly new. Yet, the philosophy behind it, the idea that the highest intellectual faculty of man, reason, is simply an instrument for coordinating ends and means, has been formulated more clearly and accepted more generally today than ever before. Today, man’s powers are exhausted in the process of dominating both his own and external nature. But nature takes its revenge. Since the whole apparatus of domination functions without an aim set by reason, man at the highest stage of enlightenment falls back into the manifold of nature from which he has alienated himself so completely. Our advanced and articulated society at this final turning reverts again to chaotic nature, only more terrifying than nature ever was before.

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Re: “The Never-Ceasing War Between Men and Rats…” (Jan. 1946)

MHA Na [546], “Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal (und Umgebung, unter anderem […]) Band 15 (p. VI.18, 215-414) [1945-1946]” S. [320] 240r.

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III. Lecture [The Rebellion of Oppressed Nature and its Philosophical Manifestations]

In the last lecture we observed how the reservation of the function of reason to the coordination of means and ends issues in an ethic of mere self-preservation. Roughly speaking, we found that the use of reason and pursuit of self-preservation amounted to almost the same thing. If reason is declared ineligible to determine the ultimate aims of human life and must content itself with making an instrument out of anything which it encounters, its lone remaining goal is simply the perpetuation of its coordinating activity. The agency of coordination is called the self or the ego which I will today treat as synonyms. Those who recollect the drift of my opening lecture will realize that I use this term in a broader sense than Freud. For me, “self” involves both what he calls the ego and the super-ego. For the present purpose, you will permit me to suggest the consequences of this difference in definition through the medium of occasional illustrations rather than by ex professo argument.

It is very hard to describe precisely what the languages of the Western world have at any given time understood by this agency which endeavors to prevail in the fight against its own feelings, against other people in particular, and against nature in general.¹⁵¹ It is felt to be incarnate in man dominating, commanding, organizing. It seems to be manifested in the outstretched arm of the ruler, directing his men to march or dooming the culprit to execution. It is spiritual. It has the quality of a ray of light. In penetrating the darkness it startles the ghosts of belief and feeling, which prefer to lurk in the shadows. Historically, ot belongs preeminently to an age of hierarchy and of caste-privilege, marked by a cleft between intellectual and manual labor, between conquerors and conquered. Its dominance is patent in the patriarchal epoch. It could scarcely have played a decisive role in the matriarchal days—to recall the imaginings of Bachofen and Morgan—when Aphrodite presided over mankind.¹⁵² It is doubtful whether one may properly ascribe an ego or self to the ancient lowly at the base of the social pyramid.

One could write a history of Western Civilization in terms of the expansion of the ego through the underling’s interiorization of his master’s commands.¹⁵³ From this standpoint, the leader and the elite might be described as having effected coherence and, so to speak, logical connection among the various manipulations of daily life. They enforced continuity, regularity, and even uniformity in the productive process, primitive though it was. The ego within each subject became, as it were, the embodiment of the leader. It established coherence and rational nexus between the variegated experiences of different persons. Just as the leader arranges his men into foot-soldiers and mounted troops, just as he charts the future, so the ego classifies experiences in categories and species and plans the individual life. It was the French sociologist Durkheim who taught us that the hierarchical arrangement of primitive general concepts reflected the organization of the tribe and its power over the individual. He showed that the whole logical order, the grouping of concepts in terms of priority and posteriority, inferiority and superiority, and the marking out of their respective domains and limitations, mirror social relations and the division of labor. At no time have the notion of self and the character of self-assertion shed the traces of their origin in social domination. Even such sublime versions as Descartes’ doctrine of the ego betray embarrassing analogies to coercive situations. One has only to recall Gassendi’s objections to the Meditations, wherein he pokes fun at the notion of a little spirit, namely ego, which from its well-concealed citadel in the brain, arcem in cerebro tenens, or as we should say, receiving-and-sending station in the brain, edits the reports of the senses and issues its orders to the various parts of the body.

It is most instructive to follow Descartes’ efforts to find a place for this ego which is not in nature but remains close enough to nature to influence it. Its first concern is to dominate the passions, that is to say, nature, insofar as it makes itself felt in our own person.¹⁵⁴ The ego is authorized to be indulgent to agreeable and wholesome emotions but is directed to be stern with anything which induces sadness. Its central concern must be to keep our emotions from influencing our judgments. Mathematics, crystal clear, imperturbable and self-subsistent, best expresses this austere agency. The ego dominates nature. To describe its aims save in terms of its own indefinite persistence would be to pollute it by nature. In Descartes’ philosophy this antagonism between the ego and nature appears somewhat softened by his traditional Catholicism. In the systems of Leibniz and Kant, it becomes outspoken. In Fichte’s early doctrine, which considers the whole world as having its only raison d’etre in offering a field of activity for the imperious transcendental self, it runs wild. The whole universe becomes an instrument of the ego which, itself, has no other content, substance, or meaning but its boundless activity. Modern positivism and instrumentalism have cut adrift from such metaphysical moorings. Nevertheless, this orientation is still to be detected in certain categories of the newer schools. The antagonism between an abstract self as undisputed master and a nature stripped of inherent meaning is obscured by such floating absolutes as progress, success, happiness, and experience. These absolutes seem to affect a reconciliation of the two abstract poles. But the tenuousness of the compromise is evident the moment we consider either positivist epistemology or the achievements of positivist mentality in the world at large.

If time permits, we will return to these problems in a subsequent session. Today, it is our task to ask: how does nature, in all its oppressed states, inside and outside the human being, react to [the] ego’s domination? What are the psychological, political, and philosophical manifestations of its revolt? Is it possible to reconcile the two antagonists by a return to nature, by a revival of old doctrines, or by the creation of new mythologies? After a preliminary word on modern psychological theories, I propose, in reply to the foregoing questions, to show that Fascism and National Socialism are, in the language of these lectures, rebellions of nature against civilization. In this context, I shall treat a philosophical doctrine which seems to defend nature against spiritualistic misinterpretation: the thought of Darwin. In conclusion, I shall venture a few words on the oriental solution, which minimizes the value of man’s desire to master nature and urges his re-absorption into the transcendental unity of all things.

As we have seen, the doctrine of the non-naturalness of reason is the most radical theoretical expression of man’s domination of nature. It is the climax of reason’s pursuit of self-preservation and of its claim of immunity to the frailties of nature. But, ironically, it is in this very impulse to survive at all costs that reason reveals itself as an aspect of nature. For its fear of being effaced has its roots in the natural urge to live, and to preserve and to expand those social mechanisms which seem profitable. To put it into a formula: reason as the principle of domination is itself nature; in fact, it marks the very life of spirit; and the domination of nature by reason is essentially a reenactment within the human sphere of what has taken place in the extra-human one. Yet spirit claims priority over nature and demands submission. Each human being is confronted with this paradoxical situation as an infant. To the child, the father’s power seems irresistible, something supernatural. The father’s command is reason exempt from nature, the overwhelming spiritual force. The child suffers in submitting to this force. It is almost impossible for an adult to remember what pangs he experienced as a child in obeying innumerable parental prohibitions; against exposing his tongue, against mimicking others, against uncleanliness and irregularities in discharging his body functions. In these petty demands, the infant confronts the root postulates of civilization. He is forced to resist the immediate pressure of his urges, to differentiate between himself and the environment, to adopt the methods of rational labor, to assume an ego, and, to borrow Freud’s terminology, to adopt a super-ego, embodying all the so-called moral principles upheld by the father and other father-like agencies. The child does not recognize the motive for all these demands. He obeys lest he be scolded or punished, lest he lose the love of his parents, which he so deeply craves. But the displeasure attached to submission persists and he develops a deep hostility against the father, which is eventually translated into resentment against civilization itself. Frustration is the mother of aggression. But the hatred of civilization is not only an irrational projection of internal psychological difficulties into the external world (as it is interpreted in some psychoanalytical writings). What the adolescent discovers in the painful years of puberty is, above all, how closely tied, how nearly identical are reason, self, domination, and nature. His ensuing rebellion is directed against the fact that what assumed an air of Godliness, of aloofness from nature, of infinite superiority, reveals itself as the rule of the stronger, or of the smarter, a human, all-too-human set-up.

There are two paths open to one who has made this discovery: protest or submission. The protestant will stand out against the conflict between the ideality of truth and the irrationalities of existence. Rather than sacrifice the claim of truth by conforming to prevailing standards, he will insist on expressing in his life as much of the truth as he can, both in theory and in practice. His must be a life of conflict, involving the risk of utter loneliness. But the irrational hostility which heedlessly projects inner difficulties upon the external world, is overcome in him by a passion to fulfill what the father represented in his childish imagination—namely, the truth. Though in adolescence he would be conscious of the infinite discrepancy between truth and existence or, to return to the refrain of this lecture, between the self’s aspiration to ideality, represented in the claim to be above nature, and the self as it really is, he would not dismiss the ideal as a utopian extravagance. He would not shrink from persistently confronting reality with truth, from unveiling the antagonism between the cultural ideals and the actualities of civilization. His criticism itself, theoretical and practical, would be a reassertion in a negative mode of the positive faith he had avowed as a child. His positive faith would be manifested explicitly in his humanistic endeavors for the improvement of the existing state of affairs.

Now to the second path, the one chosen by the greater part of society. Most people never overcome the habit of projecting their wrath onto the external world. They are never rationally reconciled to civilization. Instead, they bow to it; they accept the identity of reason and domination, of civilization and the ideal. They reject all vague intimations of a conflict between truth and existence. They either willingly embrace or force themselves to accept the rule of the stronger as the eternal norm.

In either case, their whole life witnesses a continuous effort to suppress the call of nature, whether inner or outer, and to identify themselves with the more powerful surrogates of nature which are called by the names of race, fatherland, leader and tradition. For them, all these words mean the same thing: the irresistible reality which has to be venerated and obeyed. However, their own natural impulses, those which are antagonistic to the various forms of labor in civilization, are leading a devious undercover life in their minds.

Accident will not suffice to explain the individual choice of path or solution. Whether one overcomes disillusionment by grimly or joyfully, as the case may be, taking the tension between truth and existence as one’s point of departure, or betrays truth by conforming to reality, is itself partly the function of the historical situation. The permeation of civilization by the process of the formalization of reason, which today stands revealed as testimony to the tendency of mankind to choose the path of least resistance, in this case, the second path, makes it ever more difficult for any individual to evade this kind of resignation. We shall hear more about this next time.

Now, let us attack the question from another angle. What do we mean by the rebellion of oppressed nature against reason or civilization? To understand this, I suggest that we consider the mimetic impulses of the child, his insistence on imitating everybody and everything he encounters. Psychologists tell us that this impulse is the most decisive element in the learning process, particularly in those early and all-but unconscious stages of personal development which determine the individual’s eventual character, his modes of reaction, and general behavior patterns. It is by way of the mimetic faculty that a human being acquires his special manner of laughing and crying, of speaking and judging. Only in the later phases of childhood is this unconscious mimesis subordinated to conscious imitation and rational methods of learning. This explains why, for instance, the gestures, the intonation of the voice, the degree and kind of irritability, the gait, in short, all the allegedly natural characteristics of a so-called race seem to be hereditary long after the environmental causes for these characteristics have disappeared. We may still be struck by the suggestion of anxiety in the reactions and gestures of a powerful financier or head of amusement trust who happens to descend from a people which had been persecuted through the centuries. This is because the individual acquires his mannerisms by a process which is almost free of rational control. His modes of expression are less than the fruit of planned education than the traces of floating history.

The problem of mimesis has special urgency in the present crisis. Civilization starts with, but must come to transcend and transvaluate man’s native mimetic impulses. That way lies progress. To give free rein to cravings for infantile modes of mimesis is to embrace nihilism. Is this not illustrated on a grand scale in the career of totalitarian Europe? To make this clear, it needs to be recalled that the cultural development, as a whole, as well as individual education, both the phylogenetic and the ontogenetic processes of civilization, consist to a great extent in the conversion of mimetic into rational attitudes. The magical practices of primitives are supplanted by rational forms of production and this process is repeated in the bringing up of the individual. Uncontrolled mimesis, that is to say, mimesis which has not been transformed into organized working practices for a definite comprehended purpose, is silly and must be reprimanded. One might well define the self or the ego as the agency which directs the mimetic urge into the channel of rational activity. The ego functions as an agency inside man in the same way as the father-surrogates function from the outside. If it is completely internalized so that no credence is given to a truth or objective reason which makes the renunciation of mimesis a conscious act in the service of a beloved and justified aim, if, to return to our metaphor, our second path triumphs, man becomes an apparatus of repression, who has no meaning as such, but is simply a product of internalized domination. Western religions, Judaism and Christianity, no less than great traditions in philosophy, were efforts to make this overcoming of primitive urges meaningful, to turn them from blind resignation into acts of understanding and hope. It does not seem that modern nationalism has been able to assure to the great masses the vital faith which religion had provided them. The reinstatement of Catholicism, by Napoleon for instance, indicates that his political and social program was not recognized by the instincts of the masses as a truth which rationally justified the painful abdication of natural urges. Although the people of France were willing again and again to die for their Emperor and fatherland, deep down they did not feel that his celebrated social reform contained sufficient hope to live with.

But let us return to man’s natural mimetic impulses. If the promise of its final satisfaction is not translated into other-worldly or secular hopes accepted by the total personality as its eventual fulfillment,—in the Kingdom of Heaven and the Utopias of this world are we not all to be as little children?—if there is no other norm than the persistence of the status quo, that is to say, the retention of repressive agencies, this impulse is never really transcended. It is always present, ready to break out as mere destructive force. It looks only for a pretext by which its expression can be synchronized with the network of existing power relations. The ordinary man readily identifies himself with the repressing agency. Indeed, in its service alone is he given free rein to indulge his imperious mimetic impulse. Anyone who has attended a National Socialist meeting knows that the chief thrill which the actors and audience derive from it is provided by the activation of mimetic drives. This is nonetheless true if the mimesis is not indulged in its own right for the pleasures which it affords, but asserts itself deviously in the fury and ridicule directed against the racial enemies who are claimed to have allowed themselves an impudent exemption from mimetic inhibition. The high spots of such an assembly are the moments in which the speaker impersonates a Britisher, a Frenchman, a Negro, or a Jew. The caricature is itself a desperate resort to mimesis. He imitates those whom he wants to see destroyed. His impersonations create a wild hilarity of the sort which appears whenever a forbidden natural urge is permitted to assert itself without fear of being reprimanded by the repressing agency.

There is a deep anthropological affinity between hilarity, fury, and imitation which nobody has more ingeniously described than Victor Hugo in the unforgettable scene in the English Parliament in his novel The man who laughs (L’Homme qui rit). Is it not a commonplace to say that the prominent modern demagogues behave in their speeches like naughty boys? Is it not customary in this country to describe them as ham actors with inexplicable appeal to the masses? Think of Goebbels. His general appearance and oratorical gifts are caricatures of the Jewish salesman, whose liquidation he advocates. Is Mussolini much better than a provincial prima donna or a comic opera corporal of the guard? Indeed, Hitler’s bag of tricks seems almost to have been stolen from Charlie Chaplin. Der Führer’s abrupt and exaggerated gestures are reminiscent of Chaplin’s tin types of strong men in the first slapstick comedies. All of the leaders behave like unruly boys who are normally reprimanded, repressed by their parents, teachers, or by some other civilizing agency. The impact of these demagogues on the audience, I am compelled to assert, seems to me partly due to the fact that by impersonating those repressed urges they fly in the face of civilization and lead the rebellion of nature. Let us not imagine that their protest is genuine and naive. The purpose of their clowning is never out of their minds. Their constant aim is to tempt rebelling nature to march in the ranks of the forces of repression by which it is to be crushed.

Let us analyze this situation a little more thoroughly. One does not become a prophet of doom by observing that Western civilization has never had more than limited success with great masses of men. Indeed, recent events prove that when the crisis sets in, culture can count on few of its self-proclaimed devotees to exemplify its ideals, to bear their cross. For the one man who succeeds in distinguishing truth from existence in the spirit of the major religions and philosophical systems, there are thousands who have never been able to transcend their mimetic and other archaic urges. This, I must insist in the teeth of the latest philosophical fashions, is not simply the fault of the masses. It is an expression of the fact that for the greater part of humanity, civilization has meant and still means submission to domination, that is to say, slavery, serfdom, and poverty. This fact has left its impress even upon rulers. All this means that the overwhelming majority of the people do not deal with their inner nature as something which has to be understood and transformed in the light of its own ideality, but they treat it brutally and spitefully, with the blind domination which in their own self has supplanted truth and hope. Even though they may welcome friendliness and politeness in daily life, even though they may deceive themselves completely about their own existential situation, power is the only thing they secretly respect.

Only by penetrating the surface are we able to get to the core of fascism and its hold over the masses. Only then will it be possible for us to grasp the reason for the almost tragic impotence of democratic argumentation whenever, in critical European situations, it had to compete with totalitarianism. Under the Weimar Republic, for instance, the German people seemed to express their allegiance to a truly democratic constitution and way of life so long as they believed that they were backed by a real power. But as soon as the ideals and principles of the Republic came into conflict with the interests of the ruling economic forces, the totalitarian agitators had easy play. Hitler hypnotized the unconscious in his auditors by promising to forge a power in the world, in the name of which the ban on repressed nature could be lifted. It is bare domination which alone can yoke oppressed nature in the raw forever to its barbarian cart. Democracy cannot do so because it can never become truly congenial to the blind self or superficially civilized people. Nor can democracy hope successfully to emulate totalitarian propaganda without risking fatal compromise of the democratic way of life by stimulating destructive unconscious forces. Let us observe, for a moment, democracy engaged in a death struggle with a foreign nation. If the democratic propaganda were to present the issue as one between two races instead of a conflict mainly involving material and ideal interests, it might succeed at evoking the most potent martial impulses in its own citizenry. But would not these same impulses eventually prove fatal to Western civilization? Bellicose and racist slogans clear the path for the enemy. No. It is not by using oppressed nature as an instrument that civilization can hope to advance. Oppressed nature must first be differentiated from and then ideally reconciled to truth. The equating of truth of reason and nature, an identification by which reason is debased and raw nature exalted, is a major ideological expression of our times. As we have already noted, this tendency confirms the instrumental function of subjective reason and promotes nature in its totality as mere life or brute force instead of treating it as a scripture which has to be interpreted by philosophy and which will, if rightly read, unfold a tale of nature’s infinite suffering.

I have characterized National Socialism, from the philosophical viewpoint, as an outbreak of rebellious nature against civilization. Does this definition not seem to be invalidated by the celebrated organizational skill of modern authoritarianism? Permit me, in reply, to reiterate the fact that rebellious nature’s outbreak and instrumentalized reason invoke one another. In fact, nature’s rebellion is never spontaneous, no more than the familiar improvisations—may we say pogroms?—which at any given moment are ordered or called off from above. Nevertheless, this should not lead us to the false conclusion that there are no outbreaks of raw nature involved or that they are limited to the ruling cliques. On the contrary, a great part of the population has lent its support, either active or passive, to these atrocities. On the other hand, the fact remains that the acts of barbarism, however natural, were switched on and directed according to a highly rational plan. Rationality, in modern fascism, has reached the point where it is no longer satisfied with simply oppressing nature; rationality now exploits nature by incorporating into its own system the rebellious character of nature. We might cite, as another instance of this phenomenon, the Nazi manipulation of the suppressed desires of the German people.

When the Nazis and their industrial and military backers launched their movement, they had the problem of enlisting great masses whose material interests they did not embrace. They solved this problem by making special appeal to those backward layers of the population that were doomed by capitalist development, squeezed out, that is, by the techniques of mass-production. Here, among the peasants, the middle-class artisans, the retailers, the small manufacturers, were to be found the “oppressed natures,” the victims of instrumental reason. Without the active support of these groups, which, for historical reasons, play a much bigger role in Europe than they do in this country, the Nazis could never have gained power. Hence the element of naturalness, per se, not to speak of the racist and martial ideologies with their inherent nature-creed, was heavily underscored by the Nazis.

Basically, however, the natural urge was harnessed to the needs of Nazi rationalism. And the very assertion of natural inclinations led to their denial. Thus the small producers and merchants who rallied to the Nazis have lost all traces of independence, and have been transformed into functionaries of the regime. Not only has their psychological “nature” been abolished, but in the process of being rationally coordinated their material interests have suffered; for example, their standard of living has been lowered. So, in the same way, the spontaneities that undermine existing institutions culminate in the institution of the Gestapo. The moral is plain: the assertion of the ego culminates in the utter insecurity of the individual, in its complete violation through torture. Clearly, the Nazi rebellion of nature against civilization is more than an ideological facade. Individuality begins to crack under the impact of the Nazi system and to yield something which is really close to the atomized, anarchic human being—what a German philosopher (Spengler) once called the “new raw man.”¹⁵⁵ The revolt of the natural, in the sense of the backward strata of the population against the growth of rationality, has actually promoted the formalization of “reason”, and has served to fetter nature instead of freeing it. In this light, we might describe fascism as a satanic unity of reason and nature—the very opposite of that reconciliation of the two poles that philosophy has always dreamed of.

Such is the pattern of all the so-called “revolts of nature” throughout history. Whenever nature is taken up consciously, and becomes thought’s weapon against thinking, against civilization, it shows a kind of hypocrisy, and so develops an uneasy conscience. For it has largely accepted the very principle it is ostensibly combatting. In this respect, there is little difference between a Roman court poet eulogizing the virtues of rural life as a screen for imperial propaganda and the prating of the exponents of heavy industry about blood and soul and the blessings of a race of healthy peasants. This, in fact, is one of the most significant contradictions of the Nazi regime: its rebellion of nature has become a lie, as soon as it became conscious of itself as a rebellion. It has become a lackey of the very mechanized civilization it professes to deny, and has taken over its inherently repressive measures. It is from this point of view that we shall approach the philosophical expressions of the uprisings of oppressed nature.

Now let us turn to the thought of Darwin. Darwinism has perhaps exercised a greater influence on American thinking than any other single intellectual force except the theological heritage. Pragmatism—I use the term in a broad sense, to include Veblen and Dewey, as well as William James—owes its basic impulses to the theory of evolution and adaptation, derived either directly from Darwin, or through some philosophical intermediary, particularly Spencer.

Here I should like to avoid a misunderstanding. The following analysis does not refer to the teachings of Darwin insofar as they are meant as scientific statements. More than that, it does not refer to the Darwinist criticism of religious or metaphysical mythologies, particularly those which try to justify every event in natural or human history by appeal to God. Their socially optimistic or pessimistic inferences from the postulates of a creator transgress the bounds of philosophy. Philosophers must be content to recognize the plight of nature or man and to set their sights accordingly. Such is the method of rational insight and intuition. It looks to no divine plan either for justification or discouragement. Rather, it thrives best on the humility which arises from the consciousness of the illusoriness of such evidence. Whenever Darwinism promotes this spirit of humility, and I think it has done so on many occasions, it is definitely superior to its opponents. It follows the lines of our first path. However, the popular Darwinism which permeates many aspects of mass culture and the public ethos of our time does not exhibit that humility. In the gospel of every man the survival of the fittest has become, whether under this name or another, the prime axiom of conduct and ethics, rather than a theory of organic evolution making no pretenses to impose ethical imperatives on human society. An analogous warrant is not lacking even in the rejection of popular Darwinist crudites which have been made for the last half century in leading intellectual circles.

You will be surprised to hear me count Darwinism among the philosophies which express a rebellion of nature against reason, a rebellion usually associated with romanticism, with sentimental discontent with civilization, and with the desire to restore primitive phases of society or of human nature. Darwin’s doctrine of the survival of the fittest is certainly free of such sentimentality. It is not at all romantic but belongs to the main stem of enlightenment. He has made a breach with one of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, that of the creation of man by God, in God’s image. At the same time, he struck at metaphysical concepts of development as they prevailed from Aristotle to Hegel. Evolution, according to Darwin, is not a matter of the unfolding of organic unities, according to principles of their own inherent forms or natures, but is rather a blind sequence of events in which survival depends on adaptation to the conditions of life. Darwinism and its philosophical consequences are causal, instead of teleological. Darwin was essentially a physical scientist, not a philosopher. Despite his own private religious feeling the inherent philosophy of his work was plainly positivist. Thus his name has become representative of those ideas which we have characterized as expressing the domination of nature in terms of common sense. One may even go so far as to say that the idea of the survival of the fittest is nothing but the translation of the idea of formalized reason into the vernacular of positivist philosophy. Accordingly, reason appears in Darwinism as a pure organ. The spirit or mind is conceived as natural. To quote a modern interpreter of Darwin: “The struggle for life must necessarily produce step by step through natural selection the reasonable out of the unreasonable.”¹⁵⁶ In other words, reason itself is not an autonomous faculty but something organic, like tentacles or hands, developed through adaptation to natural conditions and surviving because it proves to be an adequate means of mastering them, particularly in the acquisition of food and the averting of dangers. Thus the concept of reason, as the instrument for the domination of nature, is reduced to nature itself. The idea inherent in all idealist metaphysics, that the world is in some sense a product of the mind, is turned into its opposite. The mind is a product of the world, of the processes of nature. Hence, popular Darwinism, a byproduct of enlightenment philosophy, comes to the aid of the rebellion of nature against any scheme, theological or philosophical, which regards nature as expressing a truth which our own reason must try to recognize. In popular Darwinism and all thinking that follows its lead, dominated nature does not need philosophical reason to express what it wants to say, nature is ruler rather than the ruled, it is a powerful and venerable deity.

In traditional theology and in metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil and the spiritual or the supernatural as the good. This perspective is reversed in popular Darwinism. The good is identified with the well-adapted, whereas the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well-adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of spirit’s antagonism to nature not seldom amounts in practice to the fostering of continuous and thoroughgoing domination. This attitude implies universal subordination of theory to practice with the result that the idea of truth itself is made dependent on practical considerations. The self-abdication of spirit in popular Darwinism means the rejection of any elements of the mind which transcend the function of adaptation and thus are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface this empirical trend appears to have a more humble attitude to nature than the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it manifests the arrogance of the practical mind riding roughshod over the “useless spiritual” and dismissing any view of nature in which it is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this viewpoint are not limited to modern philosophy. Popular Darwinism and vulgar pragmatism reflect the dominant spirit of business enterprise, which permeates all of modern society.

The principle of natural selection is now added to the list of those concepts in which truth and reality, reason and nature, subject and object, are equated, a list which includes Bergson’s concept of life and Dewey’s concept of experience. All versions of such philosophies may be admitted to be more honest than the sort of speculation for which they show contempt. However, in the effort to earn this honesty, they have unwittingly renounced any philosophical principle which could logically motivate their siding with liberty rather than with despotism. The only yardstick which reality yields is more self-preservation: nature versus nature, blindness versus blindness. In this respect popular Darwinism is very close to its seeming contrary, the various theories of philosophical romanticism. In the last lecture I mentioned the similarity of Dewey’s concept of experience to Hegel’s idea of being-in-general. I might have stretched this comparison to include all of Hegel’s pantheistic teachings, for example, the doctrine of the Weltgeist. According to the Weltgeist [concept], history is the ultimate judge of the efforts of nations and individuals. I cannot refrain from comparing this opinion with Dewey’s insistence on the testing of social values or experiments in history.

I am sorry that time does not permit me to discuss truly romanticist theories such as those of early XIXth century Europe, which found their point of departure in Rousseau, Shaftesbury and Herder. Such an analysis would show that doctrines which exalt nature or primitivism at the expense of spirit do not further the reconciliation with nature, but on the contrary, promote an attitude of coldness and blindness towards nature. For wherever man intentionally assimilates himself to nature he regresses to the primitive urges, as we have previously noted. Children express themselves cruelly in mimetic and associated reactions, sadistic and others, because they do not really understand the plight of nature. Children treat each other almost as coldly and carelessly as animals. Even gregarious animals are alone when they are together. Anyone who has observed horses or dogs in groups has surely been moved by their helpless tokens of recognition. Obviously, individual isolation is much more marked among non-gregarious animals and animals of different species. They are at war, a state which pervades nature. All this, however, seems to a certain extent innocent. Animals, in a way even the child, are not possessed of reason. In the case of the philosopher and the politician however, the abdication of reason in the form of surrender to reality constitutes regression of a much worse form than is found in animals or child behavior. Such adult regression inevitably culminates in the identification of philosophical truth with cold self-preservation and war. We have only to consider the careers of Europe’s romanticist philosophers. Although, on the whole, they have shown deeper insight into human situations than the rationalist or enlightened thinkers, most of them approved the most reactionary forms of government which were available in their time.

The transition from the understanding to the adoration of raw nature, from the practice of contemplation to the ordaining of social and religious prescriptions proves to be catastrophic. This holds true even for such sublime philosophical forms of the rebellion of nature as Buddhism. To prescribe non-resistance is at the same time to proscribe rational modes of relief. This is symbolized by those great animal asylums in India where the suffering creatures are left to die in misery because nobody dares to come to the aid of them either by operation or by euthanasia.

It is now high time to conclude. Let me then say by way of summary: We are the heirs, for better or worse, of the enlightenment and technological progress. Opposing them by resort to regression does not alleviate their undesirable effects. On the contrary, such expedients lead from historically seasonable forms of domination to utterly barbarian ones. The current fashion of reviving old mythologies, a fashion which extends from astrology to motion pictures celebrating saints, from the German myth of blood and soul to Neo-Buddhism, and neo-Catholicism, commits treason even against the beliefs which it propagates. By trying to adapt them to the modern usage it makes them tools of mechanical civilization which they pretend to abhor. So far as I can see, the only way to assist nature is to unshackle its seeming contrary: independent thought. We must abandon the contempt of theory and speculation, not so much by showing deference to the prominence and eclat of celebrated old masters, but by insisting on the development of spiritual potentialities in all phases of life and culture. Such an attitude will make it more difficult for the powerful to guide progress into newer and more demonic forms of domination. It will contribute to creating human forms of society which do greater justice to nature than those which, like authoritarianism, appear to take nature as a pattern.

The death’s head has always been the awful emblem of sinister political movements, which represent the rebellion of nature. The goal of those who stand against barbarism is truth. Truth has no natural symbol by which to express itself.

