The Resistance is German & Jewish – The Frankfurt School
In the fear-fueled years after the end of World War I, an intellectual “resistance” enclave was established in Germany – The Institute of Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) – in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. “The Frankfurt School,” as they became known, were interested in developing studies of Marx and Freud in Germany as part of an effort to understand why we live in the sort of regressive, oppressive systems of social control that we do.
That they devoted themselves to “social research” is indicative of their collective concern that the insights of philosophy should be tested and perhaps even be modified by empirical investigation. Some of the primary figure heads who helped shape the school (as well as the field of Critical Theory) worked inside as well as outside the Institute. They include philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Members of the Frankfurt School include Theodore W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, and Leo Lowenthal. Also noteworthy are contributions from Erich Fromm and, some might argue more remotely, Walter Benjamin. Their critique of fascism and social change spanned a broad range of academic disciplines that include sociology, psychology, economics, political science, and literature.
The Institute was originally concerned with the German concept of critique that descended from Immanuel Kant, who was focused on the task of rescuing reason from what he believed was a proneness to “self-deception.” To advance Kant’s work, the Frankfurt School shifted the focus on deception from within the human mind toward outlying social forces that had been transformed dialectically into the opposite of how they originally appeared. With that, reason became unreason; civilization yielded to barbarism, and so on.
A central area of intellectual focus for the school was the study of how capitalist societies emerged. Drawing from a combination of Marxism, psychoanalysis, and Weberian economics, members of the school applied concepts from this work to the study of societal change. They developed what is now known as “Critical Theory” in opposition to “traditional theory.”
Critical Theory, as Max Horkheimer once said, aimed to “liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”
During the run-up to World War II and the time period of 1933, the Nazis forced the Institute to close and move to the United States; its members found a new home at Columbia University (note that the Institute returned again to Frankfurt in 1949). Later, after World War II had commenced, the Frankfurt school was among the first to sound the alarm bells. Their worst fears had been realized: Hitler’s army and the ideology of German fascism had been unleashed on the world.
Critical Theory Today
Critical theory continues to retain its power to shed light on the social dynamics that make up the current political constellation. Its theories and concepts remain salient for those interested in understanding why regressive and oppressive political movements continues to resonate with Americans and many others. In light of this, we we might say that the philosophical impact of the Frankfurt School is apparent now more than ever.
In the United States things are especially complex. The current political right wing’s favorite insult is to refer to someone as a “Cultural Marxist.” Used as a term of disparagement, it is routinely deployed as a weapon against critical thinking. Why? Let’s keep reading.
Despite this criticism, the ideas are well worth considering, even as they have been shown to be flawed in some aspects. Contemporary audiences, both inside and outside of the the social sciences and humanities, have recently returned to the canonical works of Critical Theory to study the rise of mass culture and authoritarianism in their own time (some have gone so far as to label this development “Trumpism,” but I would advise a word of caution here, because what is happening in the U.S. and beyond is much larger than just on person). At any rate, studies of authoritarianism have suddenly become fashionable again.
Theodore Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality ( published in 1950), which was written with colleagues Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, was one of the first scholarly works that explored authoritarianism. The purpose of the authors’ study was to try to assemble an extensive psychological and sociological profile of the “potentially fascistic —-individual.”
The book essentially asks: What makes a fascist? What are the key character traits that make someone identifiable as a fascist? They posited a Freudian explanation of authoritarianism, where they posited that an insecure and threatening childhood environment created authoritarian adults. In this respect, Adorno et al.’s The Authoritarian Personality is not only one of the most significant works of social psychology ever written, it also marks a milestone in the development of Adorno’s thought, as it reveals him attempting to grapple with the problem of fascism and explain the reasons for Europe’s turn to reactionary politics.
