Translation: A Letter On Kant's Apriorism, by Max Horkheimer (1937)
With three notes on Kant and Critical Theory
Part of the series on Horkheimer’s 1930s Essais Matérialistes.
Introductory Note: Kant, Hegel, Marx.
In Horkheimer’s programmatic texts on the theoretical foundations of critical theory, Kant is the thinker of the missing mediation; further, Kant is the thinker who demands mediation, which, therefore, remains incomprehensible to him.1 Horkheimer’s materialist interpretation of Kant is a model of early critical theory’s “productive orthodoxy”2—namely, reconstructive fidelity to the boundaries of a thought. To do this thought justice, it must be presented in its irresolution. The only generosity is critique.
In the letter to Wittfogel translated below, Horkheimer defends Kant against the Neo-Kantians, the Positivists, and Kant himself, arguing that Kant’s discovery of the reciprocal determination of subjective [Subjektiv] and objective [Objektiv] moments of scientific cognition, or of the object [Gegenstand] of cognition and rational practice [vernünftige Praxis] of the cognizing subject, is a negative formulation of a later, dialectical conception of scientific inquiry.3 For Horkheimer, this critical reflection on scientific consciousness is not only a significant advance in pure epistemology, but leads beyond epistemology towards the comprehension of the dialectical process of reciprocal determination in social history, and beyond this theory of history to historical praxis:
In my courses on the history of philosophy I tried above all to awaken an understanding for the teachings of Kant and Hegel. The theoretical as well as the practical ideas of these philosophers today deserve more than the exclusively historical attention many pay them. They deserve intensive study for the sake of their essential substance. Kant did not only construct, like the Enlightenment, an intellectual wall against superstition. Insofar as he, like the Enlightenment, helped science to come into its own, he transcended the French philosophers of his time because, at the same time as he demonstrated the legitimate claim of science, he also demonstrated the role of the subject in science, thus preventing its deification. Students can't forgo familiarity with his philosophy. Hegel paved the way for the recognition that even intellectual values are realized not merely through internal cognition but also through historical action. The inherent kinship of all cultural spheres, material as well as spiritual, becomes apparent in his work, which, even today, represents the most valid summary of empirical development, in spite of the subsequent evolution of the sciences and in spite of the syntheses that have since emerged. He is also the source of the principle that the idea only exists insofar as it assumes shape in reality. Hegel prevents thought from digressing into unconscious reveries, and he directs the gaze to historical praxis.4
From his first lectures on the history of modern philosophy 1925/26 through his 1930s Essais Matérialistes, Horkheimer presents the development of Classical German Idealism from Kant through Hegel to Marx as a succession of revolutions and counter-revolutions in theory driven by the impulses of revolutions and counter-revolutions unfolding around, and through, philosophy as they engulf society as a whole.
In each of the ‘Materialism’ essays of 1933, Horkheimer provides a variant of the irreversible sequence running from Kant through Hegel to Marx. In “Materialism and Metaphysics” [1933], Horkheimer argues that “the consistent application of Kantian critique”—namely, the insight into the ‘subjective’ contributions inherent to scientific objectivity—“really leads to the formation of the dialectical method” in Hegel against the ahistorical Kantian transcendental subject, and that the “correct application of the [Hegelian] method” leads to “Feuerbach, Marx, and Engels[, who] freed the dialectic from its idealist form” and “challenges every claim to the autonomy of thought”—whether the autonomy of thought for the transcendental subject which structures the experience of time without being restructured by it (Kant) or the autonomy of thought for the thinker at rest in the completed logic of the end of history (Hegel)—by understanding “thinking to be the thinking of particular [human beings] within a particular period of time.”5 In “Materialism and Morality” [1933], Horkheimer argues that the Kantian ideal, or the bourgeois ideal par excellence, in the reconciliation of interest and duty, of individual/particular and social/general interest, requires a theoretical account of the struggle for its historical realization; this leads first to Hegel’s conception of the realization of this ideal in the concrete unity of objective and subjective freedom in the historical development of supra-individual Spirit that terminates in the modern configuration of state and civil society, second to the Marxian critique of political economy which shows how this modern configuration ‘realizes’ individual/particular and social/general interests in the constant frustration of both.6
We see this sequence repeat in passages even where Marx is never mentioned. In his inaugural address on being appointed to the directorship of the ISR, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research” [1931], Horkheimer recapitulates Hegel’s historical critique of Kant and Fichte’s abstract conceptions of autonomous self-consciousness (and of the “bad infinite”) only to ground the collapse of the Hegelian system through Marx’s critique of Hegel’s metaphysical ‘transfiguration’ [Verklärung] (or, the apologetic function of the Hegelian dialectic Marx mentions in the 1873 postface to Capital V1), without, as is typical of Horkheimer’s ‘official’ texts of the period, explicit reference to Marx.7 In “Traditional and Critical Theory” [1937], Horkheimer repeats this sequence with Marxian theory (the critique of political economy) as the unnamed, but structuring, conclusion of the sequence which begins with Kant’s inability to solve the problem of objective mediation, passes through Hegel’s all-too-easy solution of the same, and culminates in the critical theory of society.8 Later in the essay, Horkheimer addresses the logical structure of critical theory by explicit reference to the critical irony of the deployment of Marxist categories: they have objective validity not as ahistorical forms of cognition (as in Kant) nor as social forms of the present transfigured into eternity (Hegel) but as real possibilities for the transformation of the world; these concepts are formed through the struggle to discover in the conditional necessity of the self-preservation of the present the necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for revolution that modern society solicits and suppresses.9
In an early lecture titled “Kant and Hegel” (1925), Horkheimer critiques the fashionable Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian revanchists of Weimar philosophy for falling short of the driving impulse of Kant and Hegel’s philosophy which, were they true to it, would have led them beyond the history of philosophy itself:
In those decades, in which philosophical thought never lost its connection with actual life on the whole and, fed by vital social forces, left behind an unprecedented abundance of the most illustrious documents in the history of ideas, in this period of time, the path from Kant to Hegel represents the consistent intensification of intellectual striving towards the most extreme possibilities, to its logical end. It is—outlined in a few phrases—the history of the dissolution of every deistic compromise with any one authoritative, transcendent morality into the inclusion of religious and moral content within the concrete, historical process. It is the path from the reduction of the fixed, timeless and empty forms of human reason in general towards consciousness of the mutability of all forms, and the attempt to comprehend precisely this mutation. It is the path from the most extreme narrowing of all practical authority, which recedes into the abstraction of the categorical imperative, towards the exhibition of the historical forces that condition—and transform—every authority. Having reached this outermost limit, the continuation of this philosophical process no longer belongs to the history of philosophy.10