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IV. Lecture [The Rise and Decline of The Individual]

Last time, I discussed the rebellion of oppressed nature against the ego. Today, I shall survey another aspect of this revolt, one most clearly discernible through the medium of a consideration of the ego’s relation to the concept of the individual. For the present purpose, I mean by individual a being with an ego. The career of the individual in history cannot be compared to a report, such as children are often compelled to write for their first composition, on the life-cycle of a table. The table is, let us say, made in a factor, purchased from the department store to grace the sitting-room; gathers dust, undergoes endless cleaning and repair, finally is painted white and put in the garden where it is allowed to dry for eventual use as firewood to heat the same room in which it formerly stood. Through all these phases the table remained the same, until it was chopped to bits. The changes are made on it, by means of it. Only its appearance, not its essence, alters. It is a different story with the individual. He is a historical entity. The changes implicate the roots of his being. They wreak transformations through and through. He grows. When at the end of our days, we dry out and become firewood to heat the society of which we once formed a part, we are indeed not the children our mothers bore. And what is true for the single person is true also for the fate of individuality as a historical category. Shakespeare’s seven ages of man (As You Like It, II, 7) must not be permitted to mislead us here.

When we speak of the individual as a historical category, we mean not merely the space-time existence and sense-awareness of a particular member of the human collectivity, but, in addition, his apprehension of his own individuality, as a self-conscious human being. Implied in this is, above all, the personality’s recognition of its identity. Not all people have an equally strong sense of their identity. Obviously, it is more clearly defined in adults than in children who need to be taught to call themselves “I”—the most elementary affirmation of identity. So, too, is it weaker among primitive than among civilized men. Indeed, many negroes, still bearing the traces of an old culture, often seem to display a very uncertain sense of their identity. Living in the gratifications of the moment, they appear but dimly aware that as individuals they must go on to face the hazards of tomorrow. This lag, it needs hardly be said, partly accounts for the common slander that they are lazy or that they are liars—a reproach which assumes on the part of the accused negro the very sense of identity which he may lack. Stunted individuality is also found among the poor whites. Few among the hard-pressed members of these groups are given a genuine incentive to cultivate their personalities. Were the submerged strata not brought up to imitate their betters, blatant ads or educational appeals to expand their ego’s personalities would inevitably seem condescending, not to say hypocritical. They would treat the summons to individuality, frustrated at every turn by the social process, as little more than an ideological opiate.

Individuality presupposes the free sacrificing of immediate satisfaction for the greater gratification of a well-balanced and meaningful life. When the roads to such a life are blocked there is little reason to deny oneself any momentary pleasures. Hence, the individuality of the mass of the people is far less integrated and enduring than that of the more fortunate elite. [The diversity of religions created deeper clefts among the masses of devotees than among the official representatives of the cults. Although the personalities of the leaders were stronger, their individualities were more alike.]¹⁵⁷ On the other hand, the minds of the elite have always been more preoccupied with the strategies of gaining and maintaining power than those of the masses. If it is true that the elite-cadre have more freedom to develop their individualities, it is also true that much of their thought and energy has been drained in drafting schemes to preserve and expand their stake against all potential rivals. The deeper a person’s concern with power over things, the more will things dominate the person and the more will he resemble other persons whose minds are automata of formalized reason.

This is evidenced in all history. In ancient Egypt the consequence of this situation for the thought of the clerical and political overlords is evidenced by the naked dominance of stereotyped formalized reason at least from the latter half of the 12th century B.C., that is from the time of Ramses II in the 20th dynasty. In the words of Breasted: “The sanctuaries of this age will always form one of the most imposing survivals from the ancient world. Not only in their grandeur as architecture, but also in their sumptuous equipment, these vast palaces of the gods lifted the external observances of religion to a plane of splendor and influence which they had never enjoyed before. Enthroned in magnificence which not even the sumptuous East had ever seen, Amon of Thebes became in the hands of his crafty priesthood a mere oracular source for political and administrative decisions. Even routine legal verdicts were rendered by the nod of the god, and such matters as wills and testaments were subject to his oracles.” Formalization of reason is the death of religion as well as individuality. We are told that Pope Gregory I, the Great (590-604), was utterly opposed to his own election by the clergy, the Roman Senate and people. He tried to take refuge in his monastic retreat and is said, in desperation, to have written a secret letter to the Emperor at Constantinople imploring him to refuse his confirmation. The Pope’s behavior has unnumbered parallels in the annals of the medieval church and is symbolically imitated today in the formalities of assumption of the highest ecclesiastical offices. He was at one with his age in believing not merely that power corrupts the best of us, but that it is taken up only at the risk of salvation. St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the mid-12th century was terror-stricken at the proposals to elevate him to the episcopacy, because he feared to compromise his preferred status and calling as religious. These are poignant, if extreme, illustrations of the awareness of power’s threat to personality, which Goethe once described as the beatitude of the wayfarers of the earthly city, the secular version, so to speak, of salvation.

It is not possible in a single lecture to present even an abstract of the phenomenology of the individual in the history of Western culture. The story of the individual is still largely unwritten. This is true even for classical Greece which not only created the concept of individuality but provided its most inspiring exemplifications. We must be content at this time to limit ourselves to a mention of the chapter headings which such a phenomenological survey would cover. The model for the emerging individual is to be found in the Greek hero: reckless and self-reliant, he emerged triumphant in the struggle for survival and emancipated himself from tradition as well as from the tribe. To Jakob Burckhardt, such a hero incarnates a totally unbridled and naive egotism. Nevertheless, while his boundless ego expresses the power spirit of domination, and intensifies the antagonism of the individual to the community, and its mores, he remains, in Burckhardt’s words, unclear about the nature of the conflict between his ego and the world, and, hence, repeatedly falls prey to all kinds of worldly intrigues. In this respect, the Greek hero may be said to have lacked an enduring personality or character. His awesome deeds were not inspired by some personal trait, such as malice or cruelty, but rather by the need to avenge a crime or to ward off a curse. One may say that the career of the hero is not so much an expression of individuality as the prelude to its birth through the interaction of processes of self-preservation and self-sacrifice. The only one of Homer’s heroes who strikes us as having a mind of his own is Ulysses, who is too wily to appear truly heroic.

The flowering of the typical Greek individuality waited for the age of the city-state, or Polis, and the crystallization of a specific burgher class. Many of you will recall the passage in the Politics of Aristotle wherein he describes the Greek burgher as a new human type, who, by combining the courage of the Nordic “man” with the intelligence of the Asiatic, that is to say, by linking self-preservation and reflection, acquired the capacity to dominate others without losing his freedom. Throughout history, the fortunes of the individual have been bound up with the development of urban society. The city-dweller is the individual par excellence. The present crisis of the individual marks the breakdown of the traditional idea of the city that has prevailed throughout occidental history for the last 2500 years.

When Greek thought is studied against the background of social development, we are led to suspect that the doctrine of the preponderance of universal concepts over the individual things is foreshadowed in the authority of the polis over its citizens and subjects. In Athens, the state is felt to be both superior and prior to its constituents. This preeminence of the polis promoted rather than blocked the rise of the individual: it effected a balance between the state and its members, between individual freedom and social welfare. It is still impossible to find a more eloquent depiction of this ideal than the Funeral Oration of Pericles. Some such concept of the individual has re-appeared time and time again in the peak periods of city culture, for instance, in Florence during the fifteenth century.

The first systematic attempt to force a philosophy of individuality in accordance with the ideal of the Polis is to be found in Plato. He conceived of man and the state as harmonious and interdependent structures of thinking, desire and courage, best organized when the division of labor was made to correspond to the triune psyche of man. His Republic projects an equilibrium between individual liberty and group control in the interests of the paramount claims of the community. At every turn Plato strains to unfold the harmony within and between the practical and theoretical realms. In the practical realm, harmony is sought by a political ideal which coordinates the various estates and correlates the nature of society to the nature of its members. In the sphere of theory, unity is felt to be attainable through a system which gives adequate expression to the hierarchy of forms throughout the universe and the participation of individual things in the ideal archetypes. Since this great chain of being is eternal, the individual is predetermined. Every creature is measured in accordance with a preexisting plan of purposes and ends. Much in his doctrine savors of archaic cosmogonies in which all life and existence are assumed to be subject to irresistible and inflexible forces. In such worldviews, it is as senseless for man to oppose fate as it is for nature to oppose the rhythm of the seasons or the cycle of life and death. The sweeping vistas of the Platonic universe must not be permitted to obscure the fact that his ideal of harmony was conceived in and assumed the persistence of a society which rested upon the labor of slaves. He turns his face from archaic mythologies and points the way to modern times by postulating that man makes himself, to the degree at least that he can realize the essence with which he is endowed in the eternal nature of reality. When Aristotle said that some were born slaves and others free, and that the virtue of the slave, like that of women and children, consisted in obedience, he was talking as an orthodox Platonist. Only free men can aspire to the kind of harmony which resulted from competition and agreement.

Plato’s philosophy embraces the idea of objective, rather than of subjective or formalized reason. Such an orientation helps explain its concreteness. Nevertheless, its insistence on the cold unshakable order of the universe excludes historical progress and hope. Paradoxically, an element of coldness is to be found in many celebrated theories in which the stress on harmony and the formation of a harmonious individuality plays a central role. This holds true even for the seemingly cheerful solution of Goethe, not to speak of the harmonious cosmos of medieval philosophy.

Here, I wish to reiterate that the transition from objective to formalized reason is a necessary historical process. It is necessary, at least to the degree that man cannot be reconciled to a doctrine celebrating adaptation to an ideal objective hierarchy, which, however much it may appease his sense of beauty, revolts his passion for justice. The supplanting of static views of history, which barely conceal their primitive core under a surface of dynamism, by the idea of progress, is, indeed, logically necessary. However, we must always be on our guard against allowing the idea of progress itself to be debased into a static mythology.

At the cost of violating chronology we have reserved our final remarks on the Greek heritage to a discussion of Socrates. He rather than Plato or Aristotle is the herald of the modern conception of individuality. It was he who took the decisive step toward affirming the autonomy of the individual. The literature on this decisive moment in the history of our civilization fills libraries. Among the numberless observations which since the time of Plato have been made with regard to this episode the most profound seem to me still those of Hegel in his History of Philosophy. They formulate precisely what was in the days of Socrates and is today the central problem of the philosophy of society, namely the clash between the universal and the individual. Naturally, the conflict appears in a different guise today. In the opinion of Hegel, Socrates gave expression to the principle of inwardness, of the absolute independence of thought. He taught that man has to discover the good and true within himself. The good and true so discovered, are necessarily universal. This appeal to the authority of the individual conscience daimonion brought him into conflict with the Athenian judges who represented the claims of hallowed custom and cult. The Gods of Athens were visible. Their worship was regulated to the last detail. Their oracles were transmitted by authorized priests. No credence was given to the verdicts of that invisible inward principle to which Socrates stubbornly referred.

Socrates’ affirmation of conscience brought the relation of the individual and the universal to a new level; the reconciliation is now no longer inferred from the established harmony within the polis; on the contrary, the universal is now conceived as an inner, almost self-authenticating truth, lodged in man’s spirit. For Socrates, it is not sufficient to desire or even to do the right thing without reflection. The ethical way of life is impossible without consciousness. Since his time—and this is meant to include Plato, [particularly his doctrine of chorismos]¹⁵⁸—there has been an abyss not only between the ideal and the real, but also between the individual conscience and the state, the Platonic utopia presupposes the Socratic critical attitude. As the claims of the subjective continued to grow, reverence for the existent waned. More and more, philosophy tended to take on the character of a quest for consolation in inner harmonies. The break between the person and the state, between subject and object which, from our point of view, makes Socrates’ life one of the greatest of the Greek tragedies—he died voluntarily in submission to the law, the irrationality of which he had been fighting as a revolutionary thinker—defines the character of the newly emancipated individual. Hellenistic society is permeated by post-Socratic philosophies of resignation which exhort man to embrace as their highest good a self-sufficiency (autarchy) which is attainable not by possessing everything necessary for an independent life, but in desiring nothing. Such counsel to apathy and avoidance of pain culminated in the detachment of the individual from the community, and, correspondingly, in the detachment of the ideal from the real. The individual relinquishes his claim to shape reality in the image of truth, and, thereby, submits himself to dictatorial and imperialistic tyrannies.

There is a moral in all this: Individuality is the loser when each man decides to shift for himself. As the ordinary man retires from participation in political affairs, society tends to operate according to the blind fatalities of the jungle, which crush all vestiges of individuality. The idea of a pure and absolutely isolated individuality or personality has always been an illusion. The most esteemed personal qualities, such as freedom, independence, sympathy, and the sense of justice, are social as well as individual virtues. The fully developed individual is the choicest fruit of a fully developed society. The emancipation of the individual is not an emancipation from society, but the deliverance of society from atomization, an atomization which may reach its climax in periods of collectivization and mass culture. —

Let us now turn to Christianity, whose similarity to the syncretist world religions of the Hellenistic age is rendered clearer every day by the advance of research. It used to be—and perhaps still is—a commonplace to say that the idea of an infinite and transcendent God resulted in the complete deflation of the individual; that the Christian individual is a contradiction in terms since the Christian is obliged to lose himself here below if he wishes to find eternal salvation. In fact, the impulse to individuality was deepend immeasurably by the doctrine that earthly life is a mere interlude in the eternal story of the soul. A similar enhancement of the soul’s uniqueness issued from the idea of equality inferred from the concept of God’s creation of man in his image and from Christ’s atonement for all mankind.—In being commanded to love his neighbor as himself, the Christian is charged to cultivate himself for the sake of God in his neighbor. Individuality became specifically religious rather than merely aesthetic or ethical, to use the language of Kierkegaard, when all souls, without exception, were rendered directly accountable to their Maker for their faith as well as their morals. Compared with some of the Gospel stories and teachings, even the highest achievements of Greek culture appear prosaic and soulless expressions of the calculating ego. Even the leading figures of antiquity seem rough-hewn and barbaric by contrast to the fishers and carpenters of Galilee.

Christianity does not insist upon a direct antagonism between the self and nature as did Greek and, to a certain extent, Hebraic culture. Christ is conceived as the mediator between final truth and finite human existence. This is why traditional Augustinianism ultimately lost out to Thomistic Aristotelianism which is a grand design to reconcile the ideal and the empirical worlds. By sharp contrast to Hellenistic ethical philosophies and the competing world religions, renunciation, overcoming natural drives, was in Christianity associated with a suffusion of universal love through every human act. Self-preservation is transformed into a metaphysical principle that guarantees the eternal being of the soul; by the very destruction of his empirical ego the individual acquires a new depth and complexity.

Just as the mind—you will remember my remarks in the last discussion—is nothing but nature, so long as it perseveres in its radical opposition to nature, so the individual is nothing but a biological specimen as long as he is merely the incarnation of a clever and well-integrated ego. Let us put this more clearly. The first step in the emergence of the individual was achieved when the cohesion of the tribe was loosened and the individual became conscious of the difference between his life and that of the seemingly eternal collectivity. By that breach, death took on a stark and irrevocable aspect. Consequently, the irreplaceable life of the individual became inflated to an absolute value. This accent in individuality is rendered classically in Hamlet’s uncertainties about the Christian concept of the soul. Hamlet, who has often been called the first truly modern and obsessed individual, fears the finality of death, the terror of the abyss. However, the profundity of his psychological reflections, the subtle shadings of his personality presuppose the Christian Era, which by the very disavowal of earthly self-preservation in the interests of the eternal soul had developed the crucial idea of the infinite value of each man, which persists even in non-Christian or anti-Christian systems of the Western world. True, the sublimation of the pursuit of self-preservation is paid for by the surrender of vital instincts, and, since such repression could never truly succeed, by an insincerity which has made itself painfully felt throughout the history of our culture. Nevertheless, this very interiorization issues in the augmentation of individuality. Through the negation of himself, through the imitation of Christ’s sacrifice, the individual simultaneously acquires a new dimension and a new ideal on which to pattern his worldly life.

I am well aware that these distinctions are much too general and sweeping. Were there time, I should have to consider the new relation of the individual to the community in the light of the distinctively Christian treatment of love embodied in the opposition of agape and caritas to the antique eros. I should have to show that the doctrine of love, which was at first welcomed by the ruling classes, gained momentum of its own in the later history of Europe; and, how the Christian soul finally became an element of resistance against the very agency which had maintained and propagated it: the Church. The church had extended its sway over the inner life—a sphere which was not invaded by the powers of classical antiquity. At the end of the Middle Ages, the hierarchy met with an ever-increasing resistance to its controls, both practical and spiritual. I should then have to describe the exciting parallelism of the Reformation and the Enlightenment with regard to the idea of the individual. As I am pressed for time, and may fortunately assume that the principal phases of this story are familiar enough to his audience, I hasten abruptly to a consideration of the contemporary scene.

The subordination of individuality to self-preserving reason has been most clearly effected in the epoch of free enterprise, the so-called age of individualism. In that period, individuality seemed to shake itself loose of metaphysical trappings and to become a mere integration of material interests. That this act has not saved it from being manipulated as a pawn by ideologists needs no proof. Individualism is the very heart of the theory and practice of bourgeois liberalism according to which society progresses through the interaction of divergent interests in the free market. In such a mechanism, the individual is able to maintain himself as a social being only through the pursuit of his own interests in terms of a “felicific calculus.” This compulsion leads to the sharpening of the qualities of individuality which had been forged by the ascetic discipline of Christianity. The bourgeois individual no longer sees himself as opposed to the collectivity, but believes freely or is prevailed on to believe that he is a member of a society which is bound to achieve the fullest measure of harmony only by the uninhibited competition of individual interests. Liberalism might be said to have considered itself a Utopia which had come true, needing little more for complete fruition than the smoothing out of a few troublesome wrinkles. These wrinkles were not to be blamed on the liberalistic principle, but on the contrary, to the regrettable fact that reservations and obstacles were opposed to its complete establishment. In the age of liberalism, individuality is said to be promoted not by polemics but conformity. The monad, a 17th century symbol for the atomistic economic subject of bourgeois society, became a social type. All the monads, isolated though they were by chasms of self-interest, tended, nevertheless, to become more and more alike through the pursuit of this very self-interest. Here we have the core of the current crisis of individuality: business, industrial production, professional life, and, finally man himself have become standardized.

Liberalism, at its dawn, was characterized by the existence of a great mass of independent entrepreneurs. The movements of the market and the general trend of production were rooted in the economic requirements of their enterprises. Merchant and manufacturer alike needed to be prepared for all economic and political eventualities. This need stimulated them to learn what they could from the past and to formulate plans for the future. The enterprise itself, which, it was assumed, would be passed down in the family, gave to a businessman’s deliberations an horizon which extended far beyond his own life-span. His individuality was that of a far-seeing protagonist, proud of himself and his kind, convinced that community and state rested upon himself and others like him who were professedly animated by the profit motive. His sense of adequacy to the challenges of an acquisitive world expressed itself in his strong, yet sober, ego, which maintained interests far beyond his immediate needs.

Today, in the era of monopolies, the independent entrepreneur is no longer typical. The ordinary man finds it more and more painful to plan for his heirs or even for his own distant future. The contemporary individual may have more opportunities than his ancestors, but his prospects are for increasingly shorter terms. He imagines he will not be entirely lost if he preserves his skill and clings to his corporation, association, or union. The typical individual of the age of liberalism felt able to take care of himself; the typical individual of the age of monopoly perforce depends on more powerful groups. The pursuit of self-preservation and the ownership of property part company. The acquisition and administration of private property formerly inspired the individual to lay plans not merely for his children’s future, but for the future of his children’s children. The perspectives of a stable past and future which grew out of ostensibly permanent property relations have vanished. The individual has become a shrunken ego, captive to an evanescent present and clinging precariously to its momentary satisfaction. To recall the drift of my second lecture: the contemporary man must, if he is to survive, develop the capacity to adapt himself to ever-changing conditions. He must be on the alert every second of his life. He must learn to obey impersonal commands automatically. He must pull the lever, follow the sign, be a good sport, and resist temptations to relax or day-dream. The property-owner has become a functionary; the scholar an expert. Everyone is under the whip of a superior agency. Those who occupy the commanding positions in the age of monopoly have little more autonomy than their dependents. They are enchained by the capital they control. The law of the jungle as expressed in popular Darwinism is not merely an ideology but the reality of contemporary life. The battlefield which today demands the greatest possible adaptability to technical devices and the greatest possible presence of mind became the pattern of life long before the war broke out.

The ordinary man freely joins or is impressed into all sorts of groups in which he functions as a cipher without special individual significance. If he wishes to preserve himself he must be content with being a cog in the wheel, one of a team, whether in industry, agriculture, or sport. [The life of the migrant laborer is especially harsh. At every turn in the road he must be ready to fight for the bare minimum of existence: his job, his food, his sleeping cot. He is never free from the toughest discipline. Do I impinge unduly upon your privacy when, resorting to a venerable formula, I observe: “There, but for the grace of God, go we.”]¹⁵⁹

The contemporary individual no longer has a history. He is always aiming at some immediate, practical goal. For him everything changes, but nothing moves. He needs neither a Zeno nor a Cocteau, neither an Eleatic dialectician nor a Parisian surrealist, to tell him what the Queen in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS means when she says: “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”

His life seems to follow a sequence which will fit any questionnaire he may need to fill out. His intellectual existence is exhausted in the Gallup Polls. [The standardization of man is illustrated in the successive contamination of the spoken word. Their employment tends to be confined to the dissemination of information, effecting orientation, and issuing commands.]¹⁶⁰ Words become tyrants when ideas are used as weapons by giant producers of material and cultural commodities. [To be acceptable in society, one must know how to chatter after the fashion of radio and film stars.]¹⁶¹ Independent thinking is treated as a luxury and a vice.

[Efficiency is the criterion and the sole excuse for the very existence of the individual. Here efficiency is not to be confused with productive capacity. It means—as American English has it—the ability to be “one of the boys,” to impose on others, to advertise oneself, to have a good nose for the right connections, and many kindred skills which seem to be transmitted through the germ cells by so many people today.

One of the least expendable losses in the collapse of individuality is the idea of romantic love. In a considerable measure this loss can be attributed to alterations in the structure of authority in the family whose implications have still to be grasped by psychoanalysis. With the supplanting of the independent entrepreneur, the power of the father is imperiled; the sons need no longer practice unquestioned obedience to the father as a token for eventual succession to the father’s business. The family is no longer the cherished foundation of social life. It ceased long ago to be the basis of the economic existence of the citizen. Up to the 19th century the revolt against the family’s verdict meant the ruin, if not for the son, at least for the daughter. Disobedience invited catastrophe. The proximity to the tragic gave romantic love its sweetness. With the increased prospect of a job, the daughter’s fear of conflict with the family fades away. Romantic love suffers in the bargain. Having gained her deliverance, the modern girl is free to treat herself, if she so desires, as a property possessing an exchange value. The flavor of this change is poignantly suggested by the thoroughly well-intended title of a current best-seller “Wenches with Wrenches.” Sex is treated without illusion. Thus is the way prepared for organized eugenics.]¹⁶²

As though afraid that the individual could maintain himself in the face of all the disintegrating machinery of modern society, every avenue of mass culture is geared to echo the social pressures against individuality. The validity of this observation is not impaired by the celebration of individual heroics and of the self-made man by popular biographies, romantic novels and moving pictures. These machine-made incentives to self-preservation actually accelerate the process of dissolution of individuality. Just as the slogans of rugged individualism are politically useful to the large trusts, which seek exemption from social control, so in mass culture the rhetoric of individualism, by imposing patterns for collective imitation, disavows the very uniqueness it professes to celebrate. If in the words of Huey Long every man can be a king, why cannot every girl be a movie queen, whose uniqueness consists in being altogether typical?

It might be objected: Has the individual collapsed? When was individualism as arbitrary and dominant as it is today in totalitarian society? This objection seems to me to miss the point. Mass heroes from Adolf Hitler to Frank Sinatra are not genuine individuals, but simply creatures of their own publicity, huge enlargements of their own photographs, functions of social processes rather than creative human beings. Herr Hitler is uneducated, neurotic, perhaps psychotic, and in all likelihood typifies Herr Schmidt more closely than any French politician of the Third Republic typified Monsieur Proudhomme. The consummated superman against whom nobody has warned humanity more anxiously than Nietzsche himself is a narcissistic projection of the oppressed masses, King Kong rather than Cesare Borgia. The hypnotic spell such supermen exercise over the masses derives not so much from what they think or say or do, but from their antics which set a style of behavior for people, already stripped of their spontaneity by the monopolistic process of production, who need to be shown how to make friends and influence people.

If my analysis be criticized for being all shadows and no light, I should be tempted to reply: The tendencies I have been describing have already in Europe led to the greatest catastrophe in history. Some of the causes were specifically European. Others are traceable to changes in man’s character profoundly influenced by the international modern economic process. I am well aware that there are strong counter-tendencies at work to combat nihilism. However, I must admit that I do not feel justified in predicting that these destructive processes will be purged in the near future. Nevertheless, that there are forces in the making to assure that this purging will not be indefinitely postponed seems beyond dispute. One of these consists in the increasing awareness that the unbearable pressure which is today brought upon the individual is not derived from inescapable necessity. More and more men are coming to see that it does not even spring directly from the purely technical requirements of production, but from the social structure. To state it more precisely: Indeed, the recent intensifications of repression are themselves testimony to the fact that a better world is in its birth throes. All the forces which are opposed to this world are trying desperately to forestall its arrival. The very processes which have led to the destruction of old mythologies and ideologies, to which even the best available versions of individuality belong, threaten to issue in a new era which cannot yet be described by philosophy, even by a much better one than mine. The terror of fascism is maintained not only because fascism can cope more easily with social atoms that with conscious human beings, but because it was feared that ever-increasing disillusionment with all ideologies might leave men free to realize their own and society’s deepest potentialities. Indeed, in some cases, social pressure and political terror have tempered the profoundly human resistance to irrationality which has always been the core of true individuality. The real individuals of our time are not the inflated personalities of popular culture, the conventional dignitaries—the real individuals are the martyrs who go through infernos of suffering and degradation in their resistance to the “iron heel” of conquest and oppression. These unsung heroes sacrifice not only their lives but freely submit their personalities to the terroristic annihilation which others undergo unconsciously through the social process. The anonymous victims of the concentration camp and the dungeon are the symbols of the humanity that is striving to be born. It is our task to translate what they are doing into language which can be understood even when their voices have long been silenced by tyranny.

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V. Lecture [The Present Crisis of Reason]

In my opening lecture I depicted the concept of reason and its formalization in modern times. I proceeded in the following weeks to show that this process issues in the fatal and absolute antagonism of self and nature, an antagonism typical of the history of our civilization and reaching its climax in our days. I argued that the totalitarian attempt of Western man to subjugate nature converted the ego, the human subject, into a mere agency of repression. All of its other functions, as expressed in general concepts and ideas, became discredited. Subsequently, I surveyed the rebellion of oppressed nature as it was manifested in sundry neo-romanticist theories and, finally, in fascism and National Socialism. A thumb-nail sketch of the history of individuality was offered as a concrete example of that process of formalization which is simultaneously spiritual and social. Throughout I intended one underlying thesis: that the awareness of these processes achieved through philosophy—the method of which is my topic for today—you will permit me this afternoon for the sake of brevity to use the word philosophy whenever I mean philosophy as I understand it—that this awareness can become one of the forces for reconstruction. Put in other terms, philosophical critique, by deepening our insight, will light up the road.

[Alternate: If I have lingered long on the crisis, it is because I am convinced that philosophical critique, by deepening our insight, lights up the road. And now, if you will allow me to blend the Old Testament with the New, I should sum up the parable by expressing the hope that some of you will find it possible [before the close of this afternoon] to join me in saying: “While we remained in the Land of the Pharaohs, we saw reality as through a glass darkly; since we have been in the desert, we seem to be beginning to see it as if face to face.”]¹⁶³

Is my faith not pious idealism? I do not think so. In my opinion, it rests on the most practical considerations. Until recently in Western history, men at large lacked sufficient cultural and technical resources for forging a humane society based on a sincere understanding between individuals, groups, and nations. Today, the material foundations for such a hope exist. Its fruition waits only upon the ripening of the will, the intelligence, and the conduct of people. The realization that at this very moment everything depends on the right use of man’s inner freedom—“that so much depends on so little”—should fortify us to defend culture from the threat of debasement at the hands of its fair-weather friends and annihilation at the hands of the barbarians within the gates.

It is utterly impossible, I must repeat, to cure this malignancy by reversion to archaic creeds, whether mythical or religious. Therapies which propose to turn back the wheel of history can be shown to be vitiated by the very pragmatism they profess to abhor. Philosophy must foreshadow the path of progress which takes its point of departure from the logical and factual necessities, it must anticipate the expression of horror and resistance which will be evoked by the triumphal march of modern man.

Lest you take this to be a definition of philosophy—or, of my philosophy—I hasten to some remarks on both definitions and philosophy.

The annals of history bear witness to the fact that only too frequently philosophy has been led down blind alleys by simplistic and exclusively abstract definitions. If we are to avoid dead-end logomachies—the price we pay for committing the fallacy of reposing “misplaced” confidence in abstractions—we must begin with the realization that definitions acquire their connotations in the historical process. We cannot hope to use them intelligently unless we humbly confess that their penumbra is not easily exhausted in linguistic short-cuts. If, out of fear of possible misunderstandings, we agree to eliminate the historical elements and to offer supposedly a-temporal sentences as definitions, we deny to ourselves the intellectual heritage bequeathed to philosophy since the beginning of thought and experience. Proof of the impossibility of such a complete disavowal is found in the procedure in the most anti-historical philosophy of our times, so-called logical empiricism of the Viennese circle. By admitting a number of undefinable terms of everyday usage into their dictionary of strictly formalized science, Carnap and his associates, have paid unwilling tribute to the historical nature of language.