Methodologically speaking, Adorno based his work on questionnaires and subsequent interviews with American subjects. Another group of scholars pursued a similar study. Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman’s 1949 book, “Prophets of Deceit,” studied the Father Coughlin (a Roman Catholic priest), a sensationalistic pulpit-based ideologue, whom they believed demonstrated how “large numbers of people would be susceptible to psychological manipulation.”
Adorno’s study, however, contained many flaws. Chiefly, it is criticized for the scientific basis of the book’s acclaimed “F” type personality, which was determined to be unfalsifiable. An F-type person, according to him, was understood to possess specific identifiable character traits, such as: compliance with conventional values, non-critical thinking, compliance with authority, and an absence of introspectiveness.
Nonetheless, despite this criticism, this work led to ongoing efforts to study and authoritarianism in populations. Erich Fromm undertook a study of working class attitudes and beliefs as part of an effort to understand the contradictions between their professed attitudes and their character traits. Although his study findings were statistically inconclusive, he nonetheless estimated that the working classes would not resist a fascist takeover.
Survey: One-Third of Republicans Favor Leaders Unchecked by Courts or Congress
Academic Research on Authoritarianism
Alex Ross wrote in a New Yorker essay in 2016 that “THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL Knew Trump was Coming.” To this the philosopher Martin Jay adds, “much has been made of late of the prescience of the Frankfurt School in anticipating the rise of populist nationalism in general and Donald Trump in particular. By and large, the focus has been on their critiques of the culture industry, the authoritarian personality, the techniques of right-wing agitators, and antisemitism.” However, he goes on to write that there is another aspect of their legacy that has “been largely ignored, which supplements their insights into the psychological and cultural sources of the problem, and deepens their analysis of the demagogic techniques of the agitator. I’m referring here to their oft-neglected analysis of what they (The Frankfurt School) called a “racket society” to explain the unexpected rise of fascism” (Jay, 2020).
According to Jay, “the America to which Horkheimer and his colleagues had fled in 1934, the words “rackets” and “racketeering” had been coined to indicate the increasing prominence of “organized” or “syndicated” crime. Surviving the end of Prohibition, it thrived in such illegal enterprises as prostitution, drug-dealing, numbers-running, and gambling, and easily spilled over into other forms of corruption, including political.” Jay asks questions that have become more than prescient in the current political moment, as he asks: “But what if a whole society, the Frankfurt School wondered, had been corrupted by the racket model, turning to bonds of personal loyalty forged through protection against the threats of an increasingly harsh world? What if universal moral norms and the abstract rule of law had been supplanted by transactional and concrete relationships between patrons and clients? What if the role of classes — both in terms of struggle between and solidarity within — had been replaced by other hierarchical relations of domination outside of those generated by the economic mode of production? What if the era of bourgeois capitalism had only been an interlude between two epochs in which the mediation of the impersonal marketplace had been unnecessary to secure subordination and compliance? (Jay, 2020).
Criticism from Ross and Jay represents an off-shoot critique of a much larger and well-developed scholarly literature on authoritarianism. One of the major findings of this body of work is that authoritarianism is strongly associated with political conservatism. Some social scientists have gone so far as to consider authoritarianism the psychological basis of conservatism, whereas others simply describe it as a particularly militant variation of political conservatism; one that demonstrates a strong aversion to social change.
A recent Pew research study revealed that many Americans have autocratic/authoritarian leanings. One of the key predictor variables in the study, which measured authoritarian dispositions, was “education.” Higher levels of education were found to be associated with people who expressed more pro-social support for democratic forms of government.
“Political Party” affiliation was another variable that revealed interesting findings. Republican party affiliation was associated with people who preferred the “strong man”/anti-democratic model of government, which is the preference of authoritarians and autocrats. Follow this link to an article in Foreign Policy magazine that discusses findings from the study.
In a recent book, Wendy Brown, Peter Gordon, and Max Pensky look at how “freedom” has become a rallying cry for what are decidedly un-emancipatory movements.