This ‘outline in a few phrases’ is, in fact, an uncited, but barely disguised, paraphrase of a passage from Marx’s “Introduction” to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843/44):
The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that is proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man—hence, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
The revolution in theory begun by Kant—namely, in what, below, Horkheimer calls the ‘continuous reciprocity’ between subjectivity and objectivity, between the object of cognition and rational practice of human beings, the ‘germs of a later, dialectical conception’—ends in a theory of revolution; refinement of the weapon of criticism in theory ends in the demand for the criticism of weapons in politics. Horkheimer concludes his 1925/26 “Lectures On the History of German Idealistic Philosophy,” which open with methodological arguments for the necessity of interpreting the philosophical developments along ‘the path from Kant to Hegel’ on the basis of social upheavals in the aftermath of the French Revolution (as opposed to grounding German Idealism in the manner of ‘the history of ideas’), with an invocation of the social movements which will finish in practice the criticism of religion idealism began in theory:
For the dialectic is a power which finds and shows the path which leads from what seem the highest, most ethereal spiritual heights of what seem the remotest spiritual isles to the most concrete violences of contemporary historical life; it unveils the historical becoming of essential beings and idols of the Gods, which seem so far withdrawn from all that is transitory, by discovering those actual powers of their own destruction they already bear within themselves. Hegel’s idealism does not have its historical continuation in pure philosophy, but is taken over by movements whose presentation is no longer our task.11
Concluding his 1927 lecture course, “Introduction to the History of Modern Philosophy,” Horkheimer makes the perspective from which he interprets the ‘path from Kant to Hegel’ explicit, quoting from the first of the “Theses on Feuerbach” [1845] in an abridged reconstruction of the genesis of this perspective—this ‘practical-critical’ perspective with ‘revolutionary’ significance—itself:
In the Critique of the Power of Judgment—at least, in the section on aesthetics—an attempt is made to establish the absolute principles of art through a consideration of the formal elements in our aesthetic comportment [Verhalten], the “universal validity” [“Allgemeingültigkeit”] of such principles for all rational beings [vernünftigen Wesen] in all times, as was done for science and morality. And yet, to date, there has never been an absolute science nor an absolute ethics nor an absolute art; Kant knew nothing of historically conditioned validity for human beings of a determinate time and determinate social classes. Instead of undertaking investigations such as these, Kant dedicated his immense philosophical capacity to the attempt to rescue metaphysics [Rettung der Metaphysik]. That there was more to the work of this ingenious man than first meets the eye, and more than he perhaps knew himself, was proven in the later development of idealist philosophy, which, despite Hegel’s adherence to an idealistic metaphysics, led to methods and results which undermined its basis. By way of conclusion, one important step beyond the old materialism can be mentioned. It lies in the fact that, until now, “the subject matter [Gegenstand], actuality, had only been grasped in the form of the object [Objekt] or intuition; but not as human, sensuous activity, praxis—not subjectively.” Kant is the stimulus [Anstoß] for the fact that “the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism—but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know actual, sensuous activity as such.” In any case, Kant is the first to consistently grasp cognition [Erkenntnis] not merely as reproduction [Abbilden], but as a process, as production, though this production is still grasped as the production of an abstract subject of cognition [abstrakten Erkenntnissubjekts], and not yet as a function “en société que suppose toujours la réunion des hommes,” as Helvétius already formulated it.12
The ‘path from Kant to Hegel’ does not just lead beyond idealism to Marx, but runs through Marx to the Revolution of 1848.
On Kant’s Apriorism (1937)
[Excerpt from Horkheimer’s Letter to K.A. Wittfogel, 3/8/1937]13
[…] Your remarks on the a priori touch exactly on the point that is crucial in the discussion with rationalists of the Neo-Kantian variety.14 Here it is crucial above all to prove that the concepts and judgments which seem to be removed from any historical context are in actuality nothing more than general features abstracted from the whole of cognition [Ganzen der Erkenntnis], which is constantly changing, and are now posited before it as a fixed norm. We need not dispute the fact that this is not just an error, but also something legitimate, insofar as the reproduction of life in a given society always requires a determinate, structured science, that is, a summing-up [Inbegriff]15 of intellectual procedures, from the most specific and problematic chemical formulas through the concept of causality or unity in general. The most general of these procedures, which determine the ideas of science and cognition [Erkenntnis], have been called a priori elements of cognition [Erkenntniselemente]. The perpetuation of these and other forms has its logical ground in the dearth of consciousness about the practical and theoretical process through which they arose.
The greatness of Kant's achievement with regard to the a priori lies in the fact that he traced back to functions of the understanding—and thus, ultimately, to human activity—those concepts and propositions which, as the highest and most general, outline the form of the natural sciences in a truly representative manner for the first time. Rationalism before him had naively accepted these determining elements of cognition as eternal truths and, ultimately, asserted them as innate ideas; by what right they were supposed to possess objective validity, no one truly knew. All of the difficulties which Spinoza attempted to solve by means of the identity of the two substances, Occasionalism by means of the mediation of God, and Leibniz by means of pre-established harmony, stem largely from the fact that concepts and judgments a priori—especially logical propositions, all of mathematics, and the most general laws of nature—were viewed as a self-enclosed system that could be developed in pure immanence [to itself] from out of the human mind. Thus, it was incomprehensible how these immanent insights, which were supposed to be valid “a priori,” i.e., not grounded on any contact with the actual world, were nevertheless supposed to apply to it, and indeed it seemed a miracle that they did. No one could understand how they came to possess the objective significance [objektiven Bedeutung] they had undeniably acquired in the progress of natural science.
Empiricists and historians often make the mistake of dismissing the rationalist view, that the general propositions of science are inherent in reason, as mere metaphysical illusion. The rationalists gave expression to, albeit in an incorrect form, the fact the only relationships which are completely transparent and clear to human beings are those they have consciously produced. Hence the relationship between all truths a priori and reason. To Leibniz and [Christian] Wolff, reason appeared merely to decree the framework in which life must play itself out, just as the absolute monarch decrees the law. Kant, however, sees reason essentially at work [sieht die Vernunft wesentlich bei der Arbeit]—namely, as a sum [Inbegriff] of functions structuring the empirical given, rendering it legible, shaping it in accordance with the theoretical and practical purposes of human beings.