One of the crucial tasks of true philosophy is to plumb the layers of experience preserved in the comprehensive and constitutive concepts of our vocabularies. Philosophy has to deepen its sensitivity to the muted testimonies of language. Each national tongue conveys a message, embodying the thought-forms and belief-patterns rooted in the evolution of different peoples. It is the repository of the variegated perspectives of prince and pauper, poet and peasant. Its forms and content are enriched or impoverished, as the case may be, by the naive usage of everyman. Yet, it would be an error to assume that we could discover the comprehensive meaning of a word by simply resorting to the people who use it. Gallup-polls are of little avail in this search. In the age of formalized reason even the masses abet the decomposition of concepts and ideas. The man in the street, or, as it has become more fashionable to say, the man in the fields and factories is learning to use words almost as schematically and unhistorically as the experts. The philosopher must avoid this example. To the passion for lucidity gained in the course of truth’s progress, he must join a sensitivity to those traits of life which lie below the surface of available definitions. [...] He must not utter the words “man, animal, society, world, mind, thought” without recalling their twilight-zones and opacities. At no time may he take refuge from complexity by surrendering to the illusion that he can climb to a higher level of truth by simply insisting on the transparency of such ideas. Concepts and categories should neither enter nor leave his workshop looking clear-cut and freshly-shaven.

This may serve to explain why some of my answers during our last discussions may have appeared cryptic. Some of you asked me—and in so doing you were entirely justified—what I mean by nature, self, mind, existence. Do “ego” and “spirit” exist, and so on? The tentative definitions I offered in my responses were intended to be simple abbreviations of my understanding of these concepts. Some of the deeper implications, it was hoped, would be found embodied in the explanations and illustrations presented in the course of the lecture. In my opinion a satisfactory philosophical definition of a concept can be supplied by nothing short of the farthest advance of the philosophical theory itself. Each concept must be seen as a fragment of an embracing truth, in which it finds its true meaning. It is precisely such building of truth out of fragments which is philosophy’s prime concern. I am compelled in this connection to recall the eloquent formulation of my great and all-too-soon departed friend, Walter Benjamin.

Let us, for the sake of clarity, revert to the concept of nature, which, in one way or another, was involved at every turn in the probing questions I have been asked during the past weeks. However we may define nature, we must, somewhere along the line, differentiate it from spirit or mind or ego. This can be done only by the introduction of new concepts. The definitions both of mind and nature must not be rendered nugatory by excluding the possibility of mind’s natural advent. Furthermore, spirit must be presented both in its opposition to and derivation from nature. The true character of their identity and difference must not be obscured by insisting throughout philosophy that mind’s function is merely the subjugation of “nature”. On the other hand, the antagonism between the two principles cannot be legislated out of existence without peril. This is not to deny what was suggested last time, namely that the celebrated modes of formulating this antagonism—you will recall my citation of Gassendi’s critique of Descartes’ symbolization of the ego as a citadel in the brain (arcem in cerebro tenens)—originate as analogies from the hierarchical structure which has typified our society since the days of the patriarchs. In the history of philosophy this antagonism has been expressed in two divergent patterns which have never ceased to vie for preeminence: (1) the elevation of mind through hybris to a supernatural agency; (2) the degradation of mind for a variety of reasons into a mere organ of oppression. The former is inevitably associated with subjective idealism; the latter with vulgar materialism. Both patterns presuppose the utter separation of nature and mind. I tried to suggest the weakness of all viewpoints which rest on the maintenance of a radical disjunction between nature and intellect. Mind is rendered aware of its natural derivation by being transformed into an agency of oppression. Philosophy by giving direction to the process of recollection lights up a path to a deeper definition.

A person who is committed to short and precise definitions might now argue: in recollecting its natural derivation, does not spirit avow its identity with nature? To which it must be replied: this identity is tenable only insofar as nature in the form of human domination is set in opposition to nature inside and outside man. Once nature in the form of the human mind has penetrated this opposition and discovered itself behind the mask of the almighty self, the constellation of all categories concerned is changed. By this very insight self is seen to transcend nature. The same position is reached the moment man’s nature is provoked through the agency of spirit in reflection upon its precarious state, to confess its natural limits.

Let me express this from the point of view of spirit. Spirit stubbornly persisting in its superiority and exemption from nature is not spirit. Spirit is adequately rendered only by disavowing the traditional hierarchical dualism, both in theory and practice. Nevertheless, any doctrine which, by omission of appropriate mediating notions of transformation, reduces spirit to raw nature commits a genealogical fallacy. The hard-headedness of pragmatism is no more helpful here than the soft-headedness of subjective idealism. All of these schools have thrown down their tools at too early a point in the process of analysis. There is no royal road to definition. Definitions seem to earn their clarity only at the expense of the truth. The opinion that concepts in philosophy must be pinned down and used precisely according to the dictates of the logic of identity, arises from the thoroughly understandable impulse to fit one’s intellectual needs to pocket-size. But such operations outlaw the possibility of converting one concept into another without impairing their identity. The pinning-down strategy characteristic of scientific method manipulates concepts as though they were intellectual atoms. Concepts are pieced together to form statements and propositions, both are in turn combined to form systems. Throughout the process, the atomic constituents of the system remain unchanged. They are felt to attract and repel each other everywhere in the mechanism, according to the familiar principles of traditional logic, the laws of identity, contradiction, tertium non datur, etc. which we employ, as though instinctively, in every act of manipulation. Philosophy pursues a different method. True, it uses these hallowed principles—and if time permitted, I should specify in what services and with what limits—but its procedure is no more reducible to this schematism than is a highly complex biochemical process reducible to terms of classical physics.¹⁶⁴

How do these considerations and strictures on schools, old and new, clarify the role of philosophy? What shall be its standpoint, its methods, its recommendation for action? If formalization of reason has led to an impasse how shall reason be conceived and used? On whom shall we pin our hopes? Shall we look for light to the tribesmen of the dark continent, the sages of the Orient, the Roman Catholic Church, the Communist Party, or a revived National Resources Planning Board?

Philosophy is not indifferent to any of these questions. When, in the first lecture, I said that I would not presume to offer any philosophical blueprint for the future, I did not mean to suggest that philosophy was too genteel to soil its hands with the vulgar details of life. On the contrary, like Antaeus in the fable, philosophy nourishes and renews itself by contact with the earth. If it has sunlight, but no soil, it must surely wither. But one point must be clear.

In the human economy, philosophy is, preeminently, the area where neither man’s most venerable custom nor his most creative endeavors are simply taken for granted. Philosophy will not allow itself to be treated as a mere instrument. Its role is not reducible to the coordination of means and ends. It rejects the current cults of activism and practical-mindedness. It does not encourage its devotees to form cliques for the propagation of slick and high-sounding slogans. Its ideas need time to mature; even in the most favorable habitat; and cannot be pronounced successes or failures by ready-made experiments. In other words, we must beware lest ideas in the making be stunted before they have a chance to ripen by insisting that they be translated into experimental or administrative terms for purposes of testing. In this context, educators might well be cautioned against the irreparable harm done when the free-ranging non-conformist intellectual impulses of children are inhibited out of undue respect for the practical, the successful, and the powerful. Philosophers must never turn deaf ears to those fancies which are neglected or repressed because they do not easily fit into our practical schemes. On the contrary, they must be prepared to be the midwives to the repressed and inarticulate in man and nature. In this spirit, philosophy cannot remain silent at the outrages committed against human potentialities by the irrationalities in the division of labor, by the divorce of practical life from art, of art from religion, of religion from science, and of science from the aspirations of mankind as a whole. It strives to enrich life and spirit, alike, by weaving them into a seamless robe.

If it be asked what these positive tasks of philosophy have in common, I should reply: philosophy realizes that throughout history man has been at the mercy of Frankensteins of his own making. His thoughts and actions have been enchained by the forms of social life. Philosophy is the effort to emancipate thought and, thereby, mankind from such slavery.

I am now in a position to say something more concrete about philosophical methods. During the last discussion, my attention was drawn to the fact that I had been unjust to the modern and contemporary periods, and indulgent to Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This criticism was welcome because it gave me another opportunity to say that I did not look to the past for paradise. I do not share the views of those who, standing the older history on its head, discover a succession of Renaissances in the Medieval period and begin the Dark Ages with the Renaissance—or Reformation. Few among the romanticist enthusiasts would be able to endure the inequities and insecurities of classical or medieval civilization. There is no returning to the tribal Gemeinschaft, Periclean Athens, Jerusalem in the days of the Apostles, the Medieval synthesis, Florence in the time of the Medici. Faith and fable no longer conceal from us the fact that it is only distance which lends enchantment to slavery and serfdom. Nor do the days of the great discoveries, of the Reformation and counter-Reformation, of the enlightened despots, and the great revolutions, fail to evoke poignant images of misery, cruelty, and despair. Or else how could Schiller have greeted the dawn of the 19th century with a challenge that in the unmeasured continents conquered by European humanity there was not room enough for ten happy people

Endlos liegt die Welt vor deinen Blicken,

Und die Schiffahrt selbst vermisst sie kaum;

Doch auf ihrem unermessnen Rücken,

Ist für zehen Glückliche nicht Raum.

—Schiller, Der Antritt des Neuen Jahrhunderts.

[It is only when the past is taken as a spectacle to be enjoyed rather than a life to be relived that we fall into the illusion of imagining that it was without its own disorder and sorrow. There is nothing to be gained by following Pied Pipers back into the “good old days.” We can never come into our inheritance unless we earn it for ourselves. Unnecessary appeals to the wisdom of past sages is, as Bentham observed, a form of ancestor worship, a seeking of the living among the dead. Lest we imagine that we can recover a putative medieval serenity by taking refuge from our doubts in the arms of an old orthodoxy, let us recollect that more than one of the revered spokesmen for the so-called Age of Faith has warned us against submitting to authority as to a halter. None of this, however, is to be taken as a counsel to discount history. […]]¹⁶⁵

There is nothing to be gained by turning back to the “good old days.” However, occidental humanity acquired and developed its ideas on God, nature, and man in these bloody ages. For example, the notion of the dignity of men, which was broached in earlier discussion, emerged in the most ruthless phases of class society. Dignity was an attribute of might. Emperors and Kings were felt to be hedged about by divinity. They demanded and enforced veneration. He who was negligent in his demonstrations of submission was punished, he who violated the godlike master was put to death. Today, freed of its tainted origins, the notion of dignity has forged to the forefront among the battle cries of human liberty. The evolution of the concepts of law, order, justice, and individuality tell the same story. Medieval man flees from justice to mercy. Today, we fight for justice, a justice universalized and transvaluated, which embraces equity and mercy. The value of the individual has been impressed upon humanity by those who had an opportunity to develop their personalities at the expense of others: from the Asiatic despots, the Pharaohs, the Greek oligarchs down to the merchant-princes and condottieri of the Renaissance and our own robber-barons and politicos. It is hardly necessary to recall that the classic rendering of this story is to be found in Hegel’s Philosophy of History.

Again and again in history, values cast off their swaddling-clothes and strike out against the social systems which had given them birth. This is due, in large measure, to the fact that spirit, language, and all the realms of the mind necessarily stake universal claims. Even ruling groups, intent, above all, on defending their private interests must promote universalistic motifs in religion, morality, and science. Thus originates the contradiction between the existent and the ideal, a contradiction which gives the spur to all historical progress. Philosophy renders men conscious of this contradiction. On the one hand, it appraises existence by the light of the very ideas which it has generated, on the other hand, it recognizes that these ideas bear the taints absorbed from the spotted actualities. The positive character of philosophy derives precisely from the interplay of these two negative procedures. Let us observe more closely what happens when values contaminated at birth by the taint of domination become the universal philosophical ideas by which existence is confronted. The hallowed values of Western Civilization,—were not created ex nihilo. They arise from the interaction of antagonistic groups in the social process. From one point of view, they ensure the amenability of the submerged strata by providing them with consolations which divert their frustrations into cooperative rather than aggressive channels. Indeed, such consolations help rulers as well as ruled bear the pressures and inequities of life and society. Such consolations effect a compromise, as it were, between blind coercion and complete abandonment to natural drives, between raw command and anarchy, between spirit and nature. They are the monuments of attempted reconciliation between oppressed nature and oppressing agencies. To the work of mediation which is performed by the language in which these ideals are couched, it is almost proper to apply the words with which the Gospel of John describes the Logos: In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The changing contents and stresses of the words we use embody the history of our civilization. The idea, in which word and thought form an inseparable unity, reflects the longings of the oppressed and the plight of nature, or, in the terms of my third lecture, releases the mimetic urge. The transformation of this urge into the universal medium of language rather than into destructive nature means the harnessing of potentially nihilistic energies to the work of reconciliation. Here, we have hit upon the basic and inherent antagonism between philosophy and fascism. Philosophy helps man to allay his fears by helping language to fulfill its mimetic function, its mission of mirroring the rhythm of natural tendencies. Fascism treats language as a power instrument, as a means of storing knowledge for use in production and destruction both in war and peace. Fascist propaganda employs the repressed mimetic tendencies in their raw form for the annihilation of all oppositions. Philosophy is at one with art in recognizing that language helps to allay anxiety and sublimate passion by giving a reflective order to experience and memory. Nature, mirroring itself in the realm of spirit, gains tranquility by listening to its own echo. This process is at the heart of all culture, particularly of music and the plastic arts. It reaches its most adequate form in language, where the echoes of nature are given names. Philosophy is the conscious effort to knit all our knowledge and insight into a linguistic structure which calls things by their right names.

This concept of truth, namely the suiting of name and thing, which, to my way of thinking, is inherent in each genuine philosophy, enables thought to withstand if not to overcome the demoralizing and mutilating effects of formalized reason. The classic systems of objective reason seem to me untenable; indeed, it was the purpose of my allusions to Platonism to intimate that the aforementioned systems were glorifications of the inexorable order of the universe and therefore mythologies. But it is to these systems rather than to positivism that we owe gratitude for preserving the idea that truth is the correspondence of language to reality. They were wrong, however, in believing that they could achieve this correlation systematically in eternalistic doctrines, in imagining that their position within the space-time nexus, in the midst of social injustice, did not prevent the formulation of an incontestable ontology. The passage of time and the workings of history have proved this confidence an illusion. A philosophia perennis cannot be expected in our days. The historical changes prerequisite to the establishment of a valid ontology are hardly in sight.

Ontology, the heart of traditional philosophy, is different from science. It pretends to develop the essences, substances, and forms of things from some universal ideas which reason imagines it finds in itself. But it is impossible to derive the structure of the universe from any first principles which we discover in our own minds. The causes for this impossibility are manifold. There are no grounds for believing that the more abstract qualities of a thing, such as its form or substance, should be considered primary or essential. What is essential has to be realized by presenting a thing in its concrete relations to other things and, finally, to the natural and historical process as a whole. Furthermore, why should the logically prior or the more general quality be accorded higher ontological rank? The hierarchy of concepts according to their generality mirrors the oppression of nature rather than its inner structure. I have previously stated that I agree with Durkheim in believing that the ontological hierarchy of being has its roots in the organization of society. This derivation from power relations rather than from the secret affinities of things is clearly suggested in Plato’s systematic arrangement of concepts according to their logical priority. His depiction of the Great Chain of Being barely conceals its dependence on traditional notions of the Olympian polity. The logically prior is no closer to the core of the thing than the temporally prior; to equate either of these priorities with the essence of nature or men means to debase creatures to the crude state to which domination tends to reduce them in reality: to mere “beings.” Today, the logical hierarchy is nothing but the repository of isolated logical devices of scientific and other [forms of] production. The major argument for the impossibility of ontology consists in the fact that the principles which man recognizes in himself cannot be those of society or of the universe because neither society nor the universe are made in the image of man. Philosophical ontology is inevitably ideological because it tries to obscure the rupture of man and nature and to uphold a theoretical harmony which is violated at each turning by the cries of the miserable and disinherited.

Distorted though the great ideals of civilization, justice, equality, freedom, may be, they are expressions of nature’s plight, the only formulated testimonies we possess. Toward them, philosophy takes a dual attitude: (1) Philosophy denies their claims to ultimate and infinite truth. Wherever a metaphysical system presents these testimonies as absolute or eternal principles, philosophy insists on laying bare their relativity to the changing historical surface. Philosophy rejects the veneration of the finite. This holds true not only for crude political or economic idols, such as the nation, the leader, success, or money, but also with ethical or aesthetic values, such as personality, happiness, beauty, or even liberty, insofar as they pretend to be independent ultimates. Philosophy opposes dogma and fetish alike. (2) Philosophy admits that the basic cultural ideas have truth values and measures them against the social background from which they emanated. It protests the breach between both ideas and ideals and reality. Our sketch of the history of individuality during the last lecture was meant to illustrate this aspect of the philosophical method.

It must be evident that, in my opinion, negation plays a crucial role in philosophy. The negation I refer to is double-edged: a negation of the absolute claims of prevailing ideology, and a negation of the impudent pretensions of reality. To criticize this concept of negation as formalistic is to confuse it with skepticism. Negation in our sense steers clear of wholesale condemnations of ideas or social realities. While exposing their absolutist claims, philosophical thinking seeks to effect an “authentic” theoretical whole which does justice to the relative truth of isolated idea-fragments. The process of relativization lies at the very heart of philosophy. It takes existing values seriously but insists on their limits and their mortality. Inasmuch as harmonious integration of subject and object, of word and thing cannot be achieved under present conditions, we are driven, by the principle of negation, to attempt to salvage relative truths from the wreckage of false ultimates. The skeptic and positivistic schools of philosophy find nothing in general concepts and norms worth salvaging. Oblivious to their own partiality, they fall into hopeless contradictions. On the other hand, objective idealism and rationalism insist, above all, on the eternal meaning of general concepts and norms without regard to their historical derivations. Both these contrary trends of thought are equally confident in their own thesis and hostile to the method of negation as practiced by true philosophical theory which, indeed, integrates their principles into its own procedure.

I must now offer some cautions against possible misconstruction. When I say that the essence or the positive side of philosophical thought consists in the understanding of the negativity and relativity of the existing culture, I do not mean that the possession of such knowledge constitutes, in itself, the overcoming of such negativity. To believe this would be to confound true philosophy with historical spiritualism, and to lose sight of the core of the doctrine which I have been trying to expound, namely, the basic difference between ideal and real, between theory and practice. The identification of wisdom, however deep with fulfillment, by which is meant the reconciliation of spirit and nature, enhances the ego only to rob it of its content by isolating it from the external world. The philosophies which look exclusively to an inner process for the eventual liberation, culminate in the exaltation of emptiness. As I observed last time, Hellenistic concentration on pure inwardness allowed society to become a jungle of power interests destructive of all the material conditions prerequisite for the security of the inner principle. Does, then, fulfillment, as I have just defined it, have to be accomplished by activism, especially by political activism? I am hesitant to say so. The present age needs no added stimulants to action. Philosophy must not be turned into propaganda, even for the best possible purpose. The world has more than enough propaganda to go around. Even in the considered opinion of Harold Lasswell, modern sophistication about propaganda has issued in a kind of propaganda-neurosis. Language is assumed to suggest and intend nothing beyond propaganda. If there were a reporter in the audience, we might expect to read in tomorrow’s paper that I had expounded propaganda against propaganda. Each of my words would be translated into a suggestion, a slogan, or a command. Philosophy is not interested in issuing commands. I must tread lightly here for the present intellectual situation is so confused that this statement might possibly be interpreted as offering foolish advice against following all commands, even those which might save our lives, indeed, it might even be construed as a command against commands. If one must translate philosophy into practical terms, one should begin by correcting this situation. The concentrated energies necessary for reflection must not be prematurely drained into the channels of activistic or non-activistic programs.

Today, the confusion between thinking and scheming is found even among outstanding scholars. Shocked by the injustices in society and by the hypocrisy in its traditional religious attitudes, they propose to wed ideology to reality, or, as they prefer to say, to bring reality closer to the heart’s desire, by adopting the wisdom of engineering and/or religion. In the spirit of Auguste Comte, they wish to establish a new social catechism. “American Culture,” writes one of our greatest sociologists, “if it is to be creative in the personality of those who live it, needs to discover and to build prominently into its structure a core of richly evocative common purposes which have meaning in terms of the deep personality needs of the great mass of people. Needless to say the theology, eschatology and other familiar aspects of traditional Christianity need not have any place in such an operating system. It is the responsibility of a science that recognizes human values as part of its data to help to search out the content and modes of expression of such shared loyalties. In withholding its hand science becomes a partner to those people who maintain outworn religious forms because there is nothing else in sight…” (L. 239). The honesty and courage of such an attitude are among the most encouraging signs of our times. Unfortunately, such progressive thinkers such as the one quoted do not recognize the core of the problem. Their social catechisms are even more futile than the revivals of Christian movements. The crisis of traditional religion consists to a great extent in the fact that it is recommended so warmly as an antidote for all our cultural and practical ills. Traditional religion is regarded as an instrument if not by great masses, at least by its authorized spokesmen. This condition can certainly not be cured by the propagation of new cults in which the actual or future community, the state or a leader, are venerated. The pragmatic end compromises the truth of the content. Once men come to speak of religious hope and despair in terms of “deep personality needs,” emotionally rich common sentiments, or scientifically tested human values, religion is meaningless for them. Even Hobbes’ prescription that religious doctrines should be swallowed like pills will be of little avail. The language of the recommendation disavows what it means to recommend.

[And now to conclude: Philosophy cannot be subsumed under politics, nor treated in isolation from it. The clarification of their relationship provides the opportunity for recalling some of the themes expounded in the past weeks. A crucial element within this nexus lies in the comprehension of domination which man has to overcome in order to realize the truth. [If] in the past, domination served a historical purpose, today it is a ghost sitting astride its own corpse. [Therefore it has become [X] demonic.] Human skill and knowledge are now sufficient to render our earth a Paradise which some 1500 years ago a Father of the Church expected to follow from a reasonable administration and distribution of goods.]¹⁶⁶

Today, the fulfillment of Utopia is blocked, preeminently by the widespread hypocrisy, by the belief in false theories, by the discouragement of Utopian thought, by the debilitation of will, by its premature diversion into endless activities under the pressure of fear. If philosophy succeeds in helping people to recognize these inhibiting factors, it will have rendered a great service to humanity. The method of negation, the denouncing of everything which mutilates mankind and impedes its free development, is an expression of the confidence in man, which has always characterized the most progressive historical movements. The so-called constructive philosophies may be shown truly to lack this conviction. They believe in the necessity of justifying programs for liberation by reference to the inherent nature of man and the world. In their light, action appears to be the fulfillment of our eternal destiny or a similar conformity. Even the struggle against despotism must have the character of an execution of an eternal command. Reason instead of being the organ for the apprehension of truth is turned into a mere organ of adaptation. Now that we have overcome the awe of the unknown in nature we are the slaves of social pressures of our own making. When called upon to act independently, we cry for patterns, systems, and authorities. If, by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from the superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate—in short, the emancipation from fear, then the denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.

Surely, something in our culture and education must be wrong, otherwise people’s faces would not always turn dull and blank when they try to think for themselves. In saying this an unforgettable image forces its way into my memory. I see before me a beautiful and sprightly girl. A student of the humanities, she has learned to read Homer, Aeschylus, Pascal, Goethe, and Proust in record time. She could answer the most intricate questions on the most incredible subjects in precisely the right terms. Yet, I never could be sure that she understood what she said. When I asked her a question to which there was no ready-made answer, one of those questions which all the writers, whom she so revered, had pondered their life long, her eyes assumed a vacant, sullen, and hostile look. She grew angry and desperate.¹⁶⁷ Is not the moral of this plain? That the smile on the face of modern youth does not conceal the disorder of our society. Regrettably, this smile is unable to shape humanity in its own image. Could one of the reasons for this misfortune be that youth has been terrorized at the prospect of thinking?

Finally—is it possible that man, who is really so much better than what he says and does in society, would fail to build and earthly paradise once he were able to understand the plight of his own nature and of the nature around him and once he had overcome the half-truths on which mass culture feeds him from earliest childhood? Philosophy, by destroying the delusions of power, endeavors to destroy the destruction which humanity faces in our days.

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Max Ernst. Volcan II. 1946-1947.

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VII. From Society and Reason to Eclipse (1944-1947).

‘The Good News Finds Us In Miserable Shape.’

[Horkheimer to Herbert Marcuse, 7/15/1944.]¹⁶⁸

Dear Marcuse:

This year the horizon seems to be brighter on your birthday. The enemy of humanity is breathing his last and it looks as though the chance of peaceful work will materialize once again. However, our triumph has been spoiled once and for all. Torture, despair, and death came to so many of our likes and untold hecatombs, destruction has been the fate of so great a part of the spiritual and material things we cherished, that the good news finds us in a miserable shape. It is difficult to enjoy the thought that the evil forces must now experience what the good ones have suffered for a decade. It is as if ruin had been exalted and success polluted. What else can we say on the days we celebrate, but that we shall make the best use of the time which, as an undeserved favor of fortune, is left to us.

I know that you and I have the same image of such use: the continuation of our theoretical work, and perhaps the effort to teach a few students who are worthwhile.

My wife joins me in my heartiest wishes for you and yours.

Take good care of yourself.

Society and Reason & sociology.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to R. MacIver, 8/9/1944.]¹⁶⁹

Thank you very much for your kind letter of July 1st. Since I am still uncertain whether or not the lectures should be printed, your lines were only too welcome. You encourage me to risk publication in spite of the fact that I wrote them under great pressure. They were meant to be a summary account of a few of the topics with which Adorno and I are dealing in our work together. Moreover, the lectures were composed almost entirely during my stay in New York, that is, in the intervals between the Thursdays on which they were delivered. I did this because I wanted to adapt them to the specific interest of the audience. Your remark that you liked the last one best was particularly valuable to me, because by the time I delivered it, I had reached the closest contact with my listeners. This is one of the reasons why I think it would do me good to keep in touch with an audience of students, at least for a while.

I am very grateful for your having been so specific in your comments [viz., on the manuscript for “Society and Reason”]. You may be certain that each of them will be considered scrupulously. There is one point which I would like to discuss in detail with you, not so much in view of publication, but for a much more far-reaching purpose. I feel that our coming to an understanding on the problem of the relation between truth and values could help to achieve the last step in the emancipation of modern sociology from positivistic epistemology, an emancipation for which we feel so highly indebted to your own work. I cannot resist the temptation of making a few remarks about the question right here. You ask: “Are all our ‘tastes’ derivatives from ‘belief’?” — I fully agree that this statement is much too one-sided. This is particularly true if derivative is meant to indicate that the specific nature of tastes may be derived from general intellectual propositions by the method of deduction in the sense of traditional logics, for neither can truth be resolved entirely into intellectual propositions, nor can the relationship between truth and volitions be expressed by syllogisms. The structure of this relationship is much more complicated.

However, I should still like to maintain that each taste involves a conceptual element. I do not think it is a very happy usage to call these elements value-judgments. This terminology tends to take back with one hand what it gives with the other, namely, the admission that there is an intellectual element registered in each taste and emotion. A value-judgment is by definition different from any objective statement, it cannot be true or untrue, it is almost alogical, a kind of exclamation. If, therefore, the intellectual element in emotions is identified as a value-judgment, our descriptive finding concerning the intellectuality of tastes would boil down to the tautological statement that a taste involves a taste.

I agree with you that the ends we strike for are realized exclusively in the lives of individuals. But it seems to me indisputable that the very concept of the individual is intrinsically linked with universality, not only as its opposite, but because every individual is determined as such by certain general, conceptual elements. It is this relationship, every individual's being more than merely individual, that constitutes the bond between even such apparently irrational traits as “tastes” and the sphere of logic and truth. As a matter of fact, our actual tastes are far less arbitrary, much more determined by universal factors, which are based upon and accessible to thinking processes, than we are led to believe. The most individual ends have a »meaning« of their own, that can be described in the phenomenological analysis of the acts through which they are sought. They are logically connected by this meaning with other beliefs and opinions. Through this connection they form a part of the whole of experience in that specific individual. The individual is not necessarily aware of such a whole toward which his aspirations inherently point. (It is one of the merits of modern psychology to have made an attempt to study certain empirical factors which obscure the link between the atomic likes and dislikes of an individual and the context of his life, and to make him aware of the forgotten logical connections. These psychologists achieve in their methodology what Bergson stated theoretically: that emotions as well as judgments etc. are abstracted from a concrete living entity. We cannot use these terms without awareness of that.)

It is my opinion that the idea of potential harmony between man's aspirations and the concept of a fundamental order of things, general and abstract at this order may be, has been inseparable from what we call Western Civilization since its beginnings. Even relativism, pluralism, and skepticism, insofar as they have tried to develop their own philosophies, bear evidence to this effect. What else are they attempting but to prove by consistent and meaningful logical methods that the world is inconsistent and meaningless? (By the way, the main point at which I deviate from these attitudes is their lack of transcendental reflection on their own philosophical methodology and their dogmatic naiveté with regard to the categories of scientific truth.)

I remember a particularly eloquent passage of yours where you counterpose some excerpts from the writings of positivistic sociologists to their own principle of Wertfreiheit. You could even go a step further and make a more general statement. If the sentences quoted depend on individual evaluation, it is equally true that the entire concept of science as well as its parts belong to an intellectual whole which is inseparable from the parti pris of innumerable generations. And there is another side to the picture. On the one hand, scientific judgments are, in the last analysis and however indirectly, irrevocably linked to emotions; on the other hand, human emotions carry the wisdom and convictions, scientific and nonscientific, of the individual who harbors them, as well as of the culture of which he is a part. Truth and tastes are connected in both ways. Please forgive me for being so explicit, but it is really impossible to speak of this problem without becoming involved in lengthy considerations, and even with regard to the present remarks, you would be perfectly right to say that they are still much too vague. Nobody can be more aware of this than I. All too often, however, a seeming clarity is paid for by repressing the difficulty into the principal concepts and then forgetting them.

Finally, I should like to take up two minor points in your letter. The term “insensitivity to nature” certainly needs far-reaching qualification. As a matter of fact, it may even be said that the sense of nature, in the connotation of Wordsworth's poetry or of the early Goethe, is as much a modern product as is landscape painting. But our idea is that just this sense of nature is a result of the alienation from nature, nay, that even the concept of nature as opposed to man, history, or society owes its very existence to man's aloofness from nature as brought about by the history of modern civilization. Nature is the outcome of man's severing his ties with nature. In other words, the notion of nature in its more specific meaning is concomitant with a going back to something which has been lost and which was nothing per se so long as it existed. It is hardly accidental that the most decisive conception of nature in its sentimental aspect, that of Rousseau, appears as retour à la nature. Moreover, the philosophy of German romanticism has given a complete account of the genesis of this contemporary concept of nature. Of course, publication would have to bring out the specific character of modern sensitivity to nature much more clearly.