Gordon, for example, dismantles the idea that fascism is rooted in the susceptible psychology of individual citizens, as he argues that we must look to the broader cultural and historical circumstances that lend it force.
Pensky brings together the unlikely pair of Tocqueville and Adorno to explore how democracies can buckle under internal pressure.
The essays included in this work do not seek to smooth over the irrationality of the contemporary world, nor do they offer the false comforts of an easy return to liberal democratic values. Rather, the three authors draw on their deep engagements with nineteenth–and twentieth–century thought to investigate the historical and political contradictions that have brought about this moment, as they respond to the demands of the current political moment (Brown, Gordon, Pensky, 2018).
Researchers have argued since 1973 that political conservatism as an ideological belief system is significantly related to concerns about the management of uncertainty. One recent study conducted at NYU concluded that people respond to uncertainty in much the same manner as they do any threat —- they respond with fear. They refer to this as the “Uncertainty Threat Model of Political Conservativism.” The results from their structural equation models demonstrated consistent support for the hypothesis:
H1: “uncertainty avoidance (e.g., need for order, intolerance of ambiguity, and lack of openness to experience) and threat management (e.g., death anxiety, system threat, and perceptions of a dangerous world) each contributes independently to political conservatism” (as opposed to liberalism) (Jost and Napier, 2011).
But what is meant by “threat?” A wide range of studies have noted that threats might include: personal threats; threat of personal failure; threats perceived to occur across society; socially learned and experienced threats; external/internal fear and anxiety; conforming in-groups threatened by unconventional out-groups; individual as well as collective threats; personal insecurity caused by the threat of terrorism; and differentially perceived economic threats, precarity, and economic insecurity (for more on threats perceived by working class Americans, see an older study published by Seymour Martin Lipset, “Democracy and Working-Class Authoritarianism”). In the case of the latter, Lipset hypothesizes that low status and low education predispose individuals to favor extremist and intolerant forms of political and religious behavior (Lipset, 1959).
According to Lipset:
- Authoritarian predispositions and ethnic prejudice flow more naturally from the situation of the lower classes than from that of the middle and upper classes in modern industrial society.
- The lower-class way of life produces individuals with rigid and intolerant approaches to politics. These findings imply that one may anticipate wide-spread support by lower-class individuals and groups for extremist movements.
- In some countries, working- class groups have proved to be the most nationalistic and jingoistic sector of the population.
- The social situation of the lower strata, particularly in poorer countries with low levels of education, predisposes them to view politics in simplistic terms of black and white, good and evil. Consequently, they should be more likely than other strata to prefer extremist movements, which suggest easy and quick solutions to social problems and have a rigid outlook rather than those which view the problem of reform or change in complex and gradualist terms and which support rational values of tolerance.
- The insecurities and tensions which flow directly from economic instability are reinforced by the particular patterns of family life associated with the lower strata. There is more direct frustration and aggression in the day-to-day lives of members of the lower classes, both children and the adults.
- A comprehensive review of the many studies made in the past 25 years of child-rearing patterns in the United States reports that their “most consistent finding” is the “more frequent use of physical punishment by working-class parents.” The link between child rearing practices in lower-class families and adult hostility and authoritarianism is suggested by the findings of investigations in Boston and Detroit that physical punishments for aggression, characteristic of the working class, tend to increase rather than decrease aggressive behavior.
In another study, Feldman and Stenner used child rearing questions from the 1992 American National Election Studies (ANES) to estimate authoritarianism. They found that “authoritarianism and perceptions of environmental stress [i.e., threat] interact in creating intolerance.” Put another way, threat did not make individuals more authoritarian. Rather, according to the authors’ hypothesis, it activated intolerant authoritarian behaviors in individuals who were already predisposed to authoritarianism.