At a first glance, this does not seem to be much of an improvement. Kant’s philosophy shows that what can be said with unconditional certainty about the objects [Gegenstände] of our natural-scientific cognitive labor [naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisarbeit] is nothing other than what reason has, unnoticed, already added to their matter [Stoff] in the course of perception. However, if one analyzes this doctrine through deeper study, it becomes clear that the germs of a later, dialectical conception [die Keime einer späteren dialektischen Auffassung] are already at hand. According to Kant, the actual world, the “thing in itself,” furnishes the objective material [gegenständliche Material] with which science is concerned. This matter [Stoff], however, is said to be “preformed” by a hidden mechanism of reason—that is, as previously mentioned, as soon as we, empirical observers have knowledge [Kenntnis] of something, it has already been structured and ordered by transcendental functions unconscious to the individual.
If I may simply communicate the results instead of entering into all-too-complicated considerations, this doctrine means nothing less than the fact that every individual, especially in the the special sciences, does perceive the actual world, not as it is “in itself,” but rather as it has become through the whole of human practice. Its outward, objective shape [objektive Gestalt], the direction of our attention, the process of abstraction, the manner in which we distinguish individual things from one another, etc.—none of this is original, but is already a product of human activity. In objectivity [Objektivität] itself lies subjectivity [Subjektivität]; in the theoretical object [theoretischen Gegenstand] lies rational practice [vernünftige Praxis]. A continuous reciprocity [fortwährende Wechselwirkung] prevails between them, and it can hardly be a surprise that science, so far as it restricts itself to observation [Feststellen], does not discover sheer chaos, but rational lineaments [rationale Züge]. If, for example, we observe there are certain relationships between ‘cold,’ ‘water,’ and ‘ice,’ these concepts have already been preformed on the grounds of human need; the concept of the ‘relationship’ [der Begriff der Beziehung], and especially the concept of the ‘causal relationship’ [der Begriff der Kausalbeziehung], which we imagine we have discovered in objects [Gegenständen] themselves, can, ultimately, only be conceived at all in connection with human concerns and human history. This applies even to the more finely determined objectivities [die feiner bestimmten Gegenständlichkeiten] with which modern physics is concerned. By no means does this mean that what we observe is merely an arbitrary conviction of the subject, as the largely degenerate school of Neo-Kantianism has interpreted this doctrine, because reality [Realität] develops independently of human beings as well, and though ‘water,’ ‘temperature,’ and ‘causal relationships’ are concepts whose meaning can only be fully illuminated in a theory of human society, water below zero degrees nevertheless still turns into ice and not steam. But it is to Kant’s great merit that he showed for the first time, by virtue of his transcendental modification of the doctrine of the a priori, that the world with which the respective special sciences are concerned is always and already conditioned by that which is subjective, by that which is human.16 Therefore, a reciprocity between objectivity and the subject [Gegenständlichkeit und Subjekt] always prevails, so one need no longer seek refuge in the doctrine of pre-established harmony or other tricks of that sort.
In Kant, these doctrines are not presented with the accent which gives them their importance for us today, and so other, rather dogmatic interpretations are still possible, particularly since the formulations which are most relevant to our problem are contained in the most obscure chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason, “On the schematism of pure concepts of the understanding.” In the end, however, it is more advantageous to consider a philosopher in productive historical connections than simply consider oneself superior to their mistakes, as the contemporary positivists do with Classical German Philosophy, for instance.
In light of the foregoing, one further point is in order. The question of the a priori is often combined with the problem of what came first, the subject [Subjekt] or the object [Objekt], and the Neo-Kantians (but not Kant!) have, in an idealistic manner, assigned priority to the subject. In this respect, it must be said that the subject, i.e. the human being, quite obviously only came into existence with a pre-given nature; all claims to the contrary are utter nonsense. However, in discussions on this subject, this question has, unnoticed, been mixed up with yet another—whether cognition [Erkenntnis] or its object [Gegenstand] came first. If the elements of cognition a priori [Erkenntniselemente a priori] are found in the object [Gegenstand], it follows that cognition, reason, subject are prior to it. But in such discussions, one must keep in mind that nature can only become an “object” [“Gegenstand”] in the true sense if there is some being which cognizes it. Objects [Gegenstände] in the true sense of the word therefore only exist insofar as there are also cognizing beings [erkennende Wesen]. These are reciprocal concepts [Wechselbegriffe], and the question of which one came first is like that of the chicken and the egg. We may let the modern idealists and their vulgar opponents wrestle over this.
For us, what is crucial about the problem of the a priori is that, in any given historical situation, the ‘purely descriptive’ special sciences [die rein registrierenden Fachwissenschaften], mere empiricism, may very well be of the highest practical importance, but, in any event, do not present us with the full scope of attainable cognition [die ganze erreichbare Erkenntnis] in said situation. Rather, for this we require theoretical considerations in which both the technical and intellectual procedures of these sciences, and the constellation of objects [die Konstellation der Gegenstände] with which they are concerned, are conceived from the perspective of human practice as a whole [gesamtmenschlichen Praxis]. We must, in the end, arrive at such considerations if we are not content to leave the problem of the a priori in the scholastic form it has today, but develop it in connection with contemporary interests. It seems to me the most illuminating formulation on these matters is Hegel’s, in his doctrine that the immediate given—that is, the empirical, the material [Material], the matter [Stoff]—is always, and at the same time, already mediated. […]
Note I: The Re-transcendentalization of early critical theory
In “Traditional and Critical Theory” [1937], Horkheimer introduces ‘critical theory’ proper by identifying the ‘critical’ (in “‘critical’ activity”) with the sense it has in “the dialectical critique of political economy,” in explicit contrast to “the idealist critique of pure reason.”17 Yet, much of the reception of early critical theory has followed Habermas’ influential argument that Adorno and Horkheimer’s work remains trapped within a paradigm of transcendental philosophy, and, moreover, one limited to the consciousness or practice of the individual subject. In his perennial criticism of the ‘paradigm’ of early critical theory (reproduced without variation as recently as the lecture on “Horkheimer and Adorno, Critical Theory and The Actuality of Philosophy” [2019]), Axel Honneth (1991) interprets Horkheimer’s materialist deciphering [Dechiffrierung] of the Kantian schematism in “Traditional and Critical Theory” [1937] as a crude analogical extension of Kantian transcendental subjectivity into a reductive philosophy of history. In a first step, Honneth claims that Horkheimer’s conception of social theory relies on an analogy between, on the one hand, the achievements of the synthetic activity of the schematism of Kant’s transcendental ego (as the categories of the understanding order and give form to the chaotic manifold of intuition) and, on the other, the achievements of the synthetic activity of the ‘social labor’ of the human species “as a singular subject of history” (as the productive forces as rational means shape irrational nature)—an “analogy [which] reveals for the first time the idealist fiction to which Horkheimer's construction of a unified species-subject leads.”18 In a second step, Honneth argues that “Horkheimer repeats a conceptual dilemma of the early Marx”19—namely, that despite the fact Horkheimer intends to demarcate “critical activity” from the synthetic-schematizing activity of “social labor” in the self-preservation of the human species, he ultimately only offers an “epistemological definition of critical theory” as the critical reflection on and conscious assumption of social labor, a definition which seemingly denies critical theory the autonomy it would require to be ‘critical’ activity at all.20