With regard to your critique of my statement about the standardization of modern man, I hardly believe that I have made the point too strongly, but I certainly have stated it too primitively. Standardization is a category that applies to the essence of modern society rather than to the surface phenomena. The apparent differentiations of men throughout the Western civilized world are to a large extent merely veneers which hide basic identities; they are as much manipulated as are magazines, broadcasts, residential districts etc. which are highly differentiated according to income groups, but are nevertheless standardized by means of this very differentiation. We have called this tendency pseudo-individualization and have characterized some of its aspects in a comprehensive study on modern mass culture. In the context of my lectures the methodological task would be to show the link between these surface differentiations or pseudo-individualizations and the basic standardization of man and society. Comparative studies on the cultural anthropology of, let us say, youth in America and Russia would probably yield astonishing basic similarities and comparatively superficial differences. Naturally, this would be largely a matter of concrete investigation.

Mimesis and Civilization.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Gretl Dupont, 1/16/1945.]¹⁷⁰

‘...en el viento restallan las banderas.” It is cold here, not only physically but mentally. You remember the story I told you of the filia hospitalis on Mont Parnasse who, when asked about her interest in her work, said: “Vous savez, Monsieur, on se fatigue, pas physiquement, mais moralement.” At present it is almost the same with me; but the only difference is that this city affects me moralement as well as physiquement. “Donde buscar / durante el invierno las flores / donde el fulgor del sol / y las sombras del suelo?” I do not have coldness enough to resist the coldness in the air and in the hearts of men. One needs a certain impenetrability of one's soul in order to survive. By this I do not mean that lack of understanding or even sympathy is essential to health. Rather a certain self-restraint is necessary in regard to abandoning oneself or being too much open to any kind of sensation and experience. A healthy person does not wake up at night with a stinging pain in his heart when a shrill sound is heard. The one who does is not in good health and that pain, being stirred up night after night, will make it worse. The number and intensity of impressions a human heart can have without being harmed is limited. The amount is probably predetermined for each individual before he is born. The Demiurgos sets the capacity for impressions beyond which the strings of the heart lose their elasticity and become fragile and brittle. The Demiurgos does not take into consideration the nature or content of our experience, the aims which the individual may pursue during his life, and, perhaps, he is right: the intensity of the impressions has an impact upon their content, their form upon their matter. Those shrill sounds at night mean danger however they may originate; in our sleep we fall back into archaic times where there is not so much distance between man and the surrounding world. That sensibility by which we are frightened out of our sleep is atavistic. All emotions are atavistic. Do not be emotional. In our emotions we are too close to things. We are almost in things, endowing them with our life and ourselves with their lives, as do children who speak of themselves in the third person and to objects as though they were alive. The process of learning and growing up means, for the individual as well as for humanity, that this identification becomes more limited and that therefore emotions become rarer and better adapted to the human condition in civilization. Our life becomes more “rational.” However, there are persons who do not completely develop according to such law. They retain something of their original childishness. Rationality provides protection against the frequency and intensity of impressions and becoming rational is therefore a part of the process of natural selection and adjustment. Those who do not follow that line must pay with their vital energy and finally with life itself.

You must forgive me for having let my thoughts go astray. This may be excused by the fact that in these weeks and months my presence of mind is needed every hour during the day and a great part of the night. Writing to you is a pause in the midst of a vita activa which is so alien to me. And further, you sent me a book by Hölderlin and he was one of those who did not surrender to that process of adjustment of which I have just been talking. His work is in the back of my mind while I am engaged in the routine of the day. I do not know how long I shall be able to stand life here. The day might not be too far when I shall return to my own work which, inspite and because of its theoretical nature, seems more important to me than anything else. […] Winter in New York! Hölderlin certainly had no idea of it. Otherwise, would he have written the verse:

“Como un dia de reposo, tal es el fin del ano, / como el son de una pregunta…”

[“Als wie ein Ruhetag, so ist des Jahres Ende / Wie einer Frage Ton…”

“Like a day of rest is the end of the year, / like a questioning tone that seeks an answer, …”]?¹⁷¹

El son de una pregunta! and not even the gas-shortage has dimmed the horns of the remaining taxicab!

On Vivisection.

[Horkheimer to Ned R. Healy, 3/22/1945.]¹⁷²

Dear Mr. Healy:

A bill to prohibit vivisection of living dogs is now before the District of Columbia Committee of the House of Representatives. In my own name and in the name of a few other Californian scholars, I beg you to do everything in your power to see that this bill becomes a law.

My personal experiences, I think, qualify me to say a word in this matter. I was born in Germany and once occupied the only regular chair for social philosophy in that country, at the University of Frankfurt am Main. After escaping the Nazi tyranny at its very beginning, I taught at various academic institutions and finally made my home in California in order to devote my life to the study of the psychological and social processes which seem to threaten our civilization.

At present I am in New York where I have been called by a great organization to direct a series of studies into the nature of prejudice. It is my belief that the unspeakable crimes which have been committed upon the instigation of the despotic cliques in Europe, have been made possible by certain basic shortcomings of education in its largest sense. One of these deficiencies may be seen in the inability of modern society to keep the training for our practical tasks in life from becoming a force hardening us against nature in general and against creatures at our mercy in particular. Vivisection of animals is a striking symptom of our inability to keep the technical means of self-preservation in proper relationship with the ends which these means are to serve.

Human industry is intended to bring about and serve a mankind in which the relationships among all human beings are decent and mutually helpful. All the sacrifices which have been made during these last centuries, in order to build up the skills and the material wealth which may lead to such a stage of cooperation were sheer madness if, while developing them, society should destroy the moral or even anthropological potentialities which justify the effort. Science is running amok.

On the one hand, it has suffered from all the uncontrollable influences of other sectors of economic and social life. On the other hand, it has become (a) kind of “absolute” instead of a means to seek and fulfill truth. The death camps in Poland and elsewhere in which streamlined science, completely freed from any moral responsibilities has celebrated its orgies, are the logical end where the various lines of frantic research converge. The vivisection laboratory is the practicing ground of the death camp. The desire of the totalitarian sadists to label their prospective victims as members of other races was motivated by the fact that race is a natural, not a social category.

Since modern man is accustomed to treat anything in nature as a subject of power, as a means to his own ends, since nature is outlawed, so to speak, humans who are denounced as members of a different race, are outlawed themselves. The ultimate consequence of this doctrine is the mutual extermination of mankind, and the doctrine itself is the consequence of mankind's blindness to nature.

Therefore, the fight against vivisection, the fight for the animal, is a fight for man and the bill before you has a greater civilizing function and meaning than many of its supporters may realize at this moment.

There are more reasons why I feel that the matter deserves your attention, but I think this letter is already too long.

Sincerely yours, —

The Poor Pledge To the Better.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Ludwig Marcuse, February 1945.]¹⁷³

Your plan to visit at the beginning of March is a ray of hope. I am busy from morning to night and nothing is getting done. At this point, I may put some particular effort into studying the general thesis that modern business is the most subtle machinery for the annihilation of the subject. It is an open question whether I will take it much further. Not far, I believe. Among the few of us left, you are one of the fewer who sees right through the prevailing social conditions. The only distinction between us is that you desperately confirm the calamity. Much like those staunch materialists whose reasoning you penetrate through to the root like no other, you wish to appropriate for yourself the very principle with which the world brandishes against us. You think anyone who refuses to profess the same stupid, or you would have him believe he is. True enough—the negator contradicts himself. The power to deny that principle, the principle of brute existence, presupposes one’s alignment with the worse. And yet, I would honor the imagination which lies in the ground of such a contradiction. It is no mere “ideology,” but the truth: the poor pledge to the better.

Adorno: Negative Impressions of the Guterman Redaktion.

[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 3/19/1945.]¹⁷⁴

During my travels, I managed to work through the first hundred pages or so (I do not yet have the rest) of the Guterman Redaktion of the lectures. While I would much rather relieve you of the whole burden and not even bother you with it in our correspondence, I must, unfortunately, do so just this once. My impression of this new edition of the text is extremely negative. It’s possible that the effort to “loosen up” the text has improved some individual sentences in an elementary, linguistic sense, though, for my own part, I doubt this is the case. But the coherence [Zusammenhang] of the whole is completely distorted. The logic of the structure and order of the sentences [Satzverbindungen] is disrupted throughout; there are numberless gaps and pseudo-conclusions, and, particularly in the first chapter, there is no longer anything remotely like a ‘discursive presentation’ to be found.

What applies to the details applies still more to the structure of the whole. The incorporation of the Positivism-essay [viz., “Revival”] is in itself a good idea, but in execution it has been unsuccessful—or rather, Guterman has not even really attempted to carry this out, and the Positivism-essay has been introduced completely undigested, like a foreign body. This leads to discrepancies of the most obvious kind (and not just for us, but for any unbiased reader): what in the first chapter is posed as a problem, the objective concept of reason, seems to be presupposed as self-evident in the Positivism-essay: it is implemented as a critical criterion before the idea of such a concept of reason has been even slightly developed. The “integration” is done with such inattentiveness that all the crudest contradictions remain standing. So, the concept of ‘value’ in the first chapter is seemingly introduced as a positive one, whereas it is subject to critique in the Positivism-section, which naturally reflects our true standpoint. Because the editors have not run rampant over this part (II. [“Revival”]), it strikes me as much better than the rest; while this may gratify us, it is by no means an advantage for the publication itself.

One finds innumerable passages in which anything whatever like a meaningful train of thought can no longer be detected. After the effort to “loosen up,” the inclusion of the historical material strikes me as wholly arbitrary ostentation. Sparing you the examples of its inadequacy on the whole, it is my strong opinion that this Redaktion is no progress compared to the results of your editorial work with Nelson, but a catastrophic regression–and not only in the sense of our sacred texts, but even with regard to the most primitive elements of communication. I maintain that publication of the text in its present form is totally irresponsible: it would do us no benefit, but only harm. Even if a number of details were to be improved upon (which, in my copy, I have made every effort to do), the whole would remain a patchwork, and, in my conviction, would not actually remedy the evil.

My suggestion is that the work be taken out of Guterman’s hands immediately, and, since neither of us has the necessary time to make something out of the matter itself and do so responsibly, that we fall back on the Nelson version, submit it to revisions of the simplest linguistic kind, and, perhaps, add the Positivism-essay and the Gewerkschaftsaufsatz [“The Sociology of Class Relations”] as appendices, and, if it does not disturb the coherence, my major insertions into the text. Another possibility would be for Leo, investing considerable time and on the grounds of my detailed instructions, to work together with Guterman to correct his reworking of the text, from the structure as a whole as much as the train of thought down to the level of details. Without great exertion, this will not be possible. In light of his inadequate performance, Guterman should not ask for any further payment for this.

As you know, I get along with Guterman very well personally, but the snag is simply that he is in no way a match for the task of an actually in-depth ‘editing’ of such a text, and has instead approached it as a seasoned editor of a literary journal routinely would, bringing about pure Galimathias. [...] Ultimately, I considered whether the individual essays and lectures could not be published independently in the form of contributions to the Kenyon- or Antioch-Review, which would at the very least solve part of the construction problem. Further, such journals would take care of the more modest editorial efforts in a relatively decent manner. I don’t think it would be good for either of us to invest too much time in this affair, not to mention the fact that we will have so little time at our disposal in the next few months, and, when you have returned and recovered, we cannot afford to postpone the Dialectic any longer than we have.

‘He Shall No More Be Remembered.’

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Berthold Viertel, April 1945.]¹⁷⁵

World-historical events [...] have brought to a close a dominion whose mere memory will henceforth eat its way through the power to of memory itself, crippling it. The Biblical curse, he shall be no more remembered [“The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a tree.” (KJV, Job 24:20)], has been fulfilled in our days to the point of annihilating the organ for it. Our vocation is to bring this unstoppable process to halt, and I wish you the full strength to do so for a long time still to come.

Löwenthal: Revisions and Additions to the S&R Manuscripts.

[Excerpt from: Löwenthal to Adorno, 5/25/1945.]¹⁷⁶

Attached you will find the new version of the proposed manuscript for the book, which I hope you like better than the preceding one. First, a word on the history: the first version was prepared during a time when, because of the Labor Study, I was able to contribute next to nothing. Guterman had only advised Miss Anderson on passages she believed she did not understand. In actuality, Ms. A. was completely incapable of editing a philosophical text, not to mention the effort of making such drastic reorganizations. Now, having worked alongside Guterman [on the text] for some weeks, I feel confirmed in my old judgment that among all of our acquaintances (aside from Nelson, who is unfortunately out of the question for other reasons), he is the most capable and well-educated editor we know. I even consider the manuscript in its present form ripe for publication.

Of course, the document does not have the look of one Max worked on with you for a year; these are, after all, texts for lectures written under less than favorable external circumstances, and excerpts from a few essays that would probably look rather different here and there if they were written from the standpoint of today’s state of knowledge. I am of the same opinion as Max that one ought not conceal the fact that the manuscript originates from lectures. In the ‘Preface’ written by Guterman, you will find a sentence to this effect. Naturally, the ‘Preface’ cannot remain as it is, but I am including it anyway as a supplement. Where your suggestions are concerned, they have been, as I have already conveyed to you, of immeasurable value. As you read through the text, you will no doubt see that in the wide majority of cases, something has been done to address your suggestions, whether by adhering almost exactly to what you wrote or by making alterations, insertions, rearrangements, or deletions of our own which we believe address your reservations. Wherever we did not follow your notes, we either weren’t entirely convinced there wasn’t some misunderstanding at work or because we felt we could not rise to the challenge of the desired expansion in question. In each instance, the guiding principle was to produce a comprehensible and responsible text.

As you look through the manuscript, we ask that instead of putting any further wishes in the form of suggestions, that you make whatever additions or modifications you see fit. It is not necessary that this is done in English. On the contrary, wherever you wish to add one or more sentences, please formulate them in German. We have found this makes editing easier, not more difficult. Regarding the organization of the whole: the second chapter, which you did see, was naturally quite impossible. We have worked the motifs of tradition and the principle of truth into the first chapter, and combined the actual theme most of the second chapter (i.e., lecture) was devoted to with the third, as they were the most closely related. In the second lecture, only the last section of pages were originally devoted to the actual object of the lecture itself (from page 18 through the end, in the old text).

Regarding the idea of including appendices—this is not a good one for such a small book. This would create significant difficulties for the publisher. You will probably also discover that the implementation of the Class-essay in the fourth chapter no longer poses any serious difficulty. As for the essay on Positivism, it may be met with a lack of understanding by any reader not already philosophically well-versed, but not in too decisive a way. In the context of the whole, the essay fulfills the double function of uncovering certain opposing positions and, through the polemic itself, clarifying the primary concepts, namely: the attributes of formalized reason. In my opinion, the first and the fourth chapters present almost no problems. In the third chapter, there might be a noticeable blockage in the flow of thought here and there, though I’m unable to make this clearer at the moment, since I lack the requisite distance.

Regarding the second chapter, I have already given my comments. The last chapter could stand to do with a few more additions by the author—but these are not unconditionally necessary. To address a few technical misunderstandings: the manuscript of the first version of the draft was not shorter, but longer than the Lecture-text. The impression otherwise is an optical illusion due to the difference in typewriters and the amount of text on the page. The same for the present manuscript, since the secretary squeezed more onto each of the pages. I couldn’t utilize any of the older drafts and preliminary materials for the lectures, since they aren’t here and Max wasn’t able to procure them. As for the ‘German version’ of the Positivism-essay you mention several times—none exists nor existed, as it was originally written in English. As for the class- and racket-theory text, the insertion was not, as you assumed, cobbled together from two manuscripts; only the essay “On [The Sociology of] Class Relations,” also originally written in English, was used. Moreover, in light of the train of thought, it was better not to use the concept of “rackets.” As you can no doubt imagine, I am very curious to hear your reaction. I believe Max would also be relieved to know whether we have now produced a text you consider usable.

Adorno: Two Critical Theses on the First Revised Manuscript.

[Excerpt from: Adorno to Löwenthal, 6/3/1945.]¹⁷⁷

My dear Leo–many thanks for your letter, and for the latest version of the draft of the lectures, which I immediately worked through in detail. It is obvious that this version is an incomparable advance on Anderson’s, and I was actually touched by how lovingly you took my many suggestions into account. The thing has improved to the point I feel I can actually make positive suggestions for additions where they appear to be necessary. Next week, I will dictate my suggestions to Frau Golm once again and see to it they are sent you chapter by chapter as quickly as possible. As a precautious Familienvater, however, I would like to state that the actual clarification of two fundamental theoretical questions appears sin qua non to me. Though I have already referred to both [previously], here I do so only in critical form. Their necessity derives not only from the subject matter itself, but also from the situation of its publication. When it comes to a text that claims to overthrow all dominant habits of thinking, as this text does and must, it is not possible to simply ignore the overviews and consequences for thought which, in the context of the problem we pose, are available to ‘official’ thinking itself. True—we are no systematics, and have no ambition to “exhaust” any problem. However, we must not expose ourselves to attack by breaking off at moments where, in remaining silent, we hand weapons to the enemy.

My concerns are as follows:

1) The text, especially the first chapter, describes the process of the formalization and instrumentalization of reason as necessary and unstoppable, in the sense Hegel treated the enlightenment in the Phenomenology. However, the book is then dedicated to the critique of precisely this reason. The relation between the critical and criticized standpoint is not made theoretically transparent. It often seems as if we “dogmatically,” to a certain extent, take objective reason as pregiven after having previously determined subjective reason in its unavoidability. In actuality, two things must be fully clarified: first, that there is no positive “solution” given in the spirit of a philosophy which would simply confront subjective reason; second, that the critique of subjective reason is only possible in a dialectical sense—that is, by demonstration of the contradictions which arise in the course of its own development and by transcending them by means of determinate negation. Put very generally, if it is to be more than just an unfulfilled promise, this very process must be worked out concretely at the very least in one model. Speaking crudely, the last chapter must explicitly answer the questions which have been raised by the first, and it would by making their unanswerability truly clear. Otherwise, the two philosophical standpoints of unstoppable and unilateral subjective reason and of the truth contrasted with it stand in immediate and, theoretically speaking, completely unsatisfactory opposition to one another. Naturally, there are a number of elements in the last chapter which are perhaps the most crucial for addressing the questions raised. Yet, at least in their construction, these elements are not related clearly enough to the basic question to be understood as an “answer” by anyone who doesn’t know it already.

2) Closely connected to this is the question of the dialectical relationship between both concepts of reason, as this is postulated by the consequences of self-preservation (which, as the ultimate norm, dissolves even this), through the concept of happiness and the like. After all, the entirety of that grand philosophy from which we begin, in Kant and Hegel, presupposed subjective reason and attempted to transform it, by its very own movement, into objective [reason]. To assume a chorismos between the two spheres would really be a regression behind Hegel, and the more I think over the whole question, the more it seems to me that the “error” of the runaway enlightenment [der losgelassenen Aufklärung] consists in breaking off [Abbrechen] the dialectic driving it into the objective, whereas, conversely, the objective must be reconciled with the subjective if it is not to fall prey to the critique we have directed against ontology. While this is not the last word on the matter, it does seem to me to lead us a bit farther. In any case, we must steel ourselves for objections such as those raised by a Russell or a Cornelius who assert, on the basis of self-preservation or the pleasure-principle, that their subjective reason is simultaneously objective. It isn’t, of course, but is nonetheless a part of it, and this must be brought to the fore with all clarity, just as much as must the inadequacy of subjective reason, in its abstract form, to pass over into objective [reason].

As you can see from my somewhat formal theses, both of these desiderata are extraordinarily difficult but cannot be avoided. I would naturally prefer if Max and I were to arrive at formulations for such extremely delicate things as these together after his return. On the other hand, I would like to formulate something theoretically coherent on both points as soon as I’m done with the other matters, and then perhaps send it to Max so he can take part in the decisive aspects. So far as I can tell, these large additions should be inserted somewhere around pages 116ff in the final chapter. Aside from this, I would only say that the critique of technocracy around 102/103 still does not appear to be strong enough to me, since the concept of the engineer still seems too subjective and psychological, and still insufficiently grasped in terms of the position of this group in the today’s production process. I don’t dare try to write something powerful about this, especially in the rush I would inevitably be in to do so, and it would really be best for Max to do something here. Two to three theoretical pages which get to the center of things would probably be sufficient. The weakness of the formulations I have in mind is particularly evident in the very first few lines of 103. But all else is a question of supplements, clarifications, and details. [...]

It’s very curious that I so strongly believed the Positivism-essay was originally written in German, despite the fact that through all my searching for it I never found a German manuscript. In any case, the incorporation of the essay, along with the pages on labor, seems to me a success.

Adorno: On the Difficulties of Americanizing While Conceptualizing.

[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 6/16/1945.]¹⁷⁸

Today, I’m sending you my larger insert for the final chapter of the Lecture-text. At Löwenthal’s urging, I wrote it out in German, which suited me just fine—since it is nearly impossible in these pressing times to conceptualize and to Americanize such things in a single coup. Naturally, I will continue to monitor the Americanization closely, and to supplement it if necessary. Since the draft represents a small pontoon-bridge [Pontonbrücke] to what lies before us, I am eager to know your reaction. The inclusion of this insert at the designated location seems to me unavoidably necessary, so that at the very least a certain proportion will prevail between the formulation of the problem and something approximating a solution. Believe me, I wrote it not out of wild philosophical enthusiasm, but entirely according to more precise considerations concerning the architectonic requirements of the work as a whole.

Horkheimer: Automatism of the Dialectical Apparatus.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adorno, 6/25/45.]¹⁷⁹

I skimmed your draft for the insertion to the last chapter of the Lecture-text. Tausend Dank. On the whole, I largely agree. Since I have no time for changes, I struck through several of the passages I had doubts about. I think this for the best anyway, since, or so it seems to me, the dialectical apparatus in the piece works somewhat automatically. I hope the whole, with the inclusion of the insert, will be finished before I leave. Löwenthal and Guterman have begun to work through your memorandum. While I cannot now join in the effort, I do have the impression it’s being undertaken with true zealousness. [...] I have so much work I actually cannot devote any thought to rational things. Nevertheless, behind and beneath everything there is simply my oversized longing for our shared future together. [...]

Adorno: Mechanics and Dialectics.

[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 7/2/1945.]¹⁸⁰

Your objection that my major insertion is “mechanical” coincides with certain reflections on dialectics which I set down on paper a few weeks prior. To quote just one sentence: “indeed, cognition of what has occurred must retain the unhappy rectilinearity of victory and defeat, the antithetic reversals of universals, and yet at the same time address itself to whatever was left out of this dynamic, left by the wayside, its waste byproduct [Abfallstoff] and blind spots. In other words, dialectical thinking must simultaneously contain the critique of dialectics.”¹⁸¹ (This is still wholly unformulated.) None can be more conscious of the problem than I, since I have always held onto an element of heterodoxy against the exclusivity of dialectical procedure. In the Lecture-text, however, something of this kind cannot be avoided, since the underlying, very general theoretical basic concepts [Grundbegriffe] have a certain kind of logical movement of their own which makes it difficult for concrete motifs to break through. The intent to criticize the simple opposition between subjective and objective reason is precisely what is anti-mechanistic. Incidentally, you will find a series of lines in the last section of my insert which argue against automatic procedure itself. Perhaps we can bring this part of the text into proper order together while you’re here.

Horkheimer: Problems of Dialectical Presentation in Eclipse.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 1/10/1946.]¹⁸²

Let us do everything we can to make at least the form of this first programmatic and aggressive publication as invulnerable as possible. [...] I share your opinion that a dialectical development of concepts as abstract as nature and spirit is very delicate and almost impossible if it is not expanded by concrete discussions far beyond the size of 11 pages. On the other hand, the book, as it is, opposes the concept of nature so directly to that of spirit, and the idea of object to that of subject, that our philosophy appears as much too static and dogmatic. We have accused the others, both Neo-Thomists and Positivists, of stopping thought at isolated and therefore contradictory concepts and, as it is, it would be only too easy for them to accuse us of doing the same thing. There are a few passages hinting at the identity of the ideas between which we differentiate, but these passages are by far too sporadic. The mere idea of the revolt of nature asks for a dialectical relativization which we offer implicitly but not in a continuous train of thought. I do not feel any doubt that in the last chapter this gap should be fulfilled. [...] This is one of the cases in which the pressing time and my condition make it impossible for me to say the last word.

Horkheimer: On the Incorporation of “The Sociology of Class Relations.”

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 1/25/1946.]¹⁸³

[…] I think the idea to bring the pages from “The Sociology of Class Relations” as an annex under the title “On Social Totalities” is really feasible. (1) It is an addition to our theory of the obliteration of the individual. It contains (think e.g. of the first sentence on p. 19) the germ of a philosophical theory of why internationalism must vanish along with the workers. (2) It introduces the concept of totality in the sense of dynamic Gestalt in American sociology. (3) It enriches the book and somehow compensates for the thinness of the parts which you had taken over originally from that article (they may make their appearance still somewhat like “Da wär mer! — Die Wörmer…”). (4) “The Sociology of Class Relations” will anyway not be published in the near future, and it would not be much fun since parts of it have now been taken out for the book.

Civilization as Forgetting.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Pollock, 3/1/1946.]¹⁸⁴

It is typical of our civilization to contradict and nullify, as it were, the pains over the past by pointing to the future. The truth in this gesture is only a relative truth. Our sadness is neither just an emotion arising from the belly as our friend Paulus [Tillich] would say, nor silly because it is without a practical aim. It is not, or rather: it is silly, but the destruction of this kind of sillyness is the destruction of humanity. There is no better instance to exemplify the essence of this form of civilization than the sentence: “It makes no sense to worry about it, for there is just nothing you can do about it.” This would be the death verdict on philosophy. However, the failure of the past few thousand years of philosophical thinking was not so much that philosophers worried about things which cannot be changed, but rather the opposite. Their memory was too short like that of the rest. …

Horkheimer: Proposed Stylistic Corrections to Eclipse.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Miss Margaret Nicholson (Oxford University Press), 3/11/1946.]¹⁸⁵

The reflections which this book lays before the reader differ in many ways from the usual texts. They neither stay within brackets—economy, sociology, psychology, epistemology—from which trier concepts originate, nor do they defend a thesis. The fact that each literary and even philosophical publication must conform to these and similar requirements is itself an element of the cultural situation with which the book is concerned. In one of our previous studies we compared these requirements (which apparently govern only the form of presentation and not the content) with other control mechanisms of present-day intellectual life. The point was that all these processes of adaptation to preconceived patterns—be they exercised by third persons or automatically current in the minds of students and writers—could well be compared to the voluntary censorship of the motion picture industry. The effect is that all those institutionalized do’s and don’ts have an impact on the life of thought. They affect its very substance even in domains that are seemingly out of their scope. You will remember that the book itself critically discusses the very compulsion to give precise definitions of philosophical concepts. The suggestions outlined in […] your letter amount to translating the book back into a style of thinking which is implicitly attacked in each of its parts. The book in its present form may or may not fulfill its task of raising the discussion level of the cultural crisis of our day; it may or may not become a driving force to raise more radical questions about man under industrialism. To formulate my ideas within nicely linked sections and as a succinct statement might weaken the effect of a book that is directed against the dangers involved in such succinct formulations. […] Any attempt at predigestion […] might make it more difficult to grasp the nature of the book rather than to induce and help [the reader] to sustain the intellectual effort required for the understanding of any philosophical theory.¹⁸⁶

Horkheimer: Potential Synopsis of Eclipse.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Leo Löwenthal, 3/20/1946.]¹⁸⁷

This book is about the changes in present-day human nature. Economic and social relations are brought in as co-players [Beiherspielende] in this process. The primary theme is the progressive dissolution of the foundational concepts upon which bourgeois civilization rests. Modern “trends” in philosophy, such as positivism and pragmatism, merely draw their conclusion from the universal development of our time when they undermine the concept of truth itself or assert the impossibility of grasping the highest goals or the destiny of the human being in thinking. In addition to the concepts of reason and truth, the logical basis of even the highest political concepts, such as justice, is undermined as well. Among the numerous neo-romantic attempts to recover a now-lost intellectual security, this book focuses on Neo-Thomism. All of these attempts at restoration are both artificial and untrue, and can only accelerate the very process they seek to bring to a halt. There is no attempt to halt the course of social, technical, and scientific progress which does not propel us towards catastrophe. On the other hand, the immense process of mechanization and massification in modern society involves such a strong suppression of human needs and impulses that civilization is perpetually under threat of bursting apart. The core of the book is the presentation of the rebellion of mutilated nature, as most recently demonstrated in the devastation of Europe by National Socialism. The individual and social mechanisms of this rebellion, which are not confined to Europe but present in every modern country, are discussed. These arise from the intolerable pressure modern civilization imposes upon human potentialities. The book proceeds to show how, under such pressure, the ego, the conscience, the faculty of expression, and along with them the very idea of the human individual are destroyed. This process is also presented through the changes within the modern labor movement. The autonomous subject, with all of its doubts and complexities, proves in a manner of speaking just another outdated small business venture. Its functions are taken over by the controlling agencies of modern mass-society. Philosophy has no cure to prescribe for this. One of its most important tasks, however, is raising to consciousness that which has been mutilated in the process of progress. In so doing, it helps to ensure that the very thing for which this sacrificial path was first taken is not lost along the way: humanity.