Given the nature of modern life and how we are surrounded by evidence of its danger from things like terrorism, mass shootings, school shootings, pandemic illness, it is perhaps not surprising that some people have become more antagonistic towards others whom they perceive hold different beliefs and values. More often than not, they have become more fearful of the Other. This easily gives way to an “us vs. them” mentality, leaving many Americans in a constant state of fear, if not actual war, inside their own heads. Some feel they must carry guns to buy a sandwich, whereas others feel the need to build literal walls to protect themselves from immigrants and perceived hostile Others.
Telling people that they should simply stop being so afraid is not likely to yield results. Because everything in their experience, which feeds their anxious worldview, shapes their sense of self, and informs their “gut experience,” tells them otherwise. For many people, being afraid and staying on alert 24/7 seems fully rational, if not instinctive.
Social science researchers, on the other hand, would perhaps argue differently, advising people that they should be more afraid of the kinds of things that might actually kill them – i.e. not having adequate health insurance, not having access to clean air and water, owning a handgun that they potentially use on themselves, and quite literally working themselves to death.
Who Were (Are) They?
First Generation
Listed here is a more extensive list of prominent figures of the first generation Critical Theorists. They include: Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), Theodore Adorno (1903-1969), Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Friedrich Pollock (1894-1970), Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993), Otto Kirchheimer, and Eric Fromm (1900-1980). First generation critical theorists devoted their work to concerns with the elaboration of Hegel’s dialectics and what is often referred to as the “Weber-Marx-Freud synthesis.”
Second Generation
From the time period of the 1970s, the second generation was led by Juergen Habermas, whose writing contributed to fostering a dialogue between the so-called “continental” and “analytical” philosophical traditions. Under Habermas’ influence, there was an effort to develop a more specific focus on understanding the conditions of human action, which were coordinated through speech-acts. This work was further complemented by the works of others, including Klaus Günther, Hauke Brunkhorst, Ralf Dahrendorf, Gerhard Brandt, Alfred Schmidt, Claus Offe, Oskar Negt, Albrecht Wellmer and Ludwig von Friedeburg, Lutz Wingert, Josef Früchtl, Lutz-Bachman.
Third Generation
Now, it is possible to speak of a “third generation” of critical theorists, symbolically represented in Germany by the influential work of Axel Honneth [for a comparison between the “inner circle” of the first generation, and the outer circle, see Axel Honneth, “Critical Theory,” in Social Theory Today, ed. A. Giddens and J. Turner (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 347ff. The focus of the third generation theorists, following the works of Honneth, was a return to Hegel’s philosophy (especially Hegel’s notion of “recognition”) which was understood to be a cognitive and pre-linguistic sphere grounding intersubjectivity. This group of scholars is represented by a large group of people, inside and outside of Germany, including figures such as Stanley Aronowitz, Andrew Arato, Kenneth Baynes, Seyla Benhabib, Jay Bernstein, Richard Bernstein, James Bohman, Susan Buck-Morss, Jean Cohen, Fred Dallmayr, Peter Dews, Alessandro Ferrara, Jean-Marc Ferry, Nancy Fraser, David Held, Agnes Heller, David Ingram, Martin Jay, Douglas Kellner, Thomas McCarthy, David Rasmussen, William Rehg, Gillian Rose, Steven Vogel, Georgia Warnke, Stephen K. White, Joel Whitebook, and others. Many among them studied with Habermas and/or Marcuse.
Areas of Intellectual Focus
Under Horkheimer’s leadership, members of the Institute aimed to address a wide variety of economic, social, political and aesthetic topics, ranging from empirical analysis to philosophical theorization. As we find to be the case in a lot of contemporary scholarship, there was a great deal of concern with the contradictions of public life. To this end, the scholars focused on the complex interplay of the psycho-dynamics of fascism, the manipulation of public opinion, the substitution of information for knowledge, material excess, mass-consumerism, and the breakdown of communication.