What Honneth calls the “sociological deficit” of critical theory derives from its over-unification of society-as-subject—“the human species as a whole, as a transcendental subject that has become actual”21—in relation to the irrational worlds of extra- and intra-human nature which social labor is supposed to bring into rational form and order. To the extent that Horkheimer is guilty of “referring all human action to [social] labor,”22 and of identifying social labor with “the practical conquest of natural processes,”23 early critical theory is compromised by its philosophy of history. On the one hand, it results in a dualism between society and nature, locked in perpetual struggle; on the other, a monism of the social order itself, precluding the critical theorist from pursuing “the sociological task” of investigating either the everyday struggle for social coordination or the everyday negotiation of social conflict, either “the familiar cultural communication within social groups” or “the everyday clash between cultural action orientations of social groups.”24 Given “the basic model of his philosophy of history,” there is, Honneth concludes, “no room for another type of social action alongside the societal cultivation of nature.”25 Thus, Honneth’s critique assumes that early critical theory is grounded on a direct, and unjustified, transposition of the structure and activity of the transcendental subject onto a ‘unified species-subject’ as the ‘singular subject of history,’ or ‘the transcendental subject that has become actual.’
Occasionally, Honneth will remark that Horkheimer sometimes ‘seems to be aware’ of the difficulties this presents for early critical theory, but the compensatory differentiations Horkheimer introduces to delimit relatively autonomous domains of social reproduction and the respective forms of special-scientific inquiry which would correspond to them are no match for the subsumptive power of the transhistorical super-subject of social labor.26 Even the ISR’s empirical social research for the 1936 Studien über Autorität und Familie is explained away as a byproduct of (Horkheimer’s) anxiety over the theoretical incomprehensibility of the unity of social life, since, Honneth continues, their social monism re-engenders the dualism between society and nature within the social order itself—between reason and irrational drives—and forces them to seek “empirical information concerning the mechanism of social integration” to compensate for the “tremendous gulf” which “remains between rational insights into reality and libidinally induced misunderstandings of reality.”27 In this manner, Honneth preemptively accounts for apparent counter-examples in Horkheimer’s work as compensations for the hypostasis of the Kantian transcendental subject of epistemology into the sole subject of human history.
Honneth’s critique of early critical theory rests entirely on his transcendental interpretation of Horkheimer’s materialist interpretation of the Kantian schematism in the 1930s. By leaving Horkheimer’s own reflections on the method of materialist interpretation unaddressed,28 Honneth is able to invert the order of operations, attributing to Horkheimer the doctrine of transcendental subjectivity which, according to Horkheimer’s materialist interpretation of Kantian idealism, is only a faithful expression of the antagonisms of modern society because it distorts them from the perspective of the bourgeois subject such a society produces:
[T]o the moral agent in the Kantian sense, the actual reasons for action remain obscure. The agent knows neither why the universal should stand above the particular, nor how to correctly reconcile the two in any given instance. The imperative, which “of itself finds entrance into the mind and yet gains reluctant reverence (though not always obedience),” leaves the individual with a certain uneasiness and unclarity. Within the soul, a struggle is played out between personal interest and a vague conception of the general interest, between individual and universal objectives. Yet it remains obscure how a rational decision based upon criteria is possible between the two. There arise an endless reflection and constant turmoil which are fundamentally impossible to overcome. Since this problematic tension playing itself out in the inner lives of human beings necessarily derives from their role in the social life process, Kant's philosophy, being a faithful reflection of this tension, is a consummate expression of its age.29
Seemingly unnoticed by Honneth, this is the conclusion of Horkheimer’s materialist ‘deciphering’ of the Kantian schematism in “Traditional and Critical Theory” [1937]:
Where Hegel glimpses the cunning of a reason that is nonetheless world-historical and objective, Kant sees “an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze.” (…) The activity of society thus appears to be a transcendental power, that is, the sum-total of spiritual factors. However, Kant’s claim that its reality is sunk in obscurity, that is, that it is irrational despite all its rationality, is not without its kernel of truth. The bourgeois type of economy, despite all the ingenuity of the competing individuals within it, is not governed by any plan; it is not consciously directed to a general goal; the life of society as a whole proceeds from this economy only at the cost of excessive friction, in a stunted form, and almost, as it were, accidentally. The internal difficulties in the supreme concepts of Kantian philosophy, especially the ego of transcendental subjectivity, pure or original apperception, and consciousness-in-itself, show the depth and honesty of his thinking. The two-sidedness of these Kantian concepts, that is, their supreme unity and purposefulness, on the one hand, and their obscurity, unknownness, and impenetrability, on the other, reflects exactly the contradiction-filled form of human activity in the modern period.30
Perhaps Honneth’s own distortions of Horkheimer can also be forgiven as faithful, if anachronistic, reflections of the same.
Note II: Horkheimer’s early Kantkritik (1921/22-1925)
Recently, John Abromeit (2011) has demonstrated the untenability of the Habermasian interpretation through an in-depth study of Horkheimer’s academic philosophical work in the 1920s, which was largely devoted to developing a critique of the transcendental philosophy—particularly the transcendental “consciousness-philosophy” of Horkheimer’s mentor, Hans Cornelius, under whose direction Horkheimer advanced his first critique of Kant’s doctrine of transcendental subjectivity.31 Horkheimer’s dissertation, “Zur Antinomie der teleologischen Urteilskraft” [1922], and habilitation, “Über Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft als Bindeglied zwischen theoretischer und praktischer Philosophie” [1925], were both dedicated to developing a close critique of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (CJ).