Horkheimer: On Sartre and Style.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 8/19/1946.]¹⁸⁸

After having had a good taste of Sartre [viz., Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, published in 1943 as L'Être et le néant : Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique] I am deeply convinced that it is our duty to have our book [viz., Eclipse and Dialectic] published as soon as possible. Despite my inner resistance, I have read a great part of Sartre and should like to have a long discussion with Guterman. This is a new kind of philosophical mass literature. The galimatias into which certain philosophical ideas, isolated from their original context and meaning, are perverted, is in reality a kind of simplification, vulgarization, reification. However, the mere ability of writing, the scholarly paraphernalia and the volume of the books make people believe that here is the cupboard which holds the truth. The fact that only the experts can read them gives a kind of authority to the poor and desolate vulgarities which will undoubtedly be presented as the exoteric summaries of the real treasure. From a philosophical point of view, the the most amazing phenomenon is indeed the naive reification of dialectical concepts in the midst of a seemingly brilliant [handwritten insert: “though abominable”] style. Sometimes it looks as though Hegel had first been worked over by August Messer for Realschulen and then been studied and presented by Maine de Biran, only that the latter would have been offended by the very idea. The dialectical finesse and complexity of thought has been turned into a glittering machinery of metal. Words like l'être en soi and l'être pour soi function as kinds of pistons. The fetishistic handling of categories appears even in the form of printing with its enervating and intolerable use of italics. All the concepts are termini technici in the literal sense of the word. …

Waiting for Liberating Words.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Paul Tillich, 8/29/1947.]¹⁸⁹

You tell me that the Germans insist on hearing liberating words from you. Are you not responding to this plea by doing what you do? In the book which you are writing now you are giving the best of yourself and in the phase of a spiritual predicament, such as the Germans are in now, anything but the best would be too little. There are, anyway, too many intellectuals who either accuse or defend the Germans politically. I do not think that we can help them by entering this field, yet if we do there is one observation which, in my opinion, should not be overlooked. I think the Germans, more than anyone, have been aware of the horror of the unspeakable actions to which they have become willing or unwilling helpers. Deep down in their hearts they have never kidded themselves about what was going on. Since they were the most highly developed nation in the world, they were more sensitive about injustice and vulgarity then others are today. Therefore, during the last fifteen years they had to achieve a more thorough job of psychological repression than any people in any period of history. Apart from the miseries of their daily lives, it is this constant necessity of keeping those feelings hidden in their unconscious, by which their libidinous energies are tied up. Anyone who takes their defense, and even more the one who with friendly or unfriendly intentions admits their guilt, must necessarily reactivate the process of repression and stir up fury and hatred. The obvious statement that masses of German individuals were unwilling, is only a rationalization for this fury; in fact, all of them feel guilty. Indeed, the inner shame is so great that they have lost the sense of shame. Therefore, if one speaks to them on subjects close to politics, I don’t see any other way but to express those as they are. That means that we point to the thorn in their eyes without seeming to forget about the beam in our own. If we are unyielding in view of the evils and dangers in other parts of the world without letting up in our denunciation of Germany's actually committed deeds, if, in other words, we express our insight into the plight of both the victors and the vanquished without using the ones in order to excuse the others, we shall help the Germans to accept consciously the indictment which they are now opposing. To make them conscious of the repression which is at the base of their actual attitude would contribute a great deal to strengthen the forces of resistance against postwar Nazist trends.

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Max Ernst. Moon II. 1944.

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VIII. Lectures on National Socialism and Philosophy (Spring 1945).

Editor’s Note.

These are transcriptions made from manuscripts of the minutes taken down in English (Pollock or Löwenthal? both? neither?) for four of the lectures on National Socialism and Philosophy Horkheimer delivered through Columbia’s sociology department in the spring of 1945. Like the materials for Society and Reason, these lectures were sourced from the MHA and, to my knowledge, have not previously been published.¹⁹⁰ The sole reference to the lectures I have been able to find in either Adorno or Horkheimer’s published correspondence is an editorial note in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), which lists key words from the lecture Horkheimer delivered on May 1st from an unspecified location in the MHA.¹⁹¹ On the typed manuscript for the earliest of the lectures which is accessible through the digitized portion of the MHA, dated 2/5/1945, the course is listed as “General Introduction to Course: Sociology U-202.” for “Spring Term 1945.” It is not clear whether the lectures were widely attended, or attended by anyone outside of the ISR’s circle, like Paul Massing and Felix Weil (regular participants in the discussions, per the minutes), or members of the Columbia sociology department. It is possible that Columbia University has archival materials on the course schedule, topics, and materials. (I would be grateful for any suggestions or help in tracking this down!) I have given the four lectures provisional titles based on what seems to be the respective thematic core of each:

[Lecture I. Problem: Authority of the Epoch] (2/5/1945)

[Lecture II. Natural History of Belief] (4/24/1945)

[Lecture III. Mimesis and Civilization] (5/1/1945)

[Lecture IV. Dialectic of Idolatry: German Philosophy and National Socialism] (5/8/1945)

LI, which has the format of an introduction to the course, was delivered on Monday, February 5th. LII-LIV were each delivered on a Tuesday, three weeks in a row, at the very end of the semester, and LIV seems to bring the course to a conclusion. I have not yet been able to determine if Horkheimer lectured every week between LI on February 5th and LII on April 24th. If we assume that he did, and also that Lecture IV on May 8th was the last lecture of the semester, this would mean the there were ten weeks worth of lectures which were not recorded, have not survived, or have yet to be located in the MHA.

Since discovering these lectures in the summer of 2024, they have come to transform my understanding of Horkheimer (and Adorno’s) theoretical project in 1945, when by all accounts, including his own, Horkheimer had been forced to sideline his own theoretical development for institutional affairs and consulting work for the AJC since late 1943.¹⁹² Horkheimer opens S&R by denying he has any program for philosophy in postwar reconstruction: “I don’t have any philosophical post-war plan.” However, at the beginning of the concluding lecture of the same series, he claims that throughout the course he had pursued a single underlying thesis:

Throughout I intended one underlying thesis: that the awareness of these processes achieved through philosophy—the method of which is my topic for today—you will permit me this afternoon for the sake of brevity to use the word philosophy whenever I mean philosophy as I understand it—that this awareness can become one of the forces for reconstruction. Put in other terms, philosophical critique, by deepening our insight, will light up the road.

The lectures on National Socialism and Philosophy seem to be Horkheimer’s attempt to demonstrate how philosophical critique might light up the road for the postwar reconstruction of Europe. At first glance, however, they seem less critical than speculative, not just about the Urgeschichte of bourgeois modernity, as Adorno and Horkheimer pursue in the Dialectic, but about the imminent future fate of European civilization. In these lectures, Horkheimer offers a number of speculative theses—he even entertains a “metaphysical theory of Fascism”—which seem to violate the Bilderverbot he and Adorno so dutifully follow in through their collaborative work in the 1940s, but in each case reaffirms it by performance of the ‘method of negation’ he presents in the concluding chapter of Eclipse: “we are driven, by the principle of negation, to attempt to salvage relative truths from the wreckage of false ultimates.”¹⁹³ As Adorno and Horkheimer famously reformulate determinate negation through the Bilderverbot in Dialectic of Enlightenment:

The self-satisfaction of knowing in advance, and the transfiguration of negativity as redemption, are untrue forms of the resistance to deception. The right of the image is rescued in the faithful observance of its prohibition. Such observance, “determinate negation,” is not exempted from the enticements of intuition by the sovereignty of the abstract concept, as is skepticism, for which falsehood and truth are equally void. Unlike rigorism, determinate negation does not simply reject imperfect representations of the absolute, idols, by confronting them with the idea they are unable to match. Rather, dialectic discloses each image as script. It teaches us to read from its features the admission of falseness which cancels its power and hands it over to truth. Language thereby becomes more than a mere system of signs.¹⁹⁴

In the final lecture, the ‘metaphysical’ theory of fascism as the elimination of ‘expression’ (meaning) for ‘information’ (function) ends in the same dialectical pattern of the Dialectic and Eclipse: expression is already information, information reverts to expression. The romantics who mourn the loss of ‘expression’ in an age of ‘information,’ who lament that no one seeks to represent the absolute in images or words anymore, fail to realize they have themselves committed an idolatrous reduction of the absolute to their nostalgic retrojection of it. They functionalize the absolute in their fight to revive authentic expression against the functionalism of information. They rage against themselves. As Horkheimer condenses the preceding development, this is the infernal dynamic which drives fascism and, by extension, the ‘civilized’ world, towards self-destruction in a downward spiral: “Why we cannot go back. Fascism is idolatry. Idolatry is the veneration of something finite (created by ourselves) as the absolute.” Aegrescit medendo.

While the minutes undoubtedly simplify Horkheimer’s train of thought—to an even greater extent than in most of the surviving Diskussionsprotokolle from the ISR—the fact that text is composed mostly of sentence fragments lends the lectures a mantic tone somewhere between Plato and Marx: “Marx’s theory of revolution. Is it science? or philosophy? It is the same tendency as in Plato: insight which provides you with a yardstick indicating what you should do.” But in the same discussion in which Horkheimer will propose that “the moral principle of our time” is aligning with the “[social] forces which with the greatest chance of success try to establish socialism,” and that the struggle for socialism has an almost undeniable validity as soon as one has insight into the lack of freedom in class society, he poses the question of whether the Marxist’s insight into history makes the logic of the history they struggle against into their yardstick for revolution against it, a constant preoccupation in Horkheimer’s work through the 1940s.¹⁹⁵ The first problem Horkheimer puts to the scientific socialist is that their program relies on the coincidence of their desire with the general trend of history as it exists. (“Massing: — Is it not immoral to build institutions to further history?”) The second is that the scientific socialist could wake up in the morning a ‘utopist,’ since, in a reversal of fortunes, their desires no longer “click[] with the trend of history” like Marx’s own did. Speaking with false remove from the perspective of a hypothetical ‘Marxist’ (a common approach in Horkheimer’s work of the time, see the ‘disclaimer’ to LI of S&R above), Horkheimer puts the anxiety which attends this self-consciousness in these words:

Fortunately history brings about the happiness of the majority, thus our interests as humanitarians and our findings as scientists click i.e. Scientific Socialism. If we were only humanitarians, we would simply be madmen, utopists, impotent if history were against us.

The jarring shifts between the conceptual idioms of theology and materialist social criticism, which are introduced in the very first lecture in the parallel between anti-modern social-Catholic and hyper-modern scientific-socialist thought, establish the broken pattern the lectures repeat to the end, where Horkheimer sketches a dialectical schema, constructed according to the following rule: “Liberation lies, theoretically and practically, in a movement in which both are given their due but without continuing to exist groundlessly next to each other.”¹⁹⁶

In a letter to Paul Tillich from 8/29/1947 (see §VII, above), Horkheimer extends his speculations from National Socialism and Philosophy into the first outline of a program for the role of philosophy in postwar German reconstruction:

If we are unyielding in view of the evils and dangers in other parts of the world without letting up in our denunciation of Germany's actually committed deeds, if, in other words, we express our insight into the plight of both the victors and the vanquished without using the ones in order to excuse the others, we shall help the Germans to accept consciously the indictment which they are now opposing. To make them conscious of the repression which is at the base of their actual attitude would contribute a great deal to strengthen the forces of resistance against postwar Nazist trends.¹⁹⁷

This is the concrete clinical practice to which the critical approach of the lectures commends us: “The only answer to what we can do is: Don’t leave these dark things in the dark.”

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[Lecture I. Problem: Authority of the Epoch] (2/5/1945)

The picture: “To-Morrow the World” and H’s survey: Education by kindness?

Education for democracy? Is democracy as strong as authoritarianism? Where is the court of appeal to decide what is right? On what basis? Religion? Philosophy? Social Science?

Social scientists deal only with specific questions.

What can science do? Natural science gives explanations, formulas, causes, so that we can do something with it. This is part of [the] process by which mankind has learned to manipulate nature. Example: Animal psychology.

What do we want from nature? Self-preservation.

Social Science has adopted the methods of Natural Science without really understanding them. To do what? To calculate what? There is a tacit understanding among Social Scientists: Social Science might prove valuable for the administration (state, business).

What should the state do? In a democracy the people decide. How do they know what is good? Through motion pictures, newspapers? Certainly not through science.

Some say: People know what is good for them. Do they? How does the majority know? Is it the meaning of democracy that the majority is right? No. The constitution says only that the majority rules.

In Greece they thought that questions of the government should be decided by insight into ultimate truth. (Plato)

Today science is not concerned with outmoded ideas, like truth, dreams of [metaphysicists]. All we can do is only to collect, classify, find formulas, predict probabilities.

When the Greek world broke down, religion came into being. There were no religions before, just ideas of Nature and God as a unity. The Egyptian priests were also that country’s scientists. — Religion was born around the 10th century. It was brought about by certain Arabian discoveries which caused the division of labor between theology and science. These discoveries concerned nature.

Religion is a relatively modern phenomenon, based on revelation. Meaning of revelation: another source of insight than science. This is a modern concept and this dualism permeates Western humanity since the Middle Ages.

The Church interpreter of doctrines. (Ten Commandments; Love thy neighbor.) Police existed too, but had not to decide what is good or bad, or whether we could have any insight into our destiny.

Enlightenment prepared the separation of secular and religious affairs; of the State and the Church.

Who decides what the State should do? In a democracy: the people. Why do people know? They know.

Apart from all social and clerical problems there is a definite cultural problem in the question: democracy vs. fascism. But there is no rational criterion to decide it. Therefore, war has to decide, as long as there is nothing that can replace the function of religion in the Middle Ages.

If man [is] not able to gain by himself insight into the ultimate aim of his existence, the prognosis is clearly pessimistic. That the democracies are not sufficiently aware of this plight is most tragic.

What happened to society? Certain enlightened bourgeois groups thought it would be good to keep religion for purposes of social control. They themselves were most vulgar materialists. They discredited thinking by persecuting those who had [their] own opinions.

Thinking, the endeavor of an individual to discover by himself the ultimate truth and teach it, is discredited. Look around — is there a place for such a man? Philosophy is not a very tempting career, and a great part of his work consists in giving evidence that thinking can be replaced by formalistic routine, scientific methodology.

How about artists? The decision on the value of their art rests with the market. Who decides? The people who can buy. How do they know? Through the evaluation by the critics. How do they know?

Religion has been preserved but should not mingle too much with earthly things.

A desperate effort to overcome this situation: Marxism. Marx wanted to get out of the situation of not knowing what to do.

He realized that the bourgeois subject was, because of this situation, empty. The subject’s freedom consisted in his accepting radically the dictation of the market. The subject became the function of its own capital. What should I do? Make as much money as possible.

He has lofty ideals, beautiful thoughts (on Sundays), but during the week, he is acting as a function of his economic fortune. Marx is in agreement with de Maistre Bonald, etc., who recognized that with religion mankind had lost its guide! Marx criticism nothing else but criticism of the great Catholics. Paul Claudel, Charles Peguy, Leon Blois say today that the God of the Liberals is economy.

Marx advocated socialism as the catholic workers advocate catholicism. In post-fascist Europe only these two cultural forces will remain.

Why socialism? Not because it is better for the majority, but because the trend of history is toward socialism (Marx would say that, if asked). His theory of history: we cannot work against it — let us help it to go faster. Since history is a power like life itself, we must follow it. There is nothing but history — therefore, history is our only guide. We must become scientists to study the reality which is history.

Therefore, religion and science become one!

Labor must fight for socialism, it is being forced by the existing situation. Therefore, they do not need a special reason.

Individuals are to study history; the only real, not ideological power, the only real God. Fortunately history brings about the happiness of the majority, thus our interests as humanitarians and our findings as scientists click i.e. Scientific Socialism.

If we were only humanitarians, we would simply be madmen, utopists, impotent if history were against us.

The subject, the citizen is empty; becomes a function; transcends it only by insight in history, follows and helps it.

But Marx distrusts the individual alone (like Catholic writers): it is not powerful enough to see what is true. The individual is an ideological category. The real human being, is not the individual or a large sum of individuals. They are not real subjects, are functions of history. The only real human being is the whole of humanity, which would have constituted itself as a subject governing its own affairs in freedom. Before the end of this struggle, inhuman forces (economics, etc.) will determine, after that there will be freedom and the fulfillment of the concrete idea of man.

(Then — we may say — humanity would decide whether it wishes to dominate the rest of nature, work in order, continue its life. Today there are always motives, competition, etc. But when the struggle is ended, humanity could decide for itself.)

Conclusion: This theory harbors many unsolved problems.

(Massing: Revelation replaced by insight into historical process? What decides on the course of history?

M.H. — The worker learns by having to face misery, the intellectual by studying history.

Massing — Who decides which of the solutions offered to the worker today is the right one?

M.H. — The lack of freedom, the fact that everybody is a function arises from class society. The intellectual can find out by analysis which solution tends to eliminate such classes. Only this is in the line of history.

Why this constitution of ultimate subject? — no answer.

Laub: — Marx’s ideals determined his theory.

M.H.: — This is merely biographical. He was fortunate in that his liberal ideals clicked with the trend of history.

Benjamin: — How does Marx explain that history leads to this happy ending?

M.H.: — Marx’s theory of revolution. Is it science? or philosophy? It is the same tendency as in Plato: insight which provides you with a yardstick indicating what you should do.)

Modern positivism would say that this endeavor is in both cases simply provincial. The scientist has to deliver the goods.

We are at a loss if we discuss as scientists with fascists.

A positivist who separates values and science, if he is honest, must be silent to the fascist claims for power.

There is no rational argument against the extermination of whole nations, torture, etc.

(Massing: — Fascist claim to master-race is exposed to positivist criticism.

M.H.: — I took that type of Nazi who does not believe this myth. Mussolini said: “We are the real relativists.”

Wicks: — Does history decide on what is good and bad?

M.H.: — The trend of history shows what is progressive and what is reactionary, i.e. good or bad.

Massing: — Is it not immoral to build institutions to further history?

M.H.: — Marx would say: The French enlighteners who advocated Liberalism were advocates of true morals. Laissez faire was the moral principle of that period. Today? The subject should go with those forces which with the greatest chance of success try to establish socialism. This would be the moral principle of our time.

There is no moral principle that we could hold against history.

German Situation

Germany has never quite adopted Christianity. There has always been a certain antagonism against all forces that stood for Catholicism.

In Germany there has always been under the surface of adopted Christianity a certain mythological trend. A strange relationship: Christianity recognizes a spiritual God, a principle completely different from nature. Catholicism tried triumphantly to reconcile both principles. Appeasement of natural deities. God had a place in this world.

Protestantism threw the mythological elements out, placing people in front of a purely spiritual God, without any mediator, his conscience.

The Germans accepted the “pure doctrine”, but kept some mythological forces underneath, e.g. Sex is a deadly sin without the sacrament of marriage. German poetry has always celebrated the deserted maiden.

From this strange antagonism many of the great achievements in German poetry and music arose.

What the Nazis have done: They have destroyed the antagonism, they are advertising mythology as the true religion, and doing so with the modern methods of propaganda. Great art has disappeared from Germany.

This antagonism (leading idea) made itself felt in rebellion against the world as it was. The French poet would criticize, explain society - but would accept the world as it is. But the Germans had never completely believed in Christian civilization.

All explanations that the Germans have nothing to do with National Socialism; and the opposite thesis: there is only one Germany, an evil one — are much too superficial.

There is only one thing in common among all the Germans down to Hitler: They did not accept Christian civilization.

Epoch — Ultimate Authority.

Greece — Insight

Catholicism — Revelation

Protestantism — Bible

Enlightenment — Reason

Democracy — The People (Volonte Generale)

Marxism — History

Positivism — [?] of Sci?

[Lecture II. Natural History of Belief] (4/24/1945)

(1) Only one true science — philosophy. All others are pragmatic: they furnish the data with which you can start to think.

(2) Marx’s system — an effort to find a norm according to which modern man would be able to live. ([The] idea of man, according to “science”, [is] just metaphysical. In order to define the concept of man we must meditate because new data do not help to explain why the life of man is to be respected, that he is different from the animals.)

(3) Norm can be found — according to Marx — in the trend toward socialism: helping it is fulfilling our [destination/destiny] as human beings. Studying history would be the study of the laws of — God? Otherwise — why should one help the working class.

(4) Because it is progressive! Why? Progress may lead to something great and beautiful. But the way to it is a way of misery.

(5) Progress is what? Overcoming of superstition, mythology, ill-founded ideas. Enlightenment is the light against the dark!

Why do you act in the name of progress? Do you do it because of pity?

(6) One of the most important Marxian doctrines: Less and less machines required for more and more products. What does this mean for Puritanism? Man must earn his living by producing useful goods — the Puritan says. Antagonism. More and more superfluous people.

(7) Concept of man in modern society is as a being able to live from his own work. But now man becomes redundant (?), superfluous.

(8) The majority must fear that they will be superfluous. Unemployed means not wanted. Become object of administration. “There are too many people.” Man becomes a liability. He has to justify why he wants to eat and live.

(9) This is at the basis of Fascist philosophy. Man can be used to conquer the world.

(10) Concept of man very ill defined. If religion is a matter of Sunday Schools and philosophy is a luxury — nothing is left but study the facts, and the facts are: There are too many men. The administrator must find new tasks.

(11) [Note: 2 Perspectives on truth in service]

Nazi: German mission, self-preservation, everything is good that serves the German nation. Why?

Lenin: History is God, everything is good that serves the class struggle.

(12) Enlightenment is to overcome everything we cannot prove. Why should the good be better than the bad? What gives the words a meaning? Facts. Where are they? Social facts — undesirable consequences. This is not the meaning of “bad.”

(13) The empiricist: make a public opinion poll and good and bad is determined by majority decision.

(14) Overcoming superstition leads to utter coldness toward human life: Mandeville, Sade, Nietzsche. Why then not do what we like if we can get away with it? Why respect a law behind which there is no police? They anticipated the path of progress!

(15) Kant defined the good by which we would act without emotions. — Killing without emotions is — good! Don’t be emotional!

(16) Consequences must be accepted if you accept the principle. Do — the best for the best’s sake — without emotions. No superstitions!

(17) Can we return and fight these doctrines which are much more dangerous than Marxism? Can we follow president Hutchins and his friend Mortimer Adler?

We cannot. It would be cynicism. We cannot believe any more Aristotle or St. Thomas or in Astrology. We would believe not because it is true but because we are in need or democracy is in danger.

Hitler did it — he revived old mythology!

(18) F.J.W. [Weil]: Do the promoters not believe what the[y] advise?

M.H.: Men with such a background cannot believe in the Thomist system as 13th century people did. He has to talk himself into it. Today [believing] is more belief than in the 13th century.

(19) Let us look at Astrology. You cannot believe it as you can believe in the truth. At the moment when you have to make a vital decision you cannot lean on Astrology. These revivals can be changed as occasion arises. A certain version of dialectics is accepted — to-morrow another is accepted, hectically as the old one was. Synthetical revival, manipulated ideology. Aristotle is accepted for certain reasons. If he says that these principles are self-evident — he does not say the truth.

(20) There is no way back. Progress leads to the state of the world as it is today. People feel it and are in despair.

(21) If there would be another realm more important than the economic realm, then man might not be superfluous in a higher sense.

(22) The problem of belief in general

(A natural history of belief.)

(23) What is it originally? How does dualism of sacred and profane originate? At a certain moment man started to look at a tree not as a means of refuge, food but as a part of nature, an other system but the life of the primitive tribe. Two worlds: one world in which one was living and the world of the uncanny…

(24) In this dualism originated the conscious will to dominate what one could not understand. What is it? Prayer? No. Science? No. Magics? Yes.

(25) Magic is organized imitation. Mimesis. Rain wanted — and he spits on the ground. He echoes nature! Every baby has the faculty to echo the environment. That is how it learns. The medicine man organizes this faculty into rites.

(26) Mythology — a way to get away from the rites and magics. Finally the many gods are muted into one God. Medicine man, priests vs. rational thinking.

(27) History of civilization can be described as the way how man learns to dominate it [viz., nature] instead of imitating it. More and more conceptual methods to dominate nature.

(28) Mimesis itself becomes the forbidden thing. Imitate is childish.

(29) Actors — dishonest, outcast. Plato curses the poets and actors. They do not dominate rationally but are echoing. Art today is neutralized magics. The artist may still be a child. He imitates and is accepted again because he is willing to forego action. “What has Homer achieved?” What does this mean: achieve? Success?

(30) Each man must overcome his drive for mimesis! Do not gesticulate. Do not raise the sound of your voice. It is against civilization. Philosophers are here to refresh memory that was lost.

(31) Tendency in man to fall back. If people have fun they become uncivilized, they become childish. Or under great pain, they become hysterical. He is human — he can smile or cry, he is not only civilized.

[Lecture III. Mimesis and Civilization] (5/1/1945)

(1) Mimesis[*] and Civilization. [* Mimesis — to mirror the environment]

Reaction by mimesis to nature replaced by domination of nature. But: is modern science not also some kind of mimesis of nature? Duplication of nature by way of figures? No — it is not mere reproduction but the will to dominate and a greater strangeness, a greater distance! Originally nature was imitated by the movement of the body. (Look at the difference between a South Italian and an American when they are having fun. The Italian’s behavior is not so very different from that of his everyday life.) The fun of modern man consists in becoming a child again. Everything else — except “fun” — is not done for its own sake. It is done for relaxation, career, etc. The French still have such words as jouir, bonheur, meaning to be abandoned to a thing. Happiness is not bonheur. Beatitude has been taken over by religion. “Absolute” happiness is close to pain. Happiness is the absence of pain complicated by enjoying a car, or traveling, etc. We want people to be happy — this is a democratic residue.

(2) Regression into Mimesis and Hostility against Civilization.

Regression into mimetic behavior has replaced happiness and has become fun. Laughing is the index of fun. But laughing people are cruel people. Absolute happiness has more to do with crying than with laughing.

Conscious repression makes people hostile to all forms by which we have overcome mimesis. A man who wants to have fun does not care about being reasonable.

(3) Fun, Laughing, Killing, and Persecution

Why does the guard torture the dying man? Because it is fun. He laughs at the funny gestures of the tortured man. Uncoordinated movements of escape, reaction to danger and persecution. By mimesis the desire of persecution is awakened. The face of utter pain is the same as that of utter fury. The face of the persecuted resembles that of the persecutor. The killing of a spider, a snake, etc., who wants to flee and displays uncoordinated movements (Tiberius’ bridge) has the same origin. Blind cruelty. Running invites to persecuting. The theory of contagion, of mass psychology is based on mimesis. (The element of being the stronger may enter the mind of the persecutor.) (Not Schadenfreude but a much more elementary process is involved. NB: The pleasure involved in looking at pornographic material, the puritan Schnüffeln, etc, is based on mimesis.)

(4) Mimesis and Fascism.

(a) If we were able to formulate this theory in such a way that all educators would become aware of the subconscious urge they may be willing to help the people to bring it out into the open and overcome it.

(b) What we are accomplishing at present by making everything a means to an end is to abolish the last remnants of genuine mimesis and to repress it. This causes outbreaks of “barbarism.” Barbarism is deeply interconnected with civilization: regression to forms of life which have been overcome by civilization.

(5) Mythology, Language, and the Loss of Insight.

Belief in old forms of expression even if they are being frowned upon. The cultivation of these mythological beliefs, of mimesis as a genuine phenomenon, is in language. The correlation between the thing and the work was a direct reflection. In modern science the words are not supposed to be any images, but mere signs. This change which deprives the language of its mimetic character, has consequences which we shall feel in the future only. Words have become instruments of domination. We can, therefore, never have insight, only knowledge or information, our minds can never be mirrors which reflect nature, we become entirely alienated to nature. If words are only signs they cannot have any similarity to the things they designate. What is left is a calculus of probability.

Can we go back? Can we believe what Marx believed, that theory [*] mirrors reality? [* A theory is a structure of sentences] To believe it would transform theory into mythology. The idea of truth in this sense of insight has been deserted, and there is no way back. Christianity says even today that we have only symbolic truth. In Judaism the word God was deeply interconnected with the thing. It, therefore, had not to be pronounced during the period of damnation.

(6) Philosophy and Paradise

This is the effort to find the right name, truth. To say this name is forbidden to the Jews. When they will be permitted to pronounce it — will have found the truth — they will return to Paradise. Humanity today is cut off from every true relationship to religion and truth. (Argument against scientivism, not science.)

(7) Fascism and Science

Fascism consciously regresses to mythological theories which have been discarded by science long ago. This is some kind of fun! We create “a new truth”, and have fun in the intellectual realm. This explains why fascism is so brilliant in criticism. They knew that religion was gone, so they made a synthetic one, giving real fun to its followers.

(8) What Can We Do?

We have science and yet we feel that we are deserted by truth. We stick to democratic principles — until this situation changes. Then it will appear that religion which was the foundation of democratic principles is dead, and the principles are left hanging in the air. (Designate what is bad, but don’t say what is good because by formulating it you turn it into something bad, something for manipulation.)

The only answer to what we can do is: Don’t leave these dark things in the dark. This is the theory of evil. Evil is to return to repressed forms of life.

(9) The Remaining Realms of Happiness, but One Cannot Make a Prescription.

One cannot discuss with these remaining realms of happiness because discussion would change them. They would become manipulated.

Example: A girl follows her lover. She was ostracized but recognized by literature. It was “Glueck.” Hitler made a prescription out of it and destroyed it. (Gretchen, Juliet, etc.) Hitler created the new fear: To say no. The law not to be superstitious.

[Lecture IV. Dialectic of Idolatry: German Philosophy and National Socialism] (5/8/1945)

(1) A metaphysical theory of Fascism based on the insight that each civilization tries to eliminate “expression.” Information not expression is asked for.

(2) Originally truth contained both, communication and expression (Hieroglyphs). Later ‘Art’ separated from practical life (in magics it was interconnected). Some remembrance in language; this work of art is truth. This becomes a matter of speaking.

(3) Science is an apparatus to limit our expectations to a few possibilities or even only one; the most probable probability.

(4) Probability, communication as image, imitation, expression — and truth vanishes. The very concept of truth is supposed to be superfluous. The longing for truth by the very process of our civilization never is satisfied.

(5) Is expression truth? No. But there is a close relationship between expressed and expression. The expressed is somehow immanent in its totality on the expression; a work of art, even a cry.

(6) Work of art is not truth. Magics is idolatry! The image not the image of absolute truth.

(7) Is it the truth to say: essence of the world is will, or idea? There is still this magical idea that the idea we form is truth.

All philosophical revivals which would give us a ready made theory of the absolute are mysticism. We cannot go back.

(8) Fascism is ideologically a situation in which

(a) the controlling group determines what we must believe. One idea gives meaning to our life. This invention of truth, this return to old forms of thinking is tyranny leading to terrorism.

(b) repressed tendency to mimesis is not really overcome and, therefore, a permanent effort is necessary to overcome it. In the atrocities is the reproduction of violent feelings giving pressure to the onlookers because of the release of the repressed. Enjoying this expression of repressed expression it is again repressed. (First step to a phenomenology of cruelty. Cruelty connected with laughter.)