Erich Fromm helped cement the Institute’s focus on the psycho dynamics of capitalism, however, it was his revision of Sigmund Freud’s ideas that caused him to have a bit of a falling out with Horkheimer. Fromm argued that the key problem of psychology was how individuals relate to one another and to the society around them, as opposed to deterministic fixation at libidinal stages (anal, oral, genital, etc.) indicated by Freud’s theory (Durkin, 2020).
Briefly put, the Frankfurt School theorists saw advanced capitalism and its accompanying instrumental rationality as contributing to the deterioration of all social life.
Mass Culture
The idea that culture is mass produced by “the culture industry” was one of the major ideas explored by the Frankfurt School, especially by Adorno and Horkheimer.They argued that the culture industry (and the culturally homogeneous/generic products it produces) is killing the desire that might allow people to freely imagine a better world. Sadly, they observed that the masses were oblivious to the mass controlled culture in which they lived (i.e. why does anyone care about or watch the Kardashians?).
According to this view, people will never be able to create an ideal society, one designed to serve human needs (as opposed to the needs of capitalist corporations) as long as they are stuck living and laboring in a a commodity-driven culture. That’s another way of saying that we all live and work on a capitalist plantation.
Put another way, they were concerned that mass society was making people comlpascent; that people were passively accepting what mass culture produced, without thinking critically about the social process as well as their own human potential. Mass culture and its commodities were getting in the way of people imagining as well as working to create different forms of social organization that could help everyone (not just a few) attain a better life.
Later, the founders of the Institute were joined by Erich Fromm, who was also interested in culture, though his approach took into account the psycho-social dynamics of social class as a component in theory-building. In particular, Fromm’s psychoanalytic theory, which he conceived at the Institute, constituted a major development and contributed greatly to the school.
The Frankfurt School provides us with useful perspectives that we can use to study contemporary society; it also provides the intellectual underpinning of critique in the academic field of Cultural Studies. We might further combine the work of this school with the theoretical innovations provided by Poststructuralist/postmodern theorists like Foucault, Baudrillard, and Jameson to analyze key developments in our present moment – mass consumerism, mass incarceration, social media, fashion & culture, computer and information technologies, as well as new forms of knowledge and power, and subjectivity and identity.
The “Critical” Method
The academic influence of the “critical” method was far-reaching in terms of the educational institutions that set out to apply this way of thinking to the study of social problems.
Key areas of focus included a critique of modernities and capitalist society, the perceived pathologies/problems of society, and the definition of social emancipation, where there was an effort to specify the terms under which people might remain free (or forfeit freedom)
Critical Theory reflects a very specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy: it reinterprets some of Marx’s central economic and political notions, including the ideas of commodification, reification, and fetishization. In doing so, it helps us to think about the world in terms of power relations and how individual humans are constituted as subjects, who are subject to those relations or power.
Philosophical Roots of Critical Theory
Critical theory draws from Kantian rationalism and Marxist Hegelianism, which postulates the following:
- humans are rational beings; the world of the real comes not from our senses, but from our rational capacities; therefore, a rational society is possible.
- social systems are presented with constant challenge and contradiction; these contradictions produce new syntheses, and out of this change (progress) occurs [dialectical thinking].
- Progress does not occur as a result of straight means-end logic (formal rationality); means-end logic is what underlies repression and domination in society; this leads to totalitarianism.
- Events are not discrete and isolated; events are part of a social process that implies constant change.
Critical Theory incorporated Hegel’s dialectical concept of Self and Other:
- Critical Theorists see social progress as contingent upon a self that is able to take/see itself as an object – so to act self-consciously. Failing to do this, they warn, guarantees we are all doomed to repeat the errors of the past.
The Problem of Enlightenment
Critical theorists (Horkheimer and Adorno in particular) were concerned with the problem of “Enlightenment” within modernity and post-modernity. So for example, the central premise of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment was that “something went wrong with the Enlightenment.” Enlightenment, in their view, became totalitarian; its force and focus was now directed toward controlling nature and humans.