In his dissertation, Horkheimer critiques the antinomy of teleological judgment: (1) Kant relies on a mechanistic theory of cognition (in the division between formal and material components of knowledge) that undermines his own assertion that transcendental subjectivity is a totality; (2) Kant maintains the faulty assumption that teleological causality always implies conscious agency, restricting teleology to the domain of practical reason and denying the possibility of teleological judgments of nature that lack a reference (however qualified or ‘heuristic’) to an intelligent creator; (3) Kant insists that human cognition begins with the perception of discrete units and only subsequently synthesizes them into wholes, but this has proven to be an assumption of a mechanistic psychology which abstracts isolated sense-data from the perceptible wholes or shapes in which they are often, initially, given to us.32
In his habilitation, Horkheimer critiques the systematic role Kant assigns to the CJ within the context of his body of work as a whole given Kant’s failure to re-connect (essentially mechanical) theoretical reason and (essentially teleological) practical reason after assuming their fundamental divorce, a psychological assumption Kant inherits from the rationalist tradition (particularly Wolff).33 Horkheimer demonstrates how each of Kant’s attempts to articulate a connecting link under the theme of “purposiveness” [Zweckmässigkeit] in the CJ reproduce the initial divorce: reflective judgments of natural purposiveness remain merely subjective and heuristic, and thereby arbitrary in relation to the mechanical objectivity of the natural world; aesthetic judgments of purposiveness reproduce the artificial distinction between the understanding and sensibility in replacing the function of the categories of the understanding with the activity of the productive imagination [Einbildungskraft] as it, too, organizes the chaotic sensory impressions in intuition, albeit with a different result (an image rather than an object proper).34
In both, Horkheimer criticizes the ‘primacy of practical reason’ as a pseudo-solution which reproduces the cissions between practical and theoretical reason, between the realms of freedom and necessity, between the transcendental subject and the world, between the transcendental and empirical ego it was meant to solve.35
Note III: Horkheimer’s Late ‘Return to Kant’ (~1953-1973)
In part—but only in part—the interpretation of early critical theory as an unconfessed or unelaborated transcendental philosophy of the subject can be explained by Horkheimer’s own ‘return to Kant’ in his ‘late’ work—a period which begins in the mid-1950s and lasts through his death in 1973, during which Horkheimer undertakes a fundamental, though fragmentary, redefinition of “critical theory” in an attempt to rescue it from its origin in “Scientific Socialism.”36 It is no coincidence that Horkheimer reverses his earlier evaluation of the “bad infinite” in Kant’s system as all of his hopes for revolutionary politics come to naught.
In his two, complementary “Materialism” essays of 1933, Horkheimer first develops his own, distinctively materialistic, approach to the criticism of what Hegel called Kant’s “bad infinity” (or schlechte Unendlichkeit)—both in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, as the infinite approximation of systematic knowledge of totality, and in Kant’s practical philosophy, as the infinite striving of the subject to realize their freedom under the Sollen of unconditional duty. In “Materialism and Metaphysics” [1933], Horkheimer focuses on the ‘endless task’ in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, arguing this idea is only necessary because of Kant’s reduction of history to “mere” experience for which the conditions of possibility are provided by the transcendental, and so non-historical, subject, which therefore cannot know itself as historical.37 In “Materialism and Morality” [1933], Horkheimer focuses instead on “the impossible concept of an eternal commandment addressed to the free subject” in Kant’s moral philosophy and “the undialectical conception of a continuous approach” to “the idea of a perfect constitution,” which consists in an eternalization of the categories of the present, in Kant’s political philosophy.38 Later, in “On the Problem of Truth” [1935], Horkheimer will make the connection between the respective ‘bad infinities’ of Kant’s theoretical (“rooted in the ahistorical sphere of transcendental subjectivity”) and practical philosophy (“which fetishizes the concept of duty” as “an immovable intellectual foundation”) explicit.39
For the Horkheimer of the 1930s, Kant’s dogmatic assumption of an unthinkable, transcendent standpoint—of absolute consciousness and unconditional morality—foments the desperation of the endless tasks of the “bad infinite,” of the infinite approximation of the knower and the infinite striving of the actor. To the extent materialism is “incompatible with the idea of an absolute demand made upon man”40 and “challenges every claim to the autonomy of thought,”41 the materialist can no more make peace with the false modesty of the Kantian separation of reason from the world than with the false modesty of the Hegelian deference to the reason of the present.42
By contrast, in the ‘late’ Horkheimer’s fragment, titled “Note on Dialectics” (ca. 1950-1955), he hazards a defense of the Kantian “bad infinite”—which he’d previously criticized, following Hegel and Marx, as ‘undialectical’ for assuming an inaccessible, divine, and transcendent standpoint from which the world was to be judged—on the grounds that Hegel and Marx both retain a naive theology of reconciliation with the world by denying this transcendence.43 By the late 1950s, Horkheimer will describe himself as one among “the—admittedly impotent—heirs of the revolution that did not occur, these pitiful clearsighted ones who are going into the catacombs” who “would plot no revolution because it would end in naked terror;”44 by the late 1960s, Horkheimer will dismiss “Marx's and Engel's teaching that the struggle for higher wages and shorter hours of work would finally put an end to the prehistory of mankind” as “a pathetically secularized Messianism, infinitely inferior to the authentic one.”45 In the end, Horkheimer will champion “Kant’s [prohibition] against straying into the noumenal world” as a recognition of “the absolute whose determination is impossible” against social revolution as such: “The critical analysis of society points to the prevailing injustice. The attempt to overcome it has repeatedly led to greater injustice.”46 To the extent his reappraisals of Kant from the mid-50s on remain consistent with the portrait of Kant’s spiritual physiognomy he draws and redraws from the mid-1920s through late 1940s, it is because Horkheimer increasingly resembles it:
[T]he contradictions [Kant’s work] produces, the mediation between critique and dogmatic system, between a mechanistic concept of science and the doctrine of intelligible freedom, between belief in an eternal order and a theory isolated from practice, increasingly and vainly occupied his own thought till the last years of his life: this is the mark of his greatness. Analysis carried through to the end and skeptical distrust of all theory on the one hand and readiness to believe naively in detached fixed principles on the other, these are characteristic of the bourgeois mind. It appears in its most highly developed form in Kant's philosophy.47
Or, it did—at least until the late Horkheimer wrote us his notes from the catacombs.