(9) Laughter. While enjoyed expression of violence is again repressed. This makes laughter - hämische Lachen - enjoyable and at the same time condemnable.

(10) Why we cannot go back. Fascism is idolatry. Idolatry is the veneration of something finite (created by ourselves) as the absolute. Our whole civilization is built on the idea that there is only one God, eternal and not created by somebody else. This gave to all concepts on which the civilization rests (truth, infinite value of the soul, idea of an idea) their meaning.

(11) To say that dying for the fatherland you have fulfilled your destination is a lie! An American president would say it is the law of God that you help your fellow men and your country. This is in agreement with our civilization. — The Fascist would say; this is the meaning of your life. This statement is a lie, used by an impostor and using a feeling which is a tragic error.

(12) Jewish (and Christian) religion maintained an idea of the Absolute but could not describe it, did not recognize any theory claiming to be an absolute expression of the Absolute. Only negative theories were accepted. But truth depends on the assumption of an absolute.

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM

(1) Philosophy is the effort to name God, to give the true theory of the world. Both cannot be kept separate despite of the fact that Nietzsche would have died in a concentration camp, that Nazis enforce a synthetic truth by terror, while philosophers want to return to paradise, want to reflect on the Absolute.

(2) Romanic [viz., Roman Catholic] philosophy wants to clarify details of the revealed truth, does not want to create God or the whole world again out of our subjective minds, wants to destroy untrue theories.

(3) German philosophy — the effort to overcome the basic dualism between God and the human being on this earth. Wants to mediate both principles. Same tendency in Beethoven’s music that tries to give the universe incl. God. You would not find that among other nations.

Philosophy and music specifically German because of the Germans not accepting reality, civilization, and then trying to change it but giving a new meaning to reality.

(4) While trying to overcome the dualism, German philosophy had to include the dark forces. God has a dark side in himself! Even crime can be understood as a thing that is in God. Leibnitz!

(5) Leibnitz very typical! Theodicee proves that even the evil things are in connection with God. God was in the finite things because they had some energy, force, and all energy stems from God.

(6) Hegel and Marx would say that God — the Absolute is the historical process. Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. (A Roman Catholic would oppose this: there is a principle above history! So would the Jew; the Law.) In all these German philosophical systems there is a hybris. Man can build the world and the evil forces are somehow justified. God needs these finite things. The human being creates God by the process of history. The idea of grace is missing.

(7) The Way to National Socialism. The only thing that has been lost is a certain responsibility, a sense for truth, a humanity — all metaphysical concepts. Then it looks as if you can create the law, and say what goes down is bad and what survives is good.

(8) Modern man has two possibilities:

(a) accept a system without obvious reasons

(b) stick to a science and be without any principles which could serve as a guide to truth.

God is dead, all metaphysical systems have failed to save Him, so we live God in making History.

Max Scheler: God is not perfect. Human beings making History are making him: Vitality.

(9) The nation is the expression of the principle that is God, a God materialized in History.

(10) Similar tendencies in Italy: Giordano Bruno, forerunner of Leibniz: God is nothing but the innumerable atoms (monads). But these tendencies were without influence in Italy.

Russia via Marx shows similar tendencies.

(11) Christian theology rejected — Pantheism (Spinoza) — God and infinite process (Hegel) — God becomes another name for History or for the world — finally given up in modern America: there is only science.

(12) Nothing is so terrible as enthusiasm for a wrong principle. Tragedy of modern man who has no principle to guide him or the urge to find it. One philosopher explained the situation: Nietzsche. In order to escape he created the crazy idea of the superman (which is diametrically opposed to anything Nazi). He accepts the lack of any ideological protection and still wants the impossible, accepts to live in this icy sphere of despair and enjoy it.

(13) Tillich: If there is no God I will become a swine. What should prevent me from doing whatever I like? Nietzsche’s superman the last effort to escape a situation where everything is a means to an end and so forth. But there is no end in itself left! — if there is not religion.

(14) If these meditations should be consistent and become the substance of the public mind — then in knowing about the situation, what we are losing: we are paying for our progress, we would have something which connects us with the Absolute.

(Cartesius: There must be the infinite because we know ourselves as finite beings.)

Thinking somehow the guarantor of the Absolute, because it makes us see the relativity of the things we believe in — and this process is not purely negative. In our criticism of all theories which claim to be truth, truth is the process in which we try to preserve all the insights of the past and of today — not in pretending that at a given moment this is the Absolute, but in accepting it we know that it will be negated.

(Eternal Soul.:

(a) science: Nonsense

(b) dogmatism: Eternal Truth

(c) dialectics: What had mankind in mind when it spoke of it and what we lose if we give it up.)

---

Ad. Handwritten Notes.

Analysis of Christianity and mythology.

Historical analysis. Types of belief.

First: [the] absence of any meaning. Man is unconscious of himself as a man.

Then: differentiation between himself and the surrounding world through the medium of fear.

We seek an interpretation of magic [from] deep under [the] neglect of certain schools of Anthropology.

Originally man acts as the function of situations in which his own organism plays a certain role — He is — so to speak — a mechanism.

Then differentiation between himself and Nature breaks in. Nature = attacking of dangerous force.

The concept of Taboo. First rules of domination (Preanimism)

[page break]

The concept of magic.

The replacement of magics by sacrificial domination. Stages of this process:

1 — naive mimesis (reaction, mimicry, Zerfliessen [Dissolve]);

2 — Magics — organized mimesis;

3 — Rites;

4 — Mythology as a means of neutralizing rites.

5 — First concept of Monotheism as Tribal God and prayer at the same time as means of overcoming magical practices: sacrifice: adoration.

6 — School metaphysics (Plato, the poet, ‘What has Homer done?’)

7 — Theory of civilization (from child to adult)

8 — The theory of persecution

[page break]

Science today - Results.

[Margin:] Psychoanalysis an example of the transformation of philosophy to research.

The theory of language. The abolition of expression.

Conception — sign — name.

Language. The idea of a concept recollecting the thing. The inability of modern man to accept this mimesis of mysticism which believes in the connection between Theory and Thing, name and being. The Idea of positivism = Christian Science.

[II. Marx economic theory.

Man is redundant. The state is provider. Idea of socialism.

The concept of the individual.]

III. German dynamic philosophy.

[page break]

The subject / individual and transcendental.

The infinite in the finite.

The becoming [/] development.

The types of [Subject];

Rationality of [Subject];

Idealism of youth.

Repression of [Subject] — sex.

The meaning of [facism/racism] explained from cycles of nature.

[Only respect in [Labor]] ¶ [[Our/own] work.]

Analyzing Russia

[Marginal: Sade’s repression is Kant made pleasurable.]

[page break]

[Extension Lecture] [X]

Modern Authoritarianism.

Tomorrow—the world.—Education

What is an explanation supposed to do.

Explanation in natural science. Administration versus domination. Humans are governed — nature is dominated.

But it is not simple to know what should be done in human affairs. Democracy tells us how to behave (according to the majority) not what is right.

Depends ultimately on insight.

Insight vs agnosticism.

[page break]

The original idea of western civilization is not insight gained by individual subject but revelation.

Revelation — religion as the guide. The church as interpreter of the Revelation.

Basic concepts of western religion: Man as God’s image. The Eternal soul — infinite value of each individual soul and eternal beatitude.

Solidarity of humans suffering from there.

[page break]

The bourgeois revolution — and its relationship to Religion.

Criticism of the Traditional Theory that French people practiced their emancipation in politics and the Germans [introjected] turned it inward into their minds.

The French are realists (Jacques Riviere) of ontology. The role of ontology. Catholicism as the rule of ontology.

The development of the bourgeois mind: perhaps it is wrong to describe this history as pro and contra religion. Essential is…

[page break]

… rather the idea of subjectivity; Insight. — The way to positivism. Psychology and emotion [Leistung [Performance]].

Excursus:

Marxism as the last effort to derive [social] action from insight. Prestabilized harmony between the good and history.

Unexpected triumph of Marxism in the modern mind.

Collectivity as the new subject. Good and bad side of the vanishing of the individual subject.

[page break]

The German curse.

In destroying Mythology (emotion) and Christianity on the surface.

What Hitler did to psychology.

Rapid process of democratizing them.

[X] Obedience as bridging the gaps between the transcendental and reality.

German philosophy (Kant etc).

Antisemitism as religious issue.

Various Kinds / Power - Positions.

Ergreifung der Welt [Capture of the World]

The theory of persecution.

[X]

Mythology = Dom. of Nature.

[page break]

Leibniz—feelings obscure judgments.

But they say this indes besser als etwas anderes. They are — Werturteile. Idee — Die moderne Veränderung vom Werturteilen und Gefühlen ist identisch. Alles ist — werden gut wird schlecht sind.

[But they say this better than anything else. They are — value-judgments. Idea — the modern transformation of value-judgments and feelings is identical. All is — will become good will become bad.]

[page break]

Historical development of our ideas (role of property).

Last lecture tried to show that Fascism was the political crystallization of certain economic and social and cultural trends of our era — not just an accident.

We found that to a certain extent the idea of our civilization itself, the specification of functions and with it the reification of the human being was the cause of its very opposite: modern totalitarianism. Two aspects of the same thing: the division of labor in the cultural or human realm and the fact that in the framework of our society. The extension of technical our domination over things. The technical domination of nature

[page break]

[domination] becomes immediately also a manifestation of the human being: his habits and attitudes, his beliefs and feelings. In order to overcome our being instruments of the blind forces of nature we have made an instrument of everything — science, art, philosophy, religion — and even pleasure and life itself. (Synthetic Mythologies) The reason why it is so difficult to deal with the ideological menace of totalitarianism is that the type of man of this whole era cannot look at anything without a definite practical purpose — and therefore the purposes themselves.

[page break]

The human being, individuality, justice, and truth itself - became isolated, abstract conventions, without any foundation in any insight.

I should like to answer the question what should we do, but at the same time I must have to address the fact that our inability to dwell upon - to abide by an insight and to raise the question [viz., ‘what should we do’] too soon - might have something to do with the situation.

Similar development in science and art. Both are to serve purposes which are determined beyond their own realms — in the economic process.

Perhaps it cannot be changed at all. Philosophy does not want to justify itself to the redundant people.

[page break]

Principle of democracy — who is right? the majority?

[page break]

The thesis of these lectures. Fascism as crystallization. Science and art manipulated.

Pragmatism not following the inner logic.

These trends are universal.

Today the attitude of the social classes of Germany [is] very different but not altogether different. The great phenomenon of insecurity resulting from the economic setup. Example: America today. Insecurity of workers. “Phony” full-employment.

The capitalists.

What about the Germans 1930 - what they could…

[page break]

… do is shown by this war.

Man is superfluous. Redundant.

Insecurity: rage: hate.

It is not prejudice.

It is manifested hate:

Freemasons or Jews.

But look at colonial imperialism during [the] 19th century. It is good if it is [by] race.

Deepest reason [for] conflict with conscience is eliminated.

The other fellow becomes mere nature.

Industrialism and nature.

[Hist. role] of classes still different.

Workers interest [involving] all humanity.

---

Max Ernst. Claire de lune, 1947

1. Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (Continuum, 1974 [Oxford University Press, 1947]).

2. MHA Na [653], Vorlesungen: ‘Eclipse of Reason’; ‘Society and Reason’ (p. IX 36.6-12);

IV. Lecture II: On the Domination of Nature [First Draft]. (Late 1943); VI. Society and Reason. Lectures I-V. (1944)

• 6. Vorlesungen 1. - 5. mit dem Titel 'Society and Reason'. a) Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Randbemerkungen von Theodor W. Adorno, 139 Blatt b) Typoskript, 139 Blatt ;

I. Possible Topics. (Jan.-Feb. 1943) / II. Notes for Lectures I-III. (Late 1943)

• 9. Stichworte zu den Vorlesungen I-III. Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Ergänzungen, 2 Blatt a) Einladungskarte zur Vorlesungsreihe 'Society and Reason'. Als Typoskript vervielfältigt, 1 Blatt b) Gliederung. Typoskript, 1 Blatt ;

III. Letter to Pollock: “On problems of Scientific Style.” (Nov. 1943)

• 10. 'Über Probleme des wissenschaftlichen Stils'. Reaktion auf ein Schriftstück (aus einem Brief an Friedrich Pollock). a) Typoskript, datiert: 28.11.1943, 3 Blatt b) Max Horkheimer: 1 Brief an Friedrich Pollock, ohne Ort, 28.11.1943, 5 Blatt ;

&: MHA Na [806], Manuskripte unter anderem ‘Eclipse of Reason’ und Gespräche mit Theodor W. Adorno (p. XI 16a - XI 20)

“Revival of Dogmatism”

• 'Eclipse of Reason'; veröffentlicht in New York, 1947:; 1. Entwurf zu Kapitel II 'Conflicting Panaceas':; 1a) Typoskript mit dem Titel 'The Revival of Dogmatism. Remarks on Neo-Positivism and Neo-Thomism', Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Anmerkungen von Theodor W. Adorno, 58 Blatt; 1b) Typoskript mit eigenen Korrekturen, 54 Blatt;

• 2. Entwurf zu Kapitel III 'Rise and Decline of the Individual', deutscher Entwurf mit dem Titel 'Aufstieg und Fall des Individuums'. Typoskript, 10 Blatt;

& the corrections for S&R lectures are sourced from: MHA Na [652], Vorlesungen […] “Eclipse of Reason,” Fünf Vorlesungen 1943/44;

• 1. I. Lecture. a) Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 38 Blatt b) Typoskript, 29 Blatt c) Typoskript mit eigenhändigen und handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 31 Blatt d) Teilstück, Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 2 Blatt e) Entwürfe, Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 6 Blatt ;

• 2. II. Lecture. a) Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 27 Blatt, b) Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 37 Blatt ;

• 3. III. Lecture. Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 27 Blatt ;

• 4. IV. Lecture. Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 23 Blatt ;

• 5. V. Lecture. a) Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 25 Blatt, b) Teilstücke, Typoskript mit eigenhändigen und handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 3 Blatt ;

All references to the MHA containers will list the page number in brackets displayed above the scans. For example:

“IV. Lecture II: On the Domination of Nature [First Draft]. (Late 1943),” in: MHA Na [653], S. [1]-[38]

3. Max Horkheimer. Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft (deutsche Fassung von Eclipse of Reason, 1947) Translated by Alfred Schmidt (S. Fischer Verlag, 1967).

4. Previously published in: Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften. Band 17. Briefwechsel: 1941-1947. Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996), 506-515.

5. Horkheimer to Gertrude Isch, 3/29/1946. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 719-720. Author’s translation.

6. For more on the history of the 1944 mimeograph, see the author’s “Translator’s note: Reconstructing the Formation of the Encore,” written as an introduction to a translation of ten fragments cut from the Fragmente prior to its printing.

For the most comprehensive reconstruction of the composition and printing of the Fragmente in secondary literature to date, see James Schmidt’s series on “The Making and the Marketing of the Philosophische Fragmente,” Part I (1/9/2017) and Part II (7/27/2017).

7. [Note from the editors of the Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel:] “Norbert Guterman (1900-1984) first studied in Warsaw, where he had been born, and subsequently in Paris, where he and his friend Henri Lefebvre belonged to the “Groupe Philosophie” and had close ties to the surrealists. Guterman went to the USA in 1929 or 1930, working as an author and academic translator of technical and scientific texts. He would edit a number of texts for the staff of the ISR. With Leo Löwenthal, Guterman would publish Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator in 1949, the first volume of the ISR’s ‘Studies in Prejudice.’” In: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer. Briefwechsel 1927-1969. Band III: 1945-1969. [Hereafter: BW, Bd. III] Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz (2005, Suhrkamp), 46. Author’s translation.

8. Horkheimer to Adorno, January 29, 1945: “No objection to your sending the Fragmente to Guggenheim, so long as it is accompanied by an obligation of discretion. Incidentally, I wanted to write you several weeks ago that the lectures are presently being taken care of by a good American editor in cooperation with Guterman. I think it would be a good idea for you to jot something down the additions you had in mind. Should you not have time to get around to it, however, we will just let the thing go to print as is.” In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 44-46. Author’s translation.

9. See: Adorno to Horkheimer, 6/16/1945: “Aside from this, I’ve also sent Löwenthal another memorandum, of 37 pages, with countless formulations for minor additions and small changes. In order not to drown you in paper, I’ll hold back from sending you a copy unless you request it yourself.” In: BW, Bd. III (2005), 132. Author’s translation.

Re: incorporating last minute revision notes from Adorno, see: Löwenthal to Horkheimer, 1/22/1946. In: MHA Na [546], S. [161] 354r.

10. On Horkheimer and Adorno’s procedure on submitting revision notes based on their conversations with one another, see: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 12/21/1945. In: MHA Na [545], S. [20] 19r.

11. Schmidt (2007): “As the date for delivering the manuscript approached, a host of editorial decisions remained unresolved. As late as a month before the due date, the book still lacked a title: The Agony of Reason, Subjectivization of Reason, and Objective and Subjective Reason were considered and found wanting. Twilight of Reason was provisionally adopted, although by February Horkheimer had misgivings: it was too close to the title of “The End of Reason,” it reminded him of Götterdämmerung, it was “too pessimistic,” “‘twilights’ and ‘of reason’ are legion,” and “the book does not correspond to it.” When a form arrived from Oxford in March requesting information from Horkheimer for its files, he had still not picked a title. In the end, Philip Vaudrin, an Oxford editor, suggested the final title.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 65.

In a letter to M. Nicholson (Oxford University Press) dated 1/30-31/1946, Horkheimer proposes a possible subtitle: “Philosophical Reflections on Industrialist [sic] Society.” In: MHA Na [546], S. [97] 296r.

12. James Schmidt (2007): “A decision also had to be reached about what to do about the preface: Horkheimer had written one but was dissatisfied with it and requested that Guterman draft an alternative. In the end, Horkheimer wrote a new preface in January, after reviewing the manuscript. Suggestions from Adorno for additions and alterations in the manuscript were being sent to Löwenthal by Horkheimer throughout January 1946, as an increasingly desperate Horkheimer complained of his deteriorating physical condition: “During the nights I have arterial cramps in the arms and legs and uncomfortable headaches; during the day, at least with the slightest exertion, there are the well-known heart-pains.” He had also begun to have serious reservations about the concluding chapter: “The book, as it is, opposes the concept of nature so directly to that of spirit, and the idea of object to that of subject, that our philosophy appears as much too static and dogmatic. We have accused the others, both Neo-Thomists and Positivists, of stopping thought at isolated and therefore contradictory concepts and, as it is, it would be only too easy for them to accuse us of doing the same thing. ... I do not feel any doubt that in the last chapter this gap should be filled.” At almost the last moment, parts of a manuscript written years earlier, “Sociology of Class Relations,” were inserted into the book’s discussion of the decline of the individual, and—after incorporating the editorial changes that Horkheimer transmitted in a massive telegram—Löwenthal delivered the manuscript to Oxford at the end of January. For the moment, Horkheimer seemed satisfied with the work. When Margaret Nicholson, his copyeditor at Oxford, suggested a few stylistic revisions, he resisted, explaining to Löwenthal that “this book is antagonistic to present-day literary habits in philosophy as well as related subjects. Therefore its form cannot be ‘adjusted’ to this kind of stuff. For instance there is no point in ‘leading up to my thesis’ as she states... for there is no ‘thesis’ in dialectical reflections like ours. The book should now be published as it is and she will be surprised how much response it will have.” But the arrival of proofs at summer's end sparked further anxieties from Horkheimer about the book's style, and Löwenthal sought to ameliorate them by suggesting that he would have the proofs read by “Harold Rosenberg or one of the other members of the literary avant-garde.” In November 1946, with the book now three months from its initially scheduled publication date, Horkheimer inquired whether it might be possible to insert subtitles in the margins, prompting an exasperated Löwenthal to point out that Oxford would surely reject such a proposal, since it would involve resetting the entire book, and to request, “Please do me the favor and enjoy the completion of this work.”” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” New German Critique, no. 100 (2007), 65-67. link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27669187.

13. Löwenthal to Horkheimer, 1/4/1946. Löwenthal compares the ongoing revision process with Adorno’s suggestions to schlechte Unendlichkeit. In: MHA Na [546], S. [216] 395r.

14. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 2/6/1946: “I just received a letter from Miss Nicholson thanking me for the manuscript. She says that there is still a slight chance that the manuscript gets published in spring, otherwise it will be fall. If Guterman is asked by Vaudrin, he should naturally be in favor of spring. This would be good for various reasons. I just mention two: first, it would help to establish relations in Europe in this decisive year. This might have a bearing upon our Frankfurt interests. Second, we will feel more at ease in pressing the distribution of the Fragmente. Other reasons are obvious. (—But this is left to your own judgment. Perhaps you let me know it.)” In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 697.

15. Horkheimer to Leo Löwenthal, 8/23/1946. In: MHA Na [548], “Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal (und Umgebung…) Band 17 (unter anderem mit Herbert Marcuse) (p. VI.19, 159-388),” S. [33] (186r).

16. Adorno’s Draft for Pollock’s Reply to Mannheim, July 1945: “First, a little book “Society and Reason” which is now in the last stage of editing. This is based on five lectures H gave at Columbia University 1944 with a number of other studies, particularly a detailed critique of both logical positivism and Neo-Thomism added. This book which should have perhaps 150 to 200 pages in print may well be regarded as a kind of “Prolegomena” to our philosophy. It is a more popular formulation of some of the leading ideas contained in the German “Philosophische Fragmente” which H wrote together with Adorno. It is not too difficult, but should give a clear idea of our specific approach. The whole thing is built around the difference and relationship of “subjective” and “objective” reason. It uses these concepts in order to provide an introduction into the problem of dialectics of enlightenment. Second, a publication of a number of studies concerned with the sociology of modern musical mass communications. These studies were either written by Adorno or under his direction when he was in charge of the musical section of the Princeton Radio Research Project. Part of the material has been published, but is out of print now. Part of it is unpublished. The volume should contain: On popular music (Adorno) The Radio Symphony (Adorno) Critical Analysis of the NBC Music Appreciation Hour (Adorno) unpubl[ished]. Typology of musical listening (Adorno) unpublished The Popular Music Industry (Duncan MacDougald) A statistical study of listening to serious music over the radio (Edward A. Suchman) All this material is already available. If it would be collected in one volume, Adorno would write a major general introduction and would add another small monographic study on musical experience and radio advertising. Probably one or two more statistical studies of the Office of Radio Research might also be incorporated. We also might include some study on jazz. The title might be “Current of Music.” The book would have something between 300 and 400 pages. Of course, it would be of a more technical character than the book on Society and Reason, but it might well give a concrete idea of how our philosophical approach works when related to a highly specific sociological material.” In: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer. Briefwechsel 1927-1969. Band III: 1945-1969. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz (2005), 423-424.

17. Adorno and Horkheimer: “The critical part of the first essay can be broadly summed up in two theses: Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology. These theses are worked out in relation to specific subjects in the two excurses. The first traces the dialectic of myth and enlightenment in the Odyssey, as one of the earliest representative documents of bourgeois Western civilization. It focuses primarily on the concepts of sacrifice and renunciation, through which both the difference between and the unity of mythical nature and enlightened mastery of nature become apparent. The second excursus is concerned with Kant, Sade, and Nietzsche, whose works represent the implacable consummation of enlightenment. This section shows how the subjugation of everything natural to the sovereign subject culminates in the domination of what is blindly objective and natural. This tendency levels all the antitheses of bourgeois thought, especially that between moral rigor and absolute amorality.” In: Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. [1947] Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Translated by Edmund Jephcott (SUP, 2002 [1987]), xviii.

18. James Schmidt (2007): “Today Eclipse of Reason is viewed as a postscript to the work now seen as the magnum opus of the Frankfurt School's American exile: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Rolf Wiggershaus's treatment in his history of the Frankfurt School is typical: the section dealing with Eclipse of Reason carries the title “Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America” (2007), 48.

19. Adorno and Horkheimer: “The aporia which faced us in our work thus proved to be the first matter we had to investigate: the self-destruction of enlightenment. We have no doubt—and herein lies our petitio principii—that freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking. We believe we have perceived with equal clarity, however, that the very concept of that thinking, no less than the concrete historical forms, the institutions of society with which it is intertwined, already contains the germ of the regression which is taking place everywhere today. If enlightenment does not assimilate reflection on this regressive moment, it seals its own fate. By leaving consideration of the destructive side of progress to its enemies, thought in its headlong rush into pragmatism is forfeiting its sublating character, and therefore its relation to truth. In the mysterious willingness of the technologically educated masses to fall under the spell of any despotism, in its self-destructive affinity to nationalist paranoia, in all this uncomprehended senselessness the weakness of contemporary theoretical understanding is evident. We believe that in these fragments we have contributed to such understanding by showing that the cause of enlightenment’s relapse into mythology is to be sought not so much in the nationalist, pagan, or other modern mythologies concocted specifically to cause such a relapse as in the fear of truth which petrifies enlightenment itself. Both these terms, enlightenment and truth, are to be understood as pertaining not merely to intellectual history but also to current reality. Just as enlightenment expresses the real movement of bourgeois society as a whole from the perspective of the idea embodied in its personalities and institutions, truth refers not merely to rational consciousness but equally to the form it takes in reality. The loyal son of modern civilization’s fear of departing from the facts, which even in their perception are turned into clichés by the prevailing usages in science, business, and politics, is exactly the same as the fear of social deviation. Those usages also define the concept of clarity in language and thought to which art, literature, and philosophy must conform today. By tabooing any thought which sets out negatively from the facts and from the prevailing modes of thought as obscure, convoluted, and preferably foreign, that concept holds mind captive in ever deeper blindness. It is in the nature of the calamitous situation existing today that even the most honorable reformer who recommends renewal in threadbare language reinforces the existing order he seeks to break by taking over its worn-out categorial apparatus and the pernicious power-philosophy lying behind it. False clarity is only another name for myth. Myth was always obscure and luminous at once. It has always been distinguished by its familiarity and its exemption from the work of concepts.” In: Dialectic of Enlightenment: (2002 [1987]), xvi-xvii.

20. Immanuel Kant: “THESE Prolegomena are destined for the use, not of pupils, but of future teachers, and even the latter should not expect that they will be serviceable for the systematic exposition of a ready-made science, but merely for the discovery of the science itself. There are scholarly men, to whom the history of philosophy (both ancient and modern) is philosophy itself; for these the present Prolegomena are not written. They must wait till those who endeavor to draw from the fountain of reason itself have completed their work; it will then be the historian's turn to inform the world of what has been done. Unfortunately, nothing can be said, which in their opinion has not been said before, and truly the same prophecy applies to all future time; for since the human reason has for many centuries speculated upon innumerable objects in various ways, it is hardly to be expected that we should not be able to discover analogies for every new idea among the old sayings of past ages. My object is to persuade all those who think Metaphysics worth studying, that it is absolutely necessary to pause a moment, and, neglecting all that has been done, to propose first the preliminary question, ‘Whether such a thing as metaphysics be at all possible?’” In: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, translated and edited by Paul Carus (The Open Court Publishing Co., 1912 [1783]), link.

21. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 12/28/1945. In: MHA Na [545], S. [1] 1r.

22. Horkheimer to Pollock, 12/18/1945: “There is nothing new to report from here. I am working and hope to finish my program during the next week. I have concentrated almost exclusively on the first chapter, because it gives what one calls here the frame of reference. It would be a great joy if I could reorganize the following chapters—this would take 6 or 8 weeks—but I think I cannot afford it for three reasons. […] It is not the English exoteric version [viz., Eclipse] of thoughts already formulated [viz., Fragmente] which matters, but the development of a positive dialectical doctrine which has not yet been written [viz., Rettung]. […] Anyhow I think these last weeks, during which I made myself an expert in American pragmatism, will not be lost.” In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 687-688.

23. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 8/19/1946: “The galimatias into which certain philosophical ideas, isolated from their original context and meaning, are perverted, is in reality a kind of simplification, vulgarization, reification. However, the mere ability of writing, the scholarly paraphernalia and the volume of the books make people believe that here is the cupboard which holds the truth. The fact that only the experts can read them gives a kind of authority to the poor and desolate vulgarities which will undoubtedly be presented as the exoteric summaries of the real treasure.” In: MHA Na [548], S. [53] 204r-[54] 205r.

For the full excerpt on Sartre, see below, §VII.: “Horkheimer: On Sartre and Style.”

24. Adorno to Löwenthal, 6/3/1945. In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 418-422.

For the author’s translation of the letter, see below, §VII.: “Adorno: Two Critical Theses on the First Revised Manuscript.”

25. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 8/30/1947. Quoted in: James Schmidt, “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America” (2007), 68.

26. G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit [1806], translated and edited by Terry Pinkard. (Cambridge University Press, 2018.

27. Hegel, “Preface” (§13): “Without this development, science has no general intelligibility, and it seems to be the esoteric possession of only a few individuals – an esoteric possession, because at first science is only available in its concept, or in what is internal to it, and it is the possession of a few individuals, since its appearance in this not-yet fully unfurled form makes its existence into something wholly singular. Only what is completely determinate is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody. The intelligible form of science is the path offered to everyone and equally available for all. To achieve rational knowledge through our own intellect is the rightful demand of a consciousness which is approaching the status of science. This is so because the understanding is thinking, the pure I as such, and because what is intelligible is what is already familiar and common both to science and to the unscientific consciousness alike, and it is that through which unscientific consciousness is immediately enabled to enter into science.” In: Ibid., 10.