Enlightenment, it turns out, created a culture that was superficially appealing even as it violated individuality by compelling conformity. Interestingly, the potential of the individual was not being destroyed by fascism alone; rather, it was the positivist turn of modern science within the Enlightenment movement that was doing the most damage.
Horkheimer and Adorno argued that the only way to get out of this modern version of hell is to engage in a Critical Theory of Society – that this is will be our only hope to achieve social transformation and progress.
What is “Dialectical” thinking?
Dialectical thinking is a form of analytical reasoning that pursues truth and knowledge as such through a process of reconciling discursive conflict. Social change, in other words, is understood to occur through contradiction, where oppositions are made to clash more or less. Another way to think about this is that opposites attract, change takes place, and then you end up with a third order situation that is not like either the first or the second order that clashed.
Dialectics/the dialectical method can be illustrated as a form of a discourse between two or more people, who hold different points of view. In classical philosophy, the dialectic represents a form of reasoning based upon dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, where one advocates propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). The outcome of such a dialectic might be the refutation of a relevant proposition, or a synthesis, or a newly formulated combination of the opposing assertions.
Hegelian dialectic follows this logic, however, it is usually presented as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, which gives rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis; the tension between the two are resolved by means of some form of synthesis. Although this model is named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel attributed the terminology to Kant. Carrying on Kant’s work, it was actually Fichte who greatly elaborated on the synthesis model and made it popular.
Summary of Dialectics
- Dialectics originated with Plato (dialogues)
- Kant also uses the dialectic (but different than Hegel does)
- In Hegel/Marx, the dialectic is about a relationship between subject and object.
- Horkheimer/Adorno examine the dialectic of reason and un-reason, as they look at how modernity’s promise of progress produces new forms of barbarism and violence.
- Marcuse looks at the dialectic of the individual and society; technology and domination.
Critique of Mass Culture
The critique of mass culture, however, remains as what is perhaps its most well-known social criticism. Writing for The New Yorker, Alex Ross says “Adorno believed that the greatest danger to American democracy lay in the mass-culture apparatus of film, radio, and television.” Indeed, in his view, this apparatus operates in dictatorial fashion even when no dictatorship is in place: it enforces conformity, quiets dissent, mutes thought. Nazi Germany was merely the most extreme case of this, which was essentially a late-capitalist condition, where people surrendered real intellectual freedom in favor of a sham paradise of personal liberation and comfort.
Watching wartime newsreels, Adorno concluded that the “culture industry,” as he and Horkheimer called it, was replicating fascist methods of mass hypnosis. Above all, he saw a blurring of the line between reality and fiction. In his 1951 book, “Minima Moralia,” he wrote:
Lies have long legs: they are ahead of their time. The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power, a process that truth itself cannot escape if it is not to be annihilated by power, not only suppresses truth as in earlier despotic orders, but has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false, which the hirelings of logic were in any case diligently working to abolish. So Hitler, of whom no one can say whether he died or escaped, survives.** **” (Ross)
Psychoanalysis, and the Nietzsche/Marx/Freud Synthesis
From the beginning, psychoanalysis in the Frankfurt School was conceived in terms of a reinterpretation of Freud and Marx. Its consideration in the School was clearly due to Horkheimer, who encouraged his researchers to direct their attention to the subject.
It was Fromm, nevertheless, whose incisive critique best produced an advancement, in terms of thinking on the subject. Fromm’s major aim and contribution was his effort to synthesize Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis, which he said was “the missing link between ideological superstructure and socio-economic base” (Jay 1966, p. 92). Fromm attributed the rise of Nazis and fascism to the notion of threat. According to him, people who felt isolated, powerless, and insecure were people who “escaped from freedom” by submitting to Nazi authoritarianism.