See Horkheimer’s “Kant und Hegel” (1925): “For Kant, in the last instance, everything is irrational and incomprehensible, because—as I have tried to show—the content of our experience has no inherent structure of its own, since this is only introduced from the outside by forms of the mind. There is thus no objective law [sachliches Gesetz] on the grounds of which internal necessity can actually be presumed, or even be demonstrated retrospectively. That the course of history, as well as the system of the natural order—aside from only its most general features—is this way and not otherwise—all of this is, in the last instance, mere factum; coincidence and accident, as Kant himself called it.” In: MHGS Bd. 11 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987), 117-118. Author’s translation.
Cf. Horkheimer, “Ernst Simmel und die Freudsche Philosophie” (1947). MHGS, Bd. 5 (1987), 396-405.
See “Materialism and Metaphysics” [1933]: “But as soon as science bears in mind the subject's share in the construction of concepts, it incorporates into itself an awareness of its own dialectic. A dialectical process is negatively characterized by the fact that it is not to be conceived as the result of individual unchanging factors. To put it positively, its elements continuously change in relation to each other within the process, so that they are not even to be radically distinguished from each other. Thus the development of human character, for example, is conditioned both by the economic situation and by the individual powers of the person in question. But both these elements determine each other continuously, so that in the total development neither of them is to be presented as an effective factor without giving the other its role. The same is true of science as a real process. Its concepts are certainly dependent on their objects but at the same time they are conditioned by the subjective factors in research and by the methods used and the direction taken by the theoretical interests of the scientist. Despite the need for science ceaselessly to determine the share subjectivity plays in concept formation and thereby to make allowance for it, it will never succeed in distinguishing subject from object with perfect clarity.” In: Critical Theory: Selected Essays, Max Horkheimer. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell & co. (Continuum, 2002), 28.
Horkheimer to the Prussian Minister for Science, Art, and People’s Education in Berlin, 4/12/1933. In: A Life in Letters: Selected Correspondence, Max Horkheimer. Translated by Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 25.
In: Critical Theory (2002), 31-32.
In: Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, Max Horkheimer. Translated by G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey (MIT Press, 1993), 29-30.
In: Ibid., 1-5. Later in the same address, Horkheimer critiques the ‘dogmatic’ Marxist reflection theory as a foundation for the revival of sociology in light of the critical Marxian problematic of investigating objective social mediation of the psyche by economy, which is to be the focus of the ISR’s social research. In: Ibid., 11-12.
“Traditional and Critical Theory” [1937]: “In Kant's theoretical philosophy, in his analysis of knowledge, this contradiction is preserved. The unresolved problem of the relation between activity and passivity, a priori and sense data, philosophy and psychology, is therefore not due to purely subjective insufficiency but is objectively necessary. Hegel discovered and developed these contradictions, but finally resolved them in a higher intellectual realm. Kant claimed that there existed a universal subject which, however, he could not quite describe. Hegel escaped this embarrassment by postulating the absolute spirit as the most real thing of all. According to him, the universal has already adequately evolved itself and is identical with all that happens. Reason need no longer stand over against itself in purely critical fashion; in Hegel reason has become affirmative, even before reality itself is affirmed as rational. But, confronted with the persisting contradictions in human existence and with the impotence of individuals in face of situations they have themselves brought about, the Hegelian solution seems a purely private assertion, a personal peace treaty between the philosopher and an inhuman world.” In: Critical Theory (2002), 203-204.
“Traditional and Critical Theory” [1937]: “The concepts which emerge under its influence [viz., of the concerns of critical thought] are critical of the present. The Marxist categories of class, exploitation, surplus value, profit, pauperization, and breakdown are elements in a conceptual whole, and the meaning of this whole is to be sought not in the preservation of contemporary society but in its transformation into the right kind of society. Consequently, although critical theory at no point proceeds arbitrarily and in chance fashion, it appears, to prevailing modes of thought, to be subjective and speculative, one-sided and useless. Since it runs counter to prevailing habits of thought, which contribute to the persistence of the past and carry on the business of an outdated order of things (both past and outdated order guaranteeing a faction-ridden world), it appears to be biased and unjust.” In: Ibid., 218.
Horkheimer, “Kant und Hegel” (1925). In: MHGS Bd. 11 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987), 102-103. Author’s translation.
In: “Vorlesung über die Geschichte der deutschen idealistischen Philosophie” (1925/26), MHGS Bd. 10 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990), 165. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer, from the final lecture of his course “Introduction to the History of Modern Philosophy” (1927), [XVIII. Vorblick auf die Kantische Philosophie]. In: MHGS. Bd. 9 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987), 479-480. Author’s translation.
[Quotations from Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach” [1845]: “The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism—that of Feuerbach included—is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism—but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice [Praxis] is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.” Translated by Cyril Smith & Don Cuckson (2002).]
In: Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften. Band 16 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995), 73-79. Author’s translation.
On Wittfogel’s ‘remarks,’ see Gunzelin Schmid Noerr’s editorial footnote no. 2: “In a letter dated February 6, 1937, Wittfogel wrote: “I have just had a Homeric [homerische] discussion of Horkheimerian [Horkheimerische] philosophy. The main point: apriorism. I claimed that the Kantian concept of the a priori is completely metaphysical, rigid, that it must be destroyed, that the underlying, imprecisely—falsely—described phenomenon must be seen materially and genetically dissolved. When the correct concept of practice illuminates the principle of experience lurking behind the a priori (a static, metaphysical, idealistic principle) as such, one will probably free up the path to a more realistic concept of a now relativized and materialized concept of the a priori, which is better described by something else altogether. This is my layman's opinion. I would like to hear from you about it and receive instruction.” In: Ibid., 79.
Horkheimer is referring to a passage of Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology (1845) which is particularly important for the anti-metaphysical concept-concept of early critical theory. See “Materialism and Metaphysics” [1933]: “If men change not only nature but themselves and all their relationships, then philosophical ontology and anthropology are replaced by ‘a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men.’ [Fn. no. 27: Marx-Engels, The German Ideology, Parts I and III, tr. by R. Pascal (New York: International Publishers, 1947), p. 15.] The possibility of using these results in order to grasp developmental tendencies which point beyond the immediate present does not justify transposing that summing-up into the future. Every metaphysics strives for insight into an essential nature, with the idea that the nucleus of the future is already contained in it; what metaphysics discovers must underlie not only the past but the future as well. But contemporary materialism does not build up supratemporal concepts and abstract from the differences introduced by time. Even the possibility of establishing certain general human traits by considering man in his past history does not lead to a hypostatization of these traits as supra-historical factors. Society, on which man's existence partially depends, is a totality which cannot be compared to anything else and is continuously restructuring itself.” In: Critical Theory (2002), 25.