28. Hegel, “Preface” (§26): “For its part, science requires that self-consciousness shall have elevated itself into this ether in order to be able to live with science and to live in science, and, for that matter, to be able to live at all. Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that science provide him at least with the ladder to reach this standpoint. The individual’s right is based on his absolute self-sufficiency, which he knows he possesses in every shape of his knowing, for in every shape, whether recognized by science or not, and no matter what the content might be, the individual is at the same time the absolute form, or, he has immediate self-certainty; and, if one were to prefer this expression, he thereby has an unconditioned being. However much the standpoint of consciousness, which is to say, the standpoint of knowing objective things to be opposed to itself and knowing itself to be opposed to them, counts as the other to science – the other, in which consciousness is at one with itself, counts instead as the loss of spirit – still, in comparison, the element of science possesses for consciousness an other-worldly remoteness in which consciousness is no longer in possession of itself. Each of these two parts seems to the other to be an inversion of the truth. For the natural consciousness to entrust itself immediately to science would be to make an attempt, induced by it knows not what, to walk upside down all of a sudden. The compulsion to accept this unaccustomed attitude and to transport oneself in that way would be, so it would seem, a violence imposed on it with neither any advance preparation nor with any necessity. – Science may be in its own self what it will, but in its relationship to immediate self-consciousness, it presents itself as an inversion of the latter, or, because immediate selfconsciousness is the principle of actuality, by immediate self-consciousness existing for itself outside of science, science takes the form of non-actuality. Accordingly, science has to unite that element with itself or instead to show both that such an element belongs to itself and how it belongs to it. Lacking actuality, science is the in-itself, the purpose, which at the start is still something inner, at first not as spirit but only as spiritual substance. It has to express itself and become for itself, and this means nothing else than that it has to posit self-consciousness as being at one with itself.” In: Ibid., 16-17.

29. Hegel, “Preface” (§27): “ This coming-to-be of science itself, or, of knowing, is what is presented in this phenomenology of spirit as the first part of the system of science. Knowing, as it is at first, or, as immediate spirit, is devoid of spirit, is sensuous consciousness. In order to become genuine knowing, or, in order to beget the element of science which is its pure concept, immediate spirit must laboriously travel down a long path. – As it is established in its content and in the shapes that appear in it, this coming-to-be appears a bit differently from the way a set of instructions on how to take unscientific consciousness up to and into science would appear; it also appears somewhat differently from the way laying the foundations for science would appear. – In any case, it is something very different from the inspiration which begins immediately, like a shot from a pistol, with absolute knowledge, and which has already finished with all the other standpoints simply by declaring that it will take no notice of them.” In: Ibid., 17-18.

30. Hegel, “Preface” (§36): “The immediate existence of spirit, consciousness, has two moments, namely, knowing and the objectivity which is negative to knowing. While spirit develops itself in this element and explicates its moments therein, still this opposition corresponds to these moments, and they all come on the scene as shapes of consciousness. The science of this path is the science of the experience consciousness goes through.” In: Ibid., 22.

31. Hegel, “Preface” (§48): “It might seem necessary to state at the outset the principal points concerning the method of this movement, or the method of science. However, its concept lies in what has already been said, and its genuine exposition belongs to logic, or is instead even logic itself, for the method is nothing but the structure of the whole in its pure essentiality. However, on the basis of what has been said up until now, we must be aware that the system of representations relating to philosophical method itself also belongs to an already vanished cultural shape. – However much this may perhaps sound somewhat boastful or revolutionary, and however much I take myself to be far from striking such a tone, still it is worthwhile to keep in mind that the scientific régime bequeathed by mathematics – a régime of explanations, classifications, axioms, a series of theorems along with their proofs, principles, and the consequences and inferences to be drawn from them – has in common opinion already come to be regarded as itself at the least out of date. Even though it has not been clearly seen just exactly why that régime is so unfit, little to no use at all is any longer made of it, and even though it is not condemned in itself, it is nonetheless not particularly well liked. And we must be prejudiced in favor of the excellent and believe that it can put itself to use and bring itself into favor. However, it is not difficult to see that the mode of setting forth a proposition, producing reasons for it, and then also refuting its opposite with an appeal to reason is not the form in which truth can emerge. Truth is the movement of itself in its own self, but the former method is that of a cognition which is external to its material. For that reason, such a method is peculiar to mathematics and must be left to mathematics, which, as noted, has for its principle the conceptless relationship of magnitude, and takes its material from dead space as well as from the equally lifeless numerical unit. In a freer style, that is to say, in a mélange of even more quirks and contingency, it may also endure in ordinary life, say, in a conversation or in the kind of historical instruction which satisfies curiosity more than it results in knowing, in the same way that, more or less, a preface does. In everyday life, consciousness has for its content little bits of knowledge, experiences, sensuous concretions, as well as thoughts, principles, and, in general, it has its content in whatever is present, or in what counts as a fixed, stable entity or essence. In part consciousness continues on this path, and in part it interrupts the whole context through a free, arbitrary choice about such content, in which it conducts itself as if it were an external determining and manipulation of that content. It leads the content back to some kind of certainty, even if it may be only the feeling of the moment, and its conviction is satisfied when it arrives at some familiar resting place.” In: Ibid., 29-30.

32. Hegel, “Preface” (§70): “No matter how much a man asks for a royal road to science, no more convenient and comfortable way can be suggested to him than to put his trust in healthy common sense, and then for what else remains, to advance simply with the times and with philosophy, to read reviews of philosophical works, and perhaps even to go so far as to read the prefaces and the first paragraphs of the works themselves. After all, the preface provides the general principles on which everything turns, and the reviews provide both the historical memoranda and the critical assessment which, because it is a critical assessment, is on a higher plane than what it assesses. One can of course traverse this ordinary path in one’s dressing-gown. However, if one is to take exaltation in the eternal, the holy, and the infinite, then one should take one’s strides on that path when clad in the vestments of the high priest – a path which itself already has instead Immediate Being at its center, and which consists in the inspired resourcefulness of deep and original Ideas and of the lightning flashes of elevated thought. But in the same way that those depths do not reveal the wellspring of the essence, these sky-rockets are not yet the empyrean. True thoughts and scientific insight can only be won by the labor of the concept. Concepts alone can produce the universality of knowing, which is not the common indeterminateness and paltriness of plain common sense, but rather that of culturally mature and accomplished cognition. – It does not bring forth some uncommon universality of a reason whose talents have been ruined by the indolence and self-conceit of genius; rather, it brings forth this truth purified into its native form, which is capable of being the possession of all self-conscious reason.” In: Ibid., 43-44.

33. Marx to Maurice Lachâtre, 3/18/1872: “I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of Das Kapital as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else. That is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once. That is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” In: 1872 Preface to the French Edition of Capital, Volume I. [link]

34. Hegel, “Introduction” (§78): “Natural consciousness will prove to be only the concept of knowing, or it will prove to be not real knowing. But while it immediately regards itself rather as real knowing, this path has negative meaning for it, and what is the realization of the concept will count instead, to it, as the loss of itself, for on this path, it loses its truth. This path can accordingly be regarded as the path of doubt, or, more properly, as the path of despair; on this path, what happens is not what is customarily understood as doubt, a shaking of this or that supposed truth, followed by the disappearance again of the doubt, and then a return to the former truth so that in the end the thing at issue is taken as it was before. Rather, this path is the conscious insight into the untruth of knowing as it appears, a knowing for which that which is the most real is rather in truth only the unrealized concept. Thus this self-consummating skepticism is also not what earnest zeal for truth and science surely thinks it has prepared and equipped itself with so that it might be ready for truth and science; that is, it is not the project in science of not submitting oneself to the thoughts of others based on their authority but rather testing everything oneself and following only one’s own conviction, or – better still – producing everything oneself and taking only one’s own deed for the true. The series of the figurations of consciousness which consciousness traverses on this path is the full history of the cultivation of consciousness itself into science. That project represents cultivation in the simple mode of a project as immediately finished and done; but in contrast to this untruth, this path is the actual working out of the project. To be sure, following one’s own conviction is more than submitting oneself to authority; but the converting of opinions which are held on authority into opinions which are held on the basis of one’s own conviction does not necessarily involve a change in the content of those opinions, and does not necessarily make truth step into the place of error. The only difference between being stuck in a system of opinion and prejudice based on the authority of others and being stuck in one based on one’s own conviction is the vanity which inheres in the latter mode. By contrast, the skepticism which is directed at the entire range of consciousness as it appears, makes spirit for the first time competent to test what truth is, by this kind of skepticism bringing about a despair regarding the so-called natural conceptions, thoughts, and opinions. It is a matter of indifference whether one calls them one’s own or someone else’s, and with which consciousness that goes straightaway into examining matters is still suffused and burdened, which thus in fact renders consciousness incapable of achieving what it wants to undertake.” In: Phenomenology (2018 [1806]), 52-53.

35. Marx, Thesis No. 3 of the “Theses on Feuerbach” [1845]: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”

36. Quoted from the translation in: James Schmidt. “Language, Mythology, and Enlightenment: Historical Notes on Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment.” (1998), 822.

37. See: Adorno to Löwenthal, 6/3/1945, in §VII., below.

38. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 1/10/1946: “On the other hand, the book, as it is, opposes the concept of nature so directly to that of spirit, and the idea of object to that of subject, that our philosophy appears as much too static and dogmatic.” In: MHA Na [546], Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal (und Umgebung…) Band 15 (p. VI.18, 215-414). [link]

For the rest of the excerpt on this problem, see §VII., below, “Horkheimer: Problems of Dialectical Presentation in Eclipse.”

39. For one of the most interesting examples of this misreading, see: Ludwig Marcuse to Horkheimer, 7/28/1947. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 830-834.

40. See: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, “Dialectic of Enlightenment Revisited: Habermas’s Critique of the Frankfurt School.” In: Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical Theory (Cornell University Press, 1991), 99-130. (link to PDF)

41. (Draft) Horkheimer to the editors of Philosophical Review, April 1949. In: A Life in Letters. (2007), 270-272.

42. Herbert Marcuse to Horkheimer, 7/18/1947. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 843. Author’s translation.

43. See: Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Translated by Michael Robertson. (Polity Press, 1994), 350.

44. Löwenthal to Horkheimer, 1/17/1946. In: MHA Na [546], [link].

45. James Schmidt (2007): “On that May morning when Löwenthal stepped from the elevator, it was not unreasonable to hope that Horkheimer's book might achieve the sort of success with educated readers that Cassirer had recently attained with his posthumously published Essay on Man and Myth of the State. The ultimate fate of Horkheimer's book, however, must have been a disappointment. A few reviews appeared—some positive, some negative—and the book soon lapsed into obscurity.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 48.

46. On Cassirer’s enthusiastic reception in his years at Yale and Columbia, see the Michael Friedman’s biography in: “Ernst Cassirer,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/cassirer/>.

Cassirer, like so many German émigrés during this period (including Carnap) then finally settled in the United States. He taught at Yale from 1941 to 1944 and at Columbia in 1944–45. During these years he produced two books in English [Cassirer 1944, 1946], where the first, An Essay on Man, serves as a concise introduction to the philosophy of symbolic forms (and thus Cassirer’s distinctive philosophical perspective) as a whole and the second, The Myth of the State, offers an explanation of the rise of fascism on the basis of Cassirer’s conception of mythical thought. Two important American philosophers were substantially influenced by Cassirer during these years: Arthur Pap, whose work on the “functional a priori” in physical theory [Pap 1946] took shape under Cassirer’s guidance at Yale, and Susanne Langer, who promulgated Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms in aesthetic and literary circles (see, e.g., [Langer 1942]). Cassirer’s American influence thus embraced both sides of his philosophical personality. One can only speculate on what this influence might have been if his life had not been cut short suddenly by a heart attack while walking on the streets of New York City on April 13, 1945.

47. See James Schmidt’s (2007) account of the series of events which led up to the ISR’s reluctant final break with Columbia University in Summer, 1946. In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 50-56.

On June 12th, 1946, Horkheimer sends the following letter to officially disaffiliate, citing the intention to shift the focus of the ISR to the West Coast:

My dear Mr. President:

I am writing this to thank you for the kindness with which you received me on June 11, and to confirm our conversation concerning our Institute's reluctant decision to discontinue its affiliation with Columbia University.

In reaching this decision we have been guided by the following considerations. Since its foundation in 1924, the Institute has been engaged in a great variety of research projects centered around the task of elaborating an analysis of the crisis of contemporary culture.

Now that the war emergency is over, we feel that the time has come for us to evaluate the results achieved in the course of more than two decades of work, and set forth our systematic findings in the form of books for the academic world.

For the successful performance of this task, it is indispensable that we should continue to work on the basis of close personal cooperation. As I have stated, I am suffering from a chronic illness which has made it imperative for me to live during a great part of the year in a climate less rigorous than that of New York. Some of our associates have also set up permanent residence in California. As a result, a considerable part of our activities will be transferred to the West Coast.

We feel deep gratitude to Columbia University which for more than a decade has been a home to us and a continuous source of encouragement to carry on our work as scholars and teachers. We realize how much we give up in proposing to separate from Columbia University at the very moment when there opens a prospect of even closer cooperation with it than in the past, a possibility recently suggested by the Department of Sociology.

I wish to state that we have reached this decision with the utmost reluctance and only after carefully weighing our responsibilities to Columbia University and to our own scientific goals. We hope that we may count on a continuance of our fruitful personal and scientific relations with our friends in the university and especially in the Department of Sociology.

Yours very truly,

Max Horkheimer

Research Director

Horkheimer to Frank D. Fackenthal, 6/12/1946. In: MHGS 17 (1996), 736-737.

48. Schmidt (2007): “It is not clear when Horkheimer decided to publish the lectures. In a letter to Maclver of August 9, 1944, he was “still uncertain whether or not the lectures should be printed.” A possible impetus may have been provided by Löwenthal's letter of September 25, which reported that [Robert] Lynd [of Columbia’s sociology department] had informed him that “the University authorities feel that we have not ‘come through in a big way’ in the same sense as in Germany.” The need to raise the institute's profile with a significant publication could only have become more pressing in the coming year as the university began evaluating its relationship with the institute. Whatever the motivation, by the autumn of 1945 the book had been accepted at Oxford, and Horkheimer was at work revising the manuscript, with a promised delivery date of January 1946.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 63-64.

49. Paul Lazarsfeld to Horkheimer, 7/19/1947. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 847-848.

50. Paul Lazarsfeld to Horkheimer, 5/10/1946. In: MHA Na [547], S. 21.

51. Horkheimer to Leo Löwenthal, 3/20/1946. In: MHA Na [547], “Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal. Band 16 (p. VI.19, 1-158),” S. [97] 88r. [link]

52. In the summer of 1944, Horkheimer writes a letter to Pollock about having been effectively pushed out of the sociology department at Columbia: “If we […] really have to resign our position at the university, we must have expressed what the Institute represents, what it has done, what it stands for.” After floating the idea that they open “a discussion with Schneider of the Department of Philosophy,” in which “Tillich might be helpful,” Horkheimer jokes: “If all efforts should be in vain, one might approach a personality of the New York University about our retreat before the victoriously advancing Navy and ask if they could harbor us.” Horkheimer to Pollock, 6/12/1944. In: MHA Na [581], S. [287] 426r-[288] 427r.

53. See Schmidt’s (2007) gloss of the critical reviews of Eclipse by Columbia philosophers Glenn Negley (1947) and John R. Everett (in 1948). Schmidt notes that the Columbia philosophy department, as reported by Tillich in 1943 and relayed by Löwenthal, long been suspicious of the ISR, citing financial irresponsibility. In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 71-74.

54. See: Wiggershaus (1994): “But the directors of the Institute had to be prepared for the fact that suspicions that the Institute had Communist members of staff, was Marxist and was only a front organization were being spread not only by people at the New School but also by all sorts of other émigrés who wanted to discredit the Institute in the eyes of American grant organizations, or simply give vent to their irritation with it. On 30 July 1940, during the university vacation, two police officers visited the Institute. Only Lowenthal and one of the secretaries were present. Lowenthal reported to Horkheimer: “In the course of a long discussion, they took precise information about individual members of staff, how long they had been there and which of them were Americans, and noted both their home and vacation addresses. Headed writing paper, our pamphlet [the 1938 prospectus], the book by Rusche and Kirchheimer, the title and contents pages of the new journal [the SPSS, the English-language continuation of the ZfS], and what Social Studies consisted of, all made a deep impression on them.” The visit was allegedly part of a general inspection of foreign institutions, but Lowenthal found that no one else in academic circles had been affected. It was hardly ever possible to nail down suspicions of Marxism as a reason for difficulties that were being made for the Institute. At the beginning of the 1940s, when the Institute was looking for research funds to support two projects, Neumann had a talk with Carl Joachim Friedrich, a well-known, extremely busy professor of politics, who had moved to the USA as early as 1921 and was teaching at Harvard University. Neumann reported to Horkheimer in August 1941: “I asked Friedrich for his views about our project on ‘Cultural Aspects of National Socialism.’ He answered that it would be an excellent project if it was carried out by ‘competent, unbiased and undogmatic scholars.’ When he made this statement, it was clear to me at once that Friedrich considered the Institute to be a purely Marxist affair, and consequently did not trust us to be able to carry out such a project in an unbiased manner. The only question, and I had to make the decision on the spur of the moment, was what tactics to apply. I could defend myself indignantly against the hidden accusation, or I could play with at least half- open cards. I decided on the latter course. I therefore asked him openly whether he meant by this that the Institute was purely Marxist and as a result of its dogmatic commitments could not guarantee that it would carry out the project objectively. His answer was ‘yes.’ I explained to him, in the first place, that there were differences between Marxists and Marxists, and secondly that it was not correct to say that the Institute was made up of Marxists. Some were Marxists, others were not. In any case, none of them was either directly or indirectly affiliated to the Communist Party. A half-hour discussion developed from this, in which I explained to him the Institute's theoretical basis and the tasks which we believe we have to carry out. At the end of this I asked him whether he still held to his original suppositions. The answer was ‘no.’” Minor successes in clarifying matters like this were not necessarily lasting, and were frustrated by the fact that Horkheimer's Institute was becoming relatively more left-wing…” In: The Frankfurt School. (1994), 255-256.

55. Horkheimer, “Response: Certain Charges made against the Institut of Social Research (Columbia University).” In: MHA Na [658], S. [1]-[19]

Also: Horkheimer to Pollock, 6/9/1943. In: MHA Na [579], S. [129] 469r-[133] 473r.

For Pollock’s reply on possible ‘informers’ (suspecting former members of the SPD), see: “Memorandum No. 46.” Pollock to Horkheimer, 6/14/1943, in: MHA Na [579], S. [121] 452r.

For Horkheimer’s reply, where he writes that the ‘evidence’ of the accusers could only be either: rumors about pre-1933 activities in Germany, or: an attack on free scientific inquiry based on their writings in the ZfS (which Horkheimer proposes they defend as a matter of principle, but also by pointing out that very few people did read or could have read the ZfS in the US), see: Horkheimer to Pollock, 6/17/1943. In: MHA Na [579], S. [110] 442r-[111] 443r.

By July, Pollock hears from a contact in Washington that, thankfully, no one seems to care about the Institute and that they have nothing but ‘favorable reports,’ which Pollock is unsatisfied with because “where there is smoke, there must be fire” and “something must have caused the incident.” In: “Memorandum No. 55.” Pollock to Horkheimer, 7/26/1943. In: MHA Na [579], S. [35] 387r.

The “Charges” letter was published in full in the Gesammelte Schriften, Band 17 (1996). The relevant section of the letter reads:

I was a little disturbed by our telephone conversation, not with regard to the matter itself, but with regard to your relatively weak reactions. I had the feeling that you were more depressed than I thought. In the meantime I was told that it is so hot in New York that even people with much less sensitivity to heat and humidity than you are almost put out of action. In addition we had awakened you between two and three o'clock which is barbarian even at a normal mercury.

My standpoint in the matter itself is that we must do whatever we can and that your personality is not so insignificant that we have to rely entirely upon the good services of Neumann. The idea that we have had anything to do with any radical movement or group is so utterly untrue that I don't know what to say about it. There must certainly be a way to put matters in their place. The only cause for such an accusation can be that the gossip around Grünberg, who, unfortunately, was the first director, back in 1923 to 1926, has been carried unto this day by totally uninformed or envious people. This is possible because most of the professors who, in 1923 and again after Grünberg's illness, had hoped to be appointed to his position, are now in this country, and one or the other of their number might still feel some bitterness. This might have done more damage than we thought because we have not done very much to cultivate social contacts. We were more than happy that we could go on studying. But heaven knows, that though Grünberg antagonized many of his colleagues by bitter criticism he was no radical, and since the day when I had a saying in the Institute, I did everything in my power to reconcile the people he had antagonized. A translation of my inauguration speech in Frankfurt, when I assumed directorship, appointed by the Department of Science of the Republican Government, and entrusted with the confidence of the whole Faculty, constitutes only one of the documents which can prove that point to every man of good will. Another document is a letter of our lawyer who confirmed that the German authorities, even after the ascent of Hitler, were convinced of my political integrity.

Since the time when we came into this country, we may have made many mistakes. I mentioned one of them when I said that we neglected social contacts and public appearances. We also should have taken a greater part in university activities. We should have pushed our official incorporation in the teaching system of Columbia University. We should have appeared more often in meetings and conventions. You and I know that there is only one reason for that: our eagerness not to be distracted from our scientific work. I feel that perhaps the deepest cause of all this lies in my reluctance to participate too much in the activities of the sociological and social science departments with which we were connected here. That reluctance was founded in the fact that I am in the first place not a social scientist but a philosopher — and, what is worse, a philosopher of an old school of thought, not very popular in social science. A further mistake for which I feel partly responsible, but which may be explained by my background, is our having called ourselves an Institute instead of a Foundation or an Endowment. When we came to this country it had been our idea to devote the funds which we brought here to enable European scholars who had lost their positions by the rise of dictatorship to continue their own work. When we became aware that a few of our American friends expected of an Institute of Social Sciences that it engage[s] in studies on pertinent social problems, fieldwork and other empirical investigations, we tried to satisfy these demands as well as we could, but our heart was set on individual studies in the sense of Geisteswissenschaften and the philosophical analysis of culture. Since we had not to rely on outside funds, we considered it as our duty and our privilege to cultivate the kinds of studies typical for older European humanities as they had lost their home over there without being able to establish themselves in other countries. This goes for the contents, methods as well as for the organization of the work. This is also the reason why we continued for a long time publications in German and French language and even did not care to bring out a great deal of publications at all. I am ready to assume the responsibility for my standpoint that the kind of work in which a few of us are engaged has to extend over a considerable period of years before its results can be presented to the public. Our preliminary studies can prove at any moment that we have never been lazy and have not wasted the opportunity for free thinking which we have enjoyed since our arrival. There may be many who don't share our philosophical standpoint and who contend that today is not the time for studies which seemed to be so utterly aloof. (My personal opinion is that it is just this kind of intellectual work which, exception made of everything necessary to win the war, this time needs more than anything else. The pragmatism and empiricism and the lack of genuine philosophy are some of the foremost reasons which are responsible for the crisis which civilization would have faced even if the war had not come). If we have refrained from entering such controversy we thought that the right answer would be the publication of our work in due time.

All this may deserve criticism and wherever it is raised we should carefully listen to it. However, if there is one reproach, which we have not deserved, it is the accusation that, instead of devoting all our time and energy to the furtherance of scientific and philosophical insight, we had mingled in any radical politics. You know as well as I do that there is not a shade of truth in such an assertion. And whoever really knows our group and utters such a statement commits a deliberate slander. You mention Grossman as the one who possibly could have made some radical remarks. I don't know what he who, as an old protégé of Grünberg, still receives a kind of pension and who for years did not even work in the Institute's building, does with his spare time, and I think it is none of our business. But I know very exactly that no member of the Institute in its framework has ever done anything else but work at a worthwhile scientific subject, and I think that this is the thing that matters even if one or the other should have uttered or even written a passage which a critic may consider as leftist. There may be other ones which other critics consider as reactionary. We live in a free country with freedom of speech and certainly freedom of scientific work. No actual member of the Institute and no one of its associates has ever, as far as I know, published an article in a political, nay leftist periodical. Our topics range from the analysis of Homer's Odyssee to the most abstract logical problems, they include, as distant subjects studies on the 13th century, the interpretation of popular music, the Institutions of present day Europe, and the philosophy of Art, but there is no work or article which can be regarded as a political pamphlet or as an attempt to defend any radical group whichever it may be. Our periodical which until 1940, that is, until the occupation of France, appeared in one of the world's best known scientific publishing houses in France, constitutes, I dare say, one of the greatest scientific, if not the greatest contribution in our fields produced by German refugee scholars. We possess Henri Bergson's unbiased declaration that it was one of the most inspiring periodicals he had ever seen. After the outbreak of the war we asked our publisher whether he wanted to continue this periodical which, apart from certain French and English contributions, contained mostly German articles, he wrote that he had had a conversation with M. Giraudoux who at the time was the French Minister of Propaganda, and that it was an honor for his firm to continue the publication of this journal. As the only refugee organization we were granted localities in the most famous part of the Sorbonne and our use of these localities was confirmed again and again by the Board of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In fact, our branch there was alive until the day when the Germans marched into Paris.

You say that Columbia University, when asked about their relations with us, answered that the only thing which they had to say about us was that they had put 429 W 117th Street at our disposal. I don't know who gave that answer but it is in contradiction to President Butler's statement about our connection. Neither does it correspond to the facts. For many years we have lectured in Columbia Extension, other lectures were given in the Department of Sociology. I, myself, have been invited to give public lectures under the auspices of the Department of Philosophy. It may be true that because of our indolence in making social contacts, a negligence which certainly is not due to conceit or vanity, we are not so well known to many members of the Faculty as we ought to be. This may have been the reason for the information which was given to the question concerning our status. However, it should be possible to induce an authoritative personality or body of Columbia to issue a statement which reflects better our affiliation and cooperation with the University. When in 1942 we were asked to apply for official incorporation, we ourselves hesitated because we thought that with regard to our restricted staff and activities in wartime it might be better to delay the incorporation until after the war. I think, it should not be too difficult to obtain such a document and to submit it to anybody who has an official interest in the nature of the Institute. — As I told you over the phone, I would consult an eminent personality with whom you could discuss the whole matter. Since we don't have very much experience in how these problems should be approached, we must get good advice from somebody who can be expected to have some interest in the kind of work we are doing. But if you should have any difficulty in finding such a personality, I might ask Mr. Lewis. Even if you have made up your mind whom to approach, I would like you to let me know first in order to enable me to ask Mr. Lewis or some other friend, whether he thinks that this man will have an understanding for such a matter. If you should choose a lawyer, I would not make any arrangements which may cost money before we have had the time to find out whether he is really the man who will do the right thing.

Forgive me that I have been so explicit, but when I started thinking about the accusation I was so utterly depressed that I simply had to speak my mind even though the only victim of my eloquence was just you who knows so much better than I do myself. Furthermore, your voice over the phone sounded so resigned that I was under the impression you might not react energetically enough, particularly because you were directly concerned. I know only too well that you don't like to defend yourself against any thing which you feel is deeply unjustified. But I also know that people like you can do a good job in Washington. Nobody can be more devoted to the great cause of this war, more enthusiastic with regard to this country's effort, more expert in quite a number of important economic matters, more opposed to any bungling experiments, more unselfish, than you are. I agree that we should not make a “frontal attack” as you called it in your letter. There is no need for any conspicuous steps, but we must do everything in our power in order to enable those who are interested in the nature of the Institute, to correct the error which they certainly made in good faith. There is an old American adage “Everyone is the maker of his own.” In this case it means one must speak up if it is necessary. …

Horkheimer to Pollock, 6/9/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 451-62.

56. Marcuse relates in an interview with Habermas in the 1970s that participation with “the more strongly politically organized groups among the émigrés” was “strictly forbidden” by Horkheimer. See Wiggershaus (1994). In: The Frankfurt School. (1994), 133-134.

57. James Schmidt (1998): “The lengths to which Horkheimer was willing to go in order to avoid even the appearance of radicalism border on the comic: before sending a colleague a copy of the mimeographed volume that the Institute for Social Research published in memory of Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer instructed Leo Löwenthal to “simply take a complete copy and cut the last article out. You may explain that the last pages were so misprinted that we had to destroy them—or find some other explanation” [MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 345.]. The article Löwenthal was instructed to remove was Horkheimer's essay "The Authoritarian State," which, with its defense of worker's councils, was perhaps the most politically radical essay he had written.” In: “Language, Mythology, and Enlightenment: Historical Notes on Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment.” In: Social Research 65(4), 813.

58. Horkheimer speculated in a letter to Löwenthal of 3/18/1946, they might publish a collection of their works in translation through Oxford University Press as well, described as:

[…] a book containing some of your and my older articles of the [ZfS] which were translated into English, and in addition some of Teddie’s articles which he wrote for Lazarsfeld. This would be the first document of advanced materialistic thought in America.

Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 3/18/1946: In: MHA Na [547], S. [110], 101r.

59. Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Leo Löwenthal, 2/2/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 415-419.

60. See: “The Philosophy of Western Society” [1938]:

This work will begin with a critical discussion of the basic concepts and methods of the social sciences. The principles of the social sciences (including economics, sociology, psychology, and even philosophy) will be developed into an integrated whole on the basis of the most advanced work in the field. In order to do this, it will first be necessary to re-examine recent work in the natural sciences in their implications and value for the social sciences. Scientific literature devoted to social problems makes use of many categories such as causality, tendency, progress, law, necessity, freedom, class, culture, ideology and so forth. Unlike the situation in the natural sciences, as soon as one seeks a precise definition of these categories, one finds a tremendous divergence of opinion. They are often gravely misused in the sense of a limited and dogmatic metaphysics. The present fashion of discarding them, however, can only serve to intensify our intellectual confusion. These concepts do have a true meaning, a meaning which can be defined only in their precise connection with the historical processes of today. One must take a critical position to the prevailing social conditions if one wishes to arrive at the correct meaning of concepts like freedom, value, or culture. One must analyze the extent to which freedom exists, and the extent to which coercion, insecurity, anxiety, and impotence exist, regardless of what the dominant ideology may claim. The purpose of the first part of this work is to develop the meanings of the basic concepts of the social sciences along these lines. No serious attempt of this kind has been made since Hegel published his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.

The second part of the work will be an application of these newly defined concepts to the analysis of contemporary society. It will be necessary to study the history of the whole modern epoch in order to present a proper picture of prevailing social systems and problems, that is, in order to make correct, concrete use of the categories which have been developed in the first part. By history is meant not merely economic and political history but the history of ideas as well. (Incidentally, it is planned to publish, as a sort of by-product of this work, a source book containing the most significant texts in the history of philosophy, psychology, and sociology which have been neglected or distorted in traditional historiography.)