Cf. Horkheimer, “The Latest Attack on Metaphysics” [1937]: “The development of idealistic philosophy in Germany, from its beginning with Leibniz to the present, has been able to confirm the insight that the world of perception is not merely a copy nor something fixed and substantial, but, to an equal measure a product of human activity. Kant proved that the world of our individual and scientific consciousness is not given to us by God and unquestioningly accepted by us, but is partially the result of the workings of our understanding. He further showed, in the chapter on the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding, that empirical perceptions which enter the consciousness have already been shaped and sifted by productive human faculties.” In: Ibid., 157-158.
Horkheimer: “In the following pages this activity [viz., ‘a human activity which has society itself for its object’] is called “critical” activity. The term is used here less in the sense it has in the idealist critique of pure reason than in the sense it has in the dialectical critique of political economy. It points to an essential aspect of the dialectical theory of society.” In: Critical Theory (2002), 206.
Axel Honneth: “Horkheimer draws an analogy between the still-unconscious synthesizing accomplishments of labor already achieved by the human species throughout history and the synthetic achievements of the transcendental ego in Kant's epistemology. This analogy admittedly also reveals for the first time the idealist fiction to which Horkheimer's construction of a unified species-subject leads (…). Horkheimer uses Kant's epistemological model to clarify the construction derived from the philosophy of history: Just as Kant traces the world of objects of possible experience back to the structurally given capacities of a transcendental subject, so the social world is regarded as the still-unconscious product of human cultivation of nature. The transcendental manner of speaking called for by this materialistic reading of Kant's epistemology requires a singular subject, employed by Horkheimer, in order to characterize the human accomplishments of labor lumped together as “the” activity of the species. Horkheimer must assign to it all the ordering accomplishments that Kant ascribed to the transcendental ego. Thus, as a singular subject of history, the human species always already produces the social world, and does so in a continuously better way. However, it remains unaware of its constitution up to the present time. This lack of awareness on the part of the species is the ultimate cause of the catastrophic blindness of the present course of history.” In: The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory. Translated by Kenneth Baynes (MIT Press, 1991), 8-9.
Honneth: “Horkheimer repeats a conceptual dilemma of the early Marx. From the perspective of both epistemology and the philosophy of history, Marx's “Theses on Feuerbach,” with its vague, general concept of “praxis,” treats the history of the species as a nature-transforming, productive activity without thereby securing a place in the conceptual framework for the concept of “practical-critical activity” which in the same text clearly denotes a politically emancipatory, revolutionary activity.” In: Ibid., 13.
Honneth: “Horkheimer did not further clarify the specific structure of the social practice characterized by the phrase “critical activity.” To be sure, the idea of a dialogically mediated application of critical social theory opens up the insight into the interpretive dependence upon social experiences. But Horkheimer does not make use of this for a conceptually broadened demarcation of the category of “critical activity” in contrast to the category of “social labor.” At the theoretical level the concept of practical-critical activity remains peculiarly undefined. To the contrary, at the level of his basic assumptions concerning the philosophy of history, Horkheimer omitted completely the dimension of a critique of everyday life in which theory is known to be located since that theory participates in the cooperative process of an interpretation of the present in the interest of overcoming suffered injustice. This conceptual reductionism prevents Horkheimer from grasping the practical dimensions of social conflict and struggle as such. Despite his epistemological definition of critical theory, he does not seriously treat the dimensions of action present in social struggle as an autonomous sphere of social reproduction. But, for that reason, Horkheimer gives up the possibility of considering sufficiently the interpretive organization of social reality. The result is, as will be shown, a sociological deficit in the interdisciplinary social science that Horkheimer views as the solution offered by the program of a critical social theory.” In: Ibid., 17.
Ibid., 16.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid., 15.
Honneth: “However, within this model of history Horkheimer is no more able to entertain a concept of cultural action that designates the cooperative activity of producing and securing group-specific action orientations than he is the epistemological concept of critical activity, since both are conceptually ruled out by referring all human action to labor.” In: Ibid., 28.
And: “In contrast to the sociological task of investigating social reality with reference to group-specific background experiences and the cooperative process of creating social patterns of orientation, [Horkheimer] seems to be locked within the programmatic structure of critical social research. Neither the familiar cultural communication within social groups nor the everyday clash between cultural action orientations of social groups is taken seriously as an object of specific scientific research.” In: Ibid., 30.
Ibid., 28.
For instance: “Horkheimer seems to be aware of this. As if to guard against the economic reductionism that would characterize a social theory short-circuited by a combination of Fromm’s social psychology and Pollock’s analysis of capitalism, Horkheimer inserts a third dimension of social reproduction between the realm of the socialization of individual instincts and the encroaching system of social labor—namely, culture. The concept of “culture” apparently represents the conceptual means with which he hopes to resist the danger of leading critical social theory astray into a latent functionalism through the theoretical merger of political economy and psychoanalysis alone. But the enigmatic significance and ambivalent place this concept admittedly acquires within the idea of interdisciplinary social science is the price of the conceptual reductionism of Horkheimer's own philosophy of history.” In: Ibid., 24-25.
Honneth: “When he wants to analyze the process through which a system of dominating nature is integrated with the culturally accepted unity of social life, Horkheimer is thrown back to the dualism of a knowledge adapted to reality and irrational instincts. A tremendous gulf remains between rational insights into reality and libidinally induced misunderstandings of reality such that only empirical information concerning the mechanism of social integration can be obtained. This is the fundamental consideration behind the research project of the Institute, “Authority and the Family,” directed by Horkheimer, on the latent readiness of the German people for fascism.” In: Ibid., 30.
For example, see Horkheimer’s methodological remarks in “Materialism and Morality” [1933]: “Materialism attempts to delineate—and not simply with the broad strokes just suggested, but with a specific focus on the distinct periods and social classes involved—the actual relationships from which the moral problem derives and which are reflected, if only in distorted fashion, in the doctrines of moral philosophy.” In: Between Philosophy and Social Science (1993), 21. And: “Morality, therefore, is by no means simply dismissed by materialism as mere ideology in the sense of false consciousness. Rather, it must be understood as a human phenomenon that cannot possibly be overcome for the duration of the bourgeois epoch. Its philosophical expression, however, is distorted in many respects.” In: Ibid., 22. And: “Materialism sees in morality an expression of life of determinate individuals and seeks to understand it in terms of the conditions of its emergence and passing, not for the sake of truth in itself but rather in connection with determinate historical forces. It understands itself as the theoretical aspect of efforts to abolish existing misery. The features it discerns in the historical phenomenon of morality figure into its consideration only on the condition of a determinate practical interest.” In: Ibid., 32. And: “The insight that morality cannot be proven, that not a single value admits of a purely theoretical grounding, is one that materialism shares with idealist currents of philosophy. But both the derivation and the concrete application of the principle within the sphere of knowledge are completely different. (…) [I]n contrast to idealist philosophy, materialism in no way traces interests and objectives that are operative on the part of the subject back to the independent creative activity of this subject and to his free will. On the contrary, they are themselves seen as a result of a development in which both subjective and objective moments have a part.” In: Ibid., 45-46.
Horkheimer, “Materialism and Morality” [1933]. In: Ibid., 18-19.
Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory” [1937]. In: Critical Theory (2002), 202-204.
John Abromeit. Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School. (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 14-16; 85-87.
In: Ibid., 74-75.
Horkheimer maintains this criticism of Kant’s rationalistic psychology through his debut publication, “Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History” [1930], arguing this assumption fundamentally compromises the Kantian concept of reason [Vernunft] itself: “For the entire French and English Enlightenment, the concept of ‘Reason’ denotes correct knowledge and the human condition of being in possession of it. German philosophers, following Christian Wolff, took the word raison to refer merely to a psychical property, which resulted in a hopeless confusion that even Kant failed to untangle completely.” Footnote no. 45 to “Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History” [1930]. In: Between Philosophy and Social Science (1993), 417.
In: Abromeit, Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (2011), 76-78.
As Horkheimer concludes in his habilitation: “The specific character of these objects which, according to Kant, bear the mark of both theoretical and practical reason, can be comprehended epistemologically without recourse to practical reason, i.e. to a will. In this regard, therefore, the Critique of Judgment is not a “link” [JA: between theoretical and practical reason].” In: Ibid., 79. Quotation translated by J. Abromeit.
In the “Foreword” (1967) to the collection Critique of Instrumental Reason, Horkheimer writes: “At the end of the Nazi period (I thought at the time) a new day, the beginning of an authentically human history, would dawn in the developed countries as the result of reforms or revolution. Along with the other founders of Scientific Socialism, I thought that the cultural gains of the bourgeois era—the free development of human powers, a spiritual productivity—but stripped now of all elements of force and exploitation, would surely become widespread throughout the world. My experiences since that time have not failed to affect my thinking. The ‘communist’ states, which make use of the same Marxist categories to which my own efforts in the realm of theory owe so much, are certainly no closer to the dawn of that day than are the countries in which, for the moment at least, the freedom of the individual has not yet been snuffed out.” In: Critique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays Since the End of World War II, by Max Horkheimer. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell and others. (Continuum : Seabury Press, 1974), ix.
In: Critical Theory (2002), 23-24; 29-31.
In: Between Philosophy and Social Science (1993), 18-19; 25-27, 33.
In: Ibid., 179-180.
Horkheimer, “Materialism and Metaphysics” [1933]: “Any treatment of materialism is misguided, then, which is interested primarily in metaphysical questions. Yet the attitude of the materialist to metaphysics may not be reduced to one of general indifference. What we have already said implies that materialist views are incompatible with the idea of an absolute demand made upon man. Such a demand can be viewed as reasonable only where there is belief in an absolute consciousness.” In: Critical Theory (2002), 21.
Horkheimer, “Materialism and Metaphysics” [1933]: “When Feuerbach, Marx, and Engels freed the dialectic from its idealist form, materialism achieved an awareness of the ever-changing but irreducible tension between its own teaching and reality, and acquired in the process its own conception of knowledge. Materialism obviously does not reject thinking. Such a step was far from the minds of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century materialists as well. But materialism, unlike idealism, always understands thinking to be the thinking of particular men within a particular period of time. It challenges every claim to the autonomy of thought.” In: Ibid., 31-32.
Horkheimer, “Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History” [1930]: “As Hegel puts it in the Encyclopaedia, “modesty of thought, as treats the finite as something altogether fixed and absolute, is the worst of virtues; and to stick to a post which has no sound ground in itself is the most unsound sort of theory. … (Such modesty) is a retention of this vanity—the finite—in opposition to the true: it is itself therefore vanity.” In another passage Hegel claims that it is the dialectic “which again makes this mass of understanding and diversity understand its finite nature and the pseudo-independence in its productions, and which brings the diversity back to unity.” For Hegel, this is not just a fragment in the unfinished history of human beings, but already achieved in Absolute Spirit. Hegel himself falls prey to the same delusion as the Enlightenment that he so bitterly attacks: he applies the dialectic only to the past, fancying it something against which his own position is somehow inured. Hegel is also guilty of taking a historical moment in his thinking and making it into something eternal. But since he took reality to be a representation of the Idea, he also had to use his philosophy quite literally to deify and worship the political basis upon which it arose, i.e., the pre-revolutionary Prussian state. This stance of humility before the existing was the false “modesty” of his own thought.” In: Between Philosophy and Social Science (1993), 362-363.
In: Dawn and Decline: Notes 1926– 1931 and 1950–1969, trans. Michael Shaw (Seabury Press, 1978), 123-124.
See “For an Association of the Clearsighted” (1959-1960): “One should found an association in all countries, particularly in Germany, which would express the horror of those without affirmative belief in either metaphysics or politics. As a humane practice in insane post-war Europe, the latter would seem impossible to them, and the former galimatias. For those who are appalled by the economic miracle, the mendacious democracy, the bribery trials with Hitler judges, the luxury and the misery, the rancor and rejection of every form of decency, the admiration of eastern and western magnates, the disintegration of spirit, the slide into parochialism of this old civilization, such an association would be a kind of home. They would plot no revolution because it would end in naked terror. But they would nonetheless be the—admittedly impotent—heirs of the revolution that did not occur, these pitiful clearsighted ones who are going into the catacombs.” In: Ibid., 166.
Horkheimer, “On the Critique of Political Economy” (1966-1969). In: Ibid., 231.
Horkheimer, “On Critical Theory” (1966-1969). In: Ibid., 236-237.
“On The Problem of Truth” [1935]. In: Between Philosophy and Social Science (1993), 180.
thanks for this interesting and insightful post. I think its a second time that you write about this subject.