Finally, the concepts and their concrete application will lead to a picture of the immanent tendencies in our society. The third part of the work, therefore, will contain a prospectus of the real potentialities for the future development of human existence. It will lay the basis for critical decisions which must be made not in the domain of “pure” science but in the field of praxis.

In: MHA Na [657], S. [296]-[297].

61. James Schmidt (2007): “While some of the other topics would have reprised themes that Horkheimer had long ago addressed and others would have required him to venture into areas that he had not yet explored, Löwenthal’s choice was tailor-made to allow Horkheimer to pull together the work that he had been doing with Adorno.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” New German Critique, no. 100 (2007): 59–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27669187.

62. See: MHA Na [653], S. [388].

63. Columbia Department of Philosophy (Herbert W. Schneider) to Max Horkheimer, 3/5/1943:

Dear Dr. Horkheimer:

Through Paul Tillich the attention of the Department has been called to your willingness to deliver next year a series of public addresses on social philosophy, and he has forwarded to us the alternative suggestions which you have formulated.

We would be delighted to have you give these lectures under the auspices of the Department, and appreciate your offer. In the Winter Session our lecture schedule is crowded, but in the Spring Session we shall have ample room for a series of five lectures. Consequently, if it is agreeable to you, we would like to schedule them beginning in February or early March, 1944, on Thursday afternoons from four to five o’clock, with an opportunity for discussion following the lectures. We would like to schedule them in Room 716 Philosophy Hall.

Of the alternative series, our Department, after deliberation, recommends as most appropriate in view of the interests of our students and colleagues, series A, entitled “Society and Reason.” Series D, “American and German Philosophy,” seems to us also extraordinarily interesting, and we hope that if you are willing to give us Series A you may find it possible to incorporate to that series some of the themes suggested in Series D. However, whatever you decide will certainly be agreeable to us.

May we have the titles of the lectures sometime next Autumn so that we may announce them in due time.

Very sincerely yours,

(Herbert W. Schneider)

Executive Officer

In: MHA Na [653], S. [397]

64. “(9.) Keywords for lectures I-III. Typescript with handwritten additions, 2 pages.” In: MHA Na [653]—Lecture I, S. [386]; Lectures II-III, S. [385]. Author’s translation.

65. As Schmidt (2007) notes: “Horkheimer seems to have planned to discuss Romanticism in his third lecture and, as a result, prefaced the lecture with discussions of German idealism that were dropped from the book, as were the lecture's apologies about not discussing Romanticism and also its concluding discussion of Hegel (see SR, 25-28).” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 62. [Fn. 60.]

66. “(10.) ‘On problems of scientific style.’ Reaction to a document (from a letter to Friedrich Pollock). a) Typescript, dated: 28.11.1943, 3 pages b) Max Horkheimer: 1 Letter to Friedrich Pollock, no location, 28.11.1943, 5 pages.” In: MHA Na [653], S. [389]-[396]

67. Horkheimer writes to Ralph Boyer, his former English teacher, in a letter dated 1/7/1943: “Thanks for your friendly greetings. I am very pleased that you feel as happy down there as you hoped to feel. Have you already found a convenient position or did you prefer up to now to imitate the enviable Mexican temperament for which I hold such true admiration spending the greater part of the day with philosophical cogitating. My own philosophical cogitating has terminated. I am definitely trying to accomplish the miracle of conquering the world’s most difficult language. That is why I have associated with the world’s most efficient teacher who certainly faces the world's most difficult task. You are one of the few who will be able to realize that from your own experience since you know the teacher, the pupil and the job. Of course our lessons don’t stand with the nice walk in the morning the memories of which I still cherish. In order to keep my timetable of the working hours intact, we had to schedule my wrestling with the English for the evening. Gretl arrives at 8 p.m. on the dot when she will find me generally a[t] napping after a late dinner. During the first half hour she has to work hard to kindle the fire of English thinking in me. After another hour usually I succeed in giving my mouth and its surrounding approximately the right formation “let the jaw drop!”). After one more hour she admits sometimes that my speech now becomes somewhat smoother (“you’re getting the groove”) and after another hour she seems to detect a small silver lining at the horizon. Mutual pity is not the reason why we don’t part before dawn, it is sheer courtesy towards Mrs. Horkheimer who still harbors the old fashioned idea that at least a small part of the night ought to be devoted to sleeping.” In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 395.

68. Horkheimer to Pollock, 1/7/1944. In: Ibid., 538-539.

69. Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 7/21/1940. In: A Life in Letters. Selected Correspondence by Max Horkheimer. Edited and translated by Evelyn M. Jacobson and Manfred R. Jacobson (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 163-164.

70. Horkheimer to Adorno, 8/21/1941. In: Ibid., 189-193.

71. Horkheimer to Marcuse, 12/19/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 390-391.

72. Horkheimer to Marcuse, 10/11/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 484-485.

73. Max Horkheimer. “Reason Against Itself: Some Remarks on Enlightenment.” In What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, edited by James Schmidt, 1st ed., 366–367. University of California Press, 1996. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt4cgf8z.29.

74. Horkheimer to Pollock, 11/28/1943. In: MHA Na [653], 10a) “On problems of scientific style.” S. [389]-[391]

75. German parenthetical in original.

76. Schmidt: “The typescript of the final version of the lectures confirms that a significant portion of the manuscript responded to questions raised by the audience at previous lectures. The second lecture, for instance, contains an extended discussion of Dewey prompted by a comment that Dewey’s “philosophy of experience” might provide a “way out of the impasse” discussed in Horkheimer's first lecture.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 61.

77. Horkheimer to Adorno, 2/11/1944. In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel 1927-1969. Band II: 1938-1944. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz. (Suhrkamp, 2004), 311.

78. Re: Horkheimer’s remark on the similarities between pre-war empiricism (from Bergson to Mach) and pragmatism, which Horkheimer considered to be both a variation on the pattern of the former and a much more naive one at that (less ‘cultured’ in its own tradition), see Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 12/21/1945. In: MHA Na [545], S. [19] 18r.

79. James Schmidt (2007): “Horkheimer, however, knew rather little about pragmatism when he first delivered the lectures. The extended discussion of Dewey at the start of the second lecture was prompted by the suggestion (which would have been hardly surprising from an audience at Columbia) that Dewey's philosophy offered an alternative to the impasse sketched in the opening lecture (SR, 5-6). Giving little indication that he was aware of the broader tradition with which Dewey was associated, Horkheimer focused on Dewey's “philosophy of experience,” which he argued was similar to Bergson's philosophy, thus allowing Horkheimer to repeat criticisms that, he informed his audience, “once brought me Bergson's personal acknowledgement that although he could not agree with me, he felt that it was the most lively and pertinent objection which he had yet encountered” (SR, 8). The material on pragmatism was among the last additions to Eclipse of Reason, and when Horkheimer sent the revisions to Lowenthal he noted, “You can see from my quotes that I read not a few of these native products and I have now the feeling to be an expert on it.” Yet he persisted in interpreting pragmatism in light of European philosophical traditions with which he had long been familiar: “The whole thing belongs definitely into the period before the first World War and is somehow on the line of empirico-criticism.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 64-65.

80. James Schmidt (2007): “Horkheimer's response to Hook, Dewey, and Nagel was originally written in German, and the English translation was assigned to Benjamin Nelson, whom the institute had engaged to perform various editorial tasks. Horkheimer's dissatisfaction with the pace and the results of the translation led to a bitter dispute during the spring and summer of 1944, with Horkheimer attributing the problem to Nelson's sympathy for Hook's position. “After all,” Horkheimer explained to Löwenthal in one of his milder assessments of the situation, “he is deeply rooted in the tradition in which he was brought up.” The material on pragmatism in the first chapter was added in response to a request by one of the readers of the manuscript for Oxford: a young Columbia sociologist named C. Wright Mills.” In: Ibid., 64.

Re: Nelson’s struggles with the revision of “Revival” (at the time still known by the shorthand of ‘Hook’), see: Löwenthal to Horkheimer, 3/24/1944: “I had a long conversation with Nelson last week in which he explained to me all the reasons why he thinks that the Hook article needs a lot of work and consultation which, however, could be achieved by correspondence. I have asked him to put down his opinion in writing which he did. I enclose his letter, and you will have now to decide whether you think it worthwhile to start this venture. I am pretty confident that after our frank conversation none or little money will be involved. By the way don't forget to send me the article on the rackets, so that Nelson can read it. [MHGS Ed. Fn.: Benjamin Nathaniel Nelson (1911-1977), sociologist and historian […] studied at the ISR and several other institutions in NY. [Shortly before this letter was sent, Nelson] had been sent a section of MH’s S&R lecture notes on the topics of American positivism and pragmatism [viz., the manuscript that would become Ch. 2, Conflicting Panaceas in EoR], and was asked if he was interested in providing corrections for the English version of the text and substantive comments in light of his expertise in contemporary American philosophy (cf. MHA: II 11.296).]” In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 552-553.

And, for Horkheimer’s reply: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 7/24/1944. In: Ibid., 564-565.

It is not clear why Schmidt claims that Nelson was contracted to translate “Revival,” which Löwenthal explicitly states in his letter to Adorno of 5/25/1945, translated in §VII. as “Löwenthal: Revisions and Additions to the S&R Manuscripts,” the following: “As for the ‘German version’ of the Positivism-essay you mention several times—none exists nor existed, as it was originally written in English.” To date (4/28/2025), I have been unable to find either an extant German version of “Revival” in the MHA or even a reference to a German draft in Horkheimer’s correspondence.

81. Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (1974 [1947]), 78.

82. Interjection by Rolf Wiggershaus.

83. Quoted in: Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Translated by Michael Robertson. (Polity Press, 1994), 321.

See Wiggershaus’ footnote listing the books on anthropology Horkheimer mentions in the letter, in: Ibid., 691. [Fn. No. 148.]

84. [Horkheimer’s parenthetical: “(examples from Thomas Aquinas)”]

85. Break in MS. [Horkheimer’s parenthetical: “(Fortsetzung A 2 c?)”]

86. Horkheimer’s citation: “(Dial. d’Ephemere, Oeuvres completes, Paris 1880, Garnier. Vol. 30, p. 488.)” and note: “(Perhaps also quote from Rousseau)”

87. Horkheimer’s citation: “(Contributions a l’Histoire religieuse de la Revolution Francaise, Paris 1907, p. 32).”

88. Horkheimer’s citation: “(quotation from Annes sociologique IV 1903, p. 66 ff.)”

89. Horkheimer’s parenthetical: “(perhaps quotation)”

90. Horkheimer’s parenthetical: “(quotation)”

91. Horkheimer’s citation: “(Unbehagen an der Kultur, p. 85 ff.)”

92. Horkheimer’s citation: “(Hubert et Mauss, page 118, Theorie generale de la Magie, in: Annee Sociologique, 1902-3.)”

93. Unclear. Perhaps: “Conclusion 1.”

94. Horkheimer’s parenthetical: “(quotation)”

95. Perhaps: “Conclusion 2.”

96. Adorno and Horkheimer (1944). In: Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. [1947] Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Translated by Edmund Jephcott (SUP, 2002 [1987]), 254-255.

97. In: MHA Na [806]:

Na 1 Nachlass Max Horkheimer, 806 - Manuskripte unter anderem Eclipse of Reason und Gespräche mit Theodor W. Adorno (p. XI 16a - XI 20): Eclipse of Reason; veröffentlicht in New York, 1947:; 1. Entwurf zu Kapitel II “Conflicting Panaceas”:; 1a) Typoskript mit dem Titel “The Revival of Dogmatism. Remarks on Neo-Positivism and Neo-Thomism,” Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Anmerkungen von Theodor W. Adorno, 58 Blatt.

98. Horkheimer to Pollock, 11/9/1943: “I will devote the greater part of the next week to finishing the Hook, which I have neglected during the last weeks. […] In January, I may prepare the lecture together with Teddie. I intend to make it a more or less popular version of the philosophy of enlightenment as far as it has taken shape in the chapters of the book we have so far completed.” In: MHGS Bd. 17 (1996), 498.

99. Schmidt (2007) notes that the earliest mention of “Revival” he was able to find in Horkheimer’s collected correspondence is in a letter of 9/11/1943 written to Herbert Marcuse. In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 64. [Footnote No. 64.]

For the letter in question, see: Horkheimer to Marcuse, 9/11/1943: “In a few weeks I shall probably send you some similar notes at the occasion of three articles published by Hock [sic], Dewey, and Nagel on “The Failure of Nerve.” I am certain you know them. In fact I am almost finished with the notes but I decided to devote the next weeks exclusively to the German text and to leave all the other things until later.” In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 471.

100. Adorno to Horkheimer, 1/25/1945: “Incidentally, he [viz., Eric Russell Bentley] put me in touch with the very respectable Antioch Review, in which an excellent essay of his was just published. [“Romanticism–A Re-Evaluation,” in: Antioch Review, Vol. 4, Spring 1944, No. 1, 3-20.] I’ve already sent you the issue in question in a separate letter. It think it not a bad idea if your essay on Positivism and Neo-Thomism [viz., “Revival”] were to appear in its pages. If you were to send it to them and mention me, I am convinced it would be received with high honors.” In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 38-41.

101. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Report of the Associated Press of October 2nd, 1943.

102. [Crossed out: “… without being hushed.”]

103. All German parentheticals in original.

104. [Crossed out: “... to irrational factors insofar as the stand each individual takes is reduced to the expediencies of partisanship.”]

105. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Sidney Hook, ‘The New Failure of Nerve’ in: Partisan Review, Jan./Feb. 1943, pp. 4-25.

106. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Ibid., p. 3.

107. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] John Dewey, ‘Anti-Naturalism in Extremis,’ in: Partisan Review, Jan./Feb. 1943, pp. 26-39.

108. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Ernest Nagel, ‘Malicious Philosophies of Science’, in: Partisan Review, Jan./Feb. 1943, p. 40.

109. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Cf. Hans Meyer, Thomas von Acquin, Bonn 1938, p. 403.

110. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Cf. S.c.g. III c. 23 and others.

111. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] S.th. II 2, LXV.

112. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Summa contra gentiles I XVI.

113. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit. p. 10.

114. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 41.

115. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 6.

116. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 7.

117. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 26.

118. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Ibid.

119. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 28.

120. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 5.

121. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 57.

122. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Ibid.

123. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 10.

124. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Dewey, Sammelband, p. 447; Ibid., p. 362.

125. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 37.

126. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 55.

127. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 33. ; [crossed out: “... in stark opposition to a higher realm of truths accessible to extra-natural organs”]

128. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 37.

129. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., pp. 22-23.

130. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 27.

131. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Op. cit., p. 34.

132. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Reuter II, 154.

133. [Horkheimer’s fn.:] Such ideas circulated in certain progressive university groups in the 70s of the 13th century (Bühler VI, 208.)

134. On the extensive revisions between “Society and Reason” [1944] and Eclipse [1947], see: James Schmidt (2007): “The last three lectures most closely correspond to the contents of Eclipse of Reason and include material subsequently reworked in the book’s last three chapters. Much of the fourth lecture appeared in the identically titled fourth chapter, though there were extensive revisions. The same can be said for the relationship between the fifth lecture and the book's closing chapter, “On the Concept of Philosophy,” and—to a lesser degree—for the relationship between the third lecture and the third chapter, “The Revolt of Nature.” However, the first two lectures were subjected to revisions so extensive that even the passages retained in Eclipse of Reason appear in a context that differs markedly. So much of the second lecture was taken up with responses to objections raised in discussing the first lecture that Horkheimer arrived at its announced theme only shortly after its midpoint and—after outlining the points he hoped to discuss—noted that he would have to survey this material “more sketchily than I planned since I have already devoted a considerable part of this lecture to answering objections” (SR, lecture 2, 18). Likewise, rather little of the first lecture survived the revisions that produced Eclipse […]” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 62.

135. Schmidt (2007): “‘Ends and Means,’ the first chapter, drew on the distinction between formal and substantive conceptions of reason that had been elaborated in Society and Reason but incorporated much new material, including an extended discussion of pragmatism (ER, 42-57). ‘Conflicting Panaceas,’ the second chapter, juxtaposed the neo-Thomist understanding of reason to naturalist approaches. This chapter originated in an earlier essay [viz., “Revival”] written by Horkheimer in response to a series of articles by Sidney Hook, Dewey, and Ernest Nagel in the Partisan Review. These two revisions resulted in a work that opened not with a lament for the lost cause of European socialism but with a critique of recent trends in American philosophy. While the changes meant that the book would engage American philosophy in a way that the lectures had not, they would also result in significant difficulties both for Horkheimer and for the book’s reception.” In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 64.

136. Horkheimer, Eclipse (1974 [1947]), 148.

137. Horkheimer: “The task of the masses today consists not in clinging to traditional party patterns, but rather in recognizing and resisting the monopolistic pattern that is infiltrating their own organizations and infesting their minds individually. In the nineteenth-century concept of a rational society of the future, the emphasis was on planning, organizing, and centralizing mechanisms rather than on the plight of the individual. The parliamentary worker’s parties, themselves a product of liberalism, denounced liberalistic irrationality and promoted a planned socialist economy in opposition to anarchic capitalism. They promoted social organization and centralization as postulates of reason in an age of unreason. Under the present form of industrialism, however, the other side of rationality has become manifest through the increasing suppression of it—the role of nonconforming, critical thought in the shaping of social life, of the spontaneity of the individual subject, of his opposition to ready-made patterns of behavior. On the one hand, the world is still divided into hostile groups and political blocks. This situation calls for organization and centralization, which represent the element of the general from the standpoint of reason. On the other hand, the human being is from his early childhood so thoroughly incorporated into associations, teams, and organizations that specificity (uniqueness), the element of particularity from the standpoint of reason, is completely repressed or absorbed.” In Eclipse (1974 [1947]), 147.

Crucially, Horkheimer (1) introduces the crisis of worker’s parties under the specification of “[t]he task of the masses today,” which “consists not in clinging to traditional party patterns, but rather in recognizing and resisting the monopolistic pattern that is infiltrating their own organizations and infesting their minds individually”; (2) observes that even what he calls the traditional ‘European socialist’ line in the 1944 ‘disclaimer,’ or the rationalizing of capitalist irrationality, is still an essential moment, of the ‘task of the masses’ in Eclipse (“the world is still divided into hostile groups and political blocks,” which “calls for organization and centralization…”).

In light of both of these points, Schmidt’s interpretation of the lectures as a ‘bitter message’ about the ‘cruel irony’ in the realization of ‘the socialist dream… under monopoly capitalism’—

Horkheimer's alterations [to LI] may have been motivated, in part, by the objections that the lecture met at Columbia. With so much of the second lecture devoted to answering objections to the first one, it is hardly surprising that Horkheimer decided to frame things differently in the book's opening. Other revisions, however, may have been the result of Horkheimer's long-standing desire to conceal his political allegiances in his published works. Among the material cut was an introduction noting that the title of the lectures “may be misleading” in that it might suggest that “I am designating those elements in our society which are irrational, so that I may proceed to suggest how to overcome the irrational ones and to achieve the identity of society and rationality.” Such a project, he noted, had been central to the program of “European socialism”: “But the period in which these theories originated is ours no longer. It was the time of the free market, universal competition, the so-called anarchy of production, and these theories advanced the principle of rationality against the prevailing anarchy. I do not say that these categories have lost their validity under the conditions of present-day economy, but a new problem has arisen in the meantime; rationality has permeated human life to a degree which those older schools did not anticipate.” (SR, lecture 1, 1) In other words, Horkheimer returned to New York bearing the bitter message that he and Adorno had been preparing in California: the socialist dream of subjecting the irrationality of capitalist production to scientific planning had, in effect, been realized under the conditions of monopoly capitalism but, in the process, its full monstrosity had become evident. This was a message whose cruel irony presupposed an audience that had once shared that dream. Eclipse of Reason was intended for different readers.

In: “The ‘Eclipse of Reason’ and the End of the Frankfurt School in America.” (2007), 63.

—is an overstatement at best and a misrepresentation, which I believe it to be, at worst.

138. Horkheimer, Eclipse (1974 [1947]), 165-167.

139. Struck through, In: MHA Na [652], “Eclipse of Reason,” Fünf Vorlesungen 1943/44; S. [15]

140. Eliminated, marked with brackets. In: Ibid. S. [15]-[16]

141. Eliminated, marked with brackets. In: Ibid. S. [18]-[19]

142. Eliminated, marked with brackets. In: Ibid. S. [20]

143. Eliminated, marked with brackets. In: Ibid.

144. See an alternate version of this paragraph, which borrows more liberally from Adorno’s “Regression” essay, in: Ibid., S. [24]-[25]

145. Eliminated, marked with brackets. In: Ibid., S [25]

146. Eliminated, marked with brackets. In: Ibid., S. [27]-[33]

147. Eliminated, marked with brackets. In: Ibid., S. [37]

148. “e) Entwürfe, Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 6 Blatt.” In: Ibid., S. [106]. Possible opening ¶ for the ‘Teilstück’ on Kant.

149. “d) Teilstück, Typoskript mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen, 2 Blatt.” Top of typed manuscript reads: “(Continuation of Lecture I).” In: Ibid., S. [99]-[100]

150. Compare to Lecture II [Draft] above, repeating the [1942] dialectical schema “On the Relation Between the Domination of Nature and Social Domination.” The following two paragraphs are devoted to the ‘realistic’ and ‘utopian’ theses, respectively.

151. Note the three forms of domination of nature: domination of internal nature, domination of other people as avatars of nature, and domination of external nature.

152. Cf. Max Horkheimer, 'Sketch for a novel on Neville Chamberlain (1942): Introduced by Esther Leslie', Radical Philosophy 184, Mar/Apr 2014. (pdf)

153. “Interiorization”: elsewhere called “introversion.” See the author’s translation of: “The Function of Speech in Modernity” (October 1936).

154. See: Adorno’s Fn. from Excursus I to the Dialectic on Odysseus’ domination of nature in domination of his unruly heart. In: Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002 [1987]), 258-259.

155. See the author’s translation of Horkheimer’s critical Review of Spengler’s Hour of Decision [1933].

156. No citation given in the lecture transcript version ‘a).’

157. Cut from the draft of this lecture, marked with the word “Omit,” In: MHA Na [652], S. [163]

158. Cut from the draft of this lecture, struck through. In: Ibid., S. [170]

159. Cut from the draft of this lecture, marked with the word “Omit,” In: Ibid., S. [178]-[179]

160. Cut from the draft of this lecture, marked with the word “Omit,” In: Ibid.

161. Cut from the draft of this lecture, marked with the word “Omit,” In: Ibid.

162. Cut from the draft of this lecture, marked with the word “Omit,” In: Ibid., S. [180]

163. Alternate last sentence of opening ¶ of LV, In: Ibid., [link]

164. Alternate ending to the ¶: “But let us now leave the abstract problems of logic, traditional and dialectical, and of definition.” In: Ibid., [link]

165. Alternate [“Alternation. After Schiller citation.”] In: Ibid., [link]

166. Omitted, marked by brackets. In: Ibid., [link]

167. Cf. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 12/21/1945: “The girl whom I had intended to use as an assistant during the last weeks, turned out to be a complete flop. I had conceived the idea on a suggestion of [Hans] Reichenbach who said he had used her during the writing of his Logic, which is now in print. She has attended philosophical courses for four years. Seldom have I seen a more striking proof of the impotence of philosophical education in these days. She did not even know the name of Montaigne and she had never even heard of Schelling. Naturally, she did not understand a sentence of the manuscript.” In: MHA Na [545], S. [18] 17r.

168. Horkheimer to R. MacIver, 8/9/1944. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 560. English in original.

169. Horkheimer to R. MacIver, 8/9/1944. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 591-594. English in original.

170. Horkheimer to Gretl Dupont, 1/16/1945. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 617-621. English (and Spanish) in original.

171. [MHGS Ed. Fn.: “Als wie ein Ruhetag, so ist des Jahres Ende / Wie einer Frage Ton, aus: Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Der Winter,’ in: ders., Sämtliche Werke Bd. 6, Berlin 1923, S. 47.] In: Ibid.

172. Horkheimer to Ned R. Healy, 3/22/1945. In: A Life in Letters (2007), 226-228. English in original.

[Editor’s note, MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996): “This letter is included as a note in ‘NY Notes II’ in the MHA, with the handwritten title, by Pollock, ‘On Vivisection.’ The assumption is that the letter would have served as the basis for a final formulation if work on the ‘Notes’ had continued.”] In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 629-630.

173. Horkheimer to Ludwig Marcuse, February 1945. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 625-626. Author’s translation.

174. Adorno to Horkheimer, 3/19/1945. In: Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 545-548. Author’s translation.

175. Horkheimer to Berthold Viertel, April 1945. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 630.

176. Löwenthal to Adorno, 5/25/1945. In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 415-418. Author’s translation.

177. Adorno to Löwenthal, 6/3/1945. In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 418-422. Author’s translation.

178. Adorno to Horkheimer, 6/16/1945. In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 131-132.

179. Horkheimer to Adorno, 6/25/45. In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 136-137. Author’s translation.

180. Adorno to Horkheimer, 7/2/1945. In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 141-143. Author’s translation.

181. Adorno: “zwar muß die Erkenntnis dessen, was geschah, die unselige Geradlinigkeit von Sieg und Niederlage, der antithetisch umschlagenden Universalien im Begriff festhalten, zugleich aber dem sich zuwenden, was in solche Dynamik nicht einging, am Wege liegen blieb, gewissermaßen Abfallstoff und blinde Stellen. Mit anderen Worten, das dialektische Denken muß zugleich die Kritik der Dialektik enthalten.”

From a draft of the aphorism “Vermächtnis,” translated as “Bequest,” from part II of Minima Moralia (§98). 160-162.

182. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 1/10/1946. In: MHA Na [546], Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal (und Umgebung…) Band 15 (p. VI.18, 215-414). [link]

183. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 1/25/1946. In: MHA Na [546], Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal (und Umgebung…) Band 15 (p. VI.18, 215-414). [link]

• See also: Löwenthal’s reply on the reasons for turning down the proposal for an ‘annex’ (or appendix) on totalities from “The Sociology of Class Relations.” Löwenthal to Horkheimer, 1/29/1946. In: MHA Na [546], [link]

184. Horkheimer to Pollock, 3/1/1946. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 703-705. English in original.

185. Horkheimer to Miss Margaret Nicholson (Oxford University Press), 3/11/1946. In: MHA Na [547], “Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal. Band 16 (p. VI.19, 1-158),” [link]

186. See also: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 3/6/1946: “[T]his book is antagonistic to present-day literary habits in philosophy as well as related subjects. Therefore its form cannot be “adjusted” to this kind of stuff. For instance, there is no point in “leading up to my thesis” […] for there is no “thesis” in dialectical reflections like ours.” In: MHA Na [547], S. [158] 145r. [link]

187. Horkheimer to Leo Löwenthal, 3/20/1946. In: MHA Na [547], “Korrespondenzen mit Leo Löwenthal. Band 16 (p. VI.19, 1-158),” [link]. Author’s translation.

188. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 8/19/1946. In: MHA Na [548], S. [53] 204r-[54] 205r.

See also: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 7/17/1946: “I shall go through the Sartre as soon as the first book comes back from the binder. As far as I can see the first three parts of the book are a brilliant but doubtful popularization of Hegel and Heidegger. somehow the book gives me the impression as though it belongs to the general Ausverkauf.” In: MHA Na [548], S. [218] 333r. [link]

And: Löwenthal to Horkheimer, 8/23/1947: “Guterman and I deeply agree with your remarks. I am particularly proud of myself because without having read much I had just explained several weeks ago to William Dieterle, and now again to Hannah Tillich that and why I believe that Sartre and his crowd including this abominable novelist Albert Camus are a conscious racket producing mass culture. I am waiting for the day where Mr. Sartre will prepare a movie treatment of Kierkegaard’s Journal of a Seducer. After all, he had a write-up in Life.” In: MHA Na [548], S. [45] 198r. [link]

189. Horkheimer to Paul Tillich, 8/29/1947. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 884-885. English in original.

190. “Max Horkheimer: 'National Socialism and Philosophy'. Seminar Frühjahr 1945;” In: MHA Na [654]. S. [108]-[122]; [140]-[154].

191. See the editor’s note to the letter from Margot von Mendelssohn to Adorno, 5/1/1945:

In spring semester [1945], Horkheimer gave a general introductory lecture in sociology under the title “National Socialism and Philosophy.” On May 1st, he spoke of “Mimesis and Civilization”; “Regression into Mimesis and Hostility against Civilization”; “Fun, Laughing, Killing, and Personality”; “Mimesis and Fascism”; “Mythology, Language, and the Loss of Insight”; “Can We Go Back?”; “Philosophy and Paradise”; “Fascism and Science”; “What Can We Do?”; and “The Remaining Realms of Happiness, but One Cannot Make a Prescription.” (Typed manuscript of key words in the Horkheimer Archive)

In: Adorno, Horkheimer. Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 94-95.

192. Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 10/3/1947: “I believe our personal cooperation is a necessary presupposition for the fulfillment of our task. The fact that for a number of years you have not written an article or a book which is an adequate expression of the stage of our theoretical insight is due to the practical situation and to the set-up into which we were forced for the sake of our survival. My own production was almost castrated since 1943. I don’t have any doubt that your work, with my modest assistance, can be taken up on a higher level today, and that in turn your presence will become a decisive factor for my own theoretical thinking. Moreover, it has always been our conviction that the development of our conception does not exclusively express itself in theoretical writings, but in the conduct of our lives. There must be an interaction between existence and theory as it is exemplified in our own history, and even to a certain degree during the years of our separation. With your arrival this process will again be intensified. It would be too involved if I were to write you concretely about the future as I envisage it, but let me say that the possibility of a “marginal” existence, which you mention in your letter, would be as absurd for me as for yourself.” In: MHA Na [552], S. [179] 410r.

193. Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (1974 [1947]), 183.

194. In: Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. [1947] Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Translated by Edmund Jephcott (SUP, 2002 [1987]), 18.

195. See, for example—Horkheimer, “The Authoritarian State” [1942], Translation by Peoples' Translation Service in Berkeley and Elliott Eisenberg. Telos Spring 1973, No. 15 (1973).

196. Horkheimer to Helen and Felix Weil, 3/22/1946. In: A Life in Letters. (2007), 238-239.

197. Horkheimer to Paul Tillich, 8/29/1947. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 884-885. English in original.