A radical shift occurred again, in terms of the School’s interests, when Fromm departed the Institute in the late 1930s. Despite retaining psychoanalysis as an area of interest (and in particular Freud’s instinct theory) there was almost at total abandonment of the study of Marxism and a turn away from the linking of psychoanalysis to social change. Fromm’s insight into the psychic (or even psychotic) role of the family was effectively sidelined We see this reflected in Adorno’s later paper “Social Science and Sociological Tendencies in Psychoanalysis” (1946), as well as Marcuse’s book Eros and Civilization (1955).
Fascism, Families, and Authoritarian Personalities
In retrospect, the move away from a focus on families was an unfortunate development, considering it was interest in the family as an agent of socialization, which proved to be so crucial to the School’s empirical studies in 1940 that culminated in Max Horkheimer and Theodore W. Adorno working together on “The Authoritarian Personality.“
It should be noted here that Nietzsche’s influence, particularly his critique of Enlightenment, was significant. According to Rolf Wiggershaus, Adorno aimed to correct/supplement Marx through the use of Nietzsche as a thinker concerned with the “totality of happiness incarnate.” Horkheimer, likewise, supported this view, to the extent that he saw in Nietzsche a critic of the “entire [bourgeois] culture of satiety” (Wiggershaus).
Horkheimer, says Wiggershaus, shares Nietzsche’s (as opposed to Marx’s) “distrust of the bourgeoisie” (Adorno); he also shares their detachment from the proletariat and social democracy, and merely avoids speaking of the superman (Nietzsche’s “aristocratism”), since there are those who would allege that, without class-rule and mass-domination, the characteristics and higher culture of the superman would be impossible. Horkheimer sees in this only a problem of release from stultifying toil. He concludes that if Nietzsche had realized that an extremely advanced domination of nature would make stultifying toil superfluous, he would have realized that his conviction that “all excellence [develops]. . .only among those of equal rank” means that either all or none would become supermen.
Thus, in a sharp criticism of Nietzsche, Horkheimer wrote: “Beneath [Nietzsche’s] seemingly misanthropic formulations lies . . . not so much this [elitist] error but the hatred of the patient, self-avoiding, passive, and conformist character at peace with the present.”
Adorno also said he did not want to adopt Nietzschean concepts like “love” and “longing.” Indeed, he and Horkheimer valued Nietzsche above all for his frankness concerning the instinctual nature of cruelty, for his attentiveness to the stirring of repressed instincts without minimizing rationalization. No philosopher, in their view, had brought such anti-Christian, antihumanistic furor to his age as the pastor’s son Nietzsche, who interacted almost exclusively with the educated, patricians, and petty nobility.
Likewise, they found no philosopher had attempted so resolutely, without regard for socio-historical trends, to negate and destroy his own origins and training.
On the issue of race, Adorno and Horkheimer insisted in a 1942 discussion that Nietzsche must be rescued from fascist and racist appropriations. They found in his work, perhaps more than any other philosopher, their own fears and desires confirmed and accentuated.
What’s Up with All This Critique of Capitalism?
Some might say, “Why all the hate for capitalism? Don’t you like money? Because I like money! Capitalism has brought about great innovations!” And so on and so on. Critical Theorists took a different view, because they were focused on analyzing social organization, and most especially systems of social control, which condition how people think, act, and form their basic beliefs about the world.
Most historians, including Marxist historical materialists, locate the rise of industrial capitalism in 18th century Britain. This European centered view, unfortunately overlooks the numerous forms of global commercial organization that thrived for centuries before this time (i.e. Venice, Istanbul, Spain) as well as the use of slavery to further economic enterprise. Nonetheless, the view taken by Critical theorists, like Marx before them, was that capitalism contained the seeds of totalitarianism and authoritarianism; as a social system, it did a better job of controlling people than markets and when left to its own devices (i.e. no government intervention), it would ultimately enslave people.
When you look at things this way, the picture that emerges in regards to capitalism ventures into dark territory. A better question than “Is Capitalism Good (or bad) is “Why does capitalism have such a firm psychological hold on people?” “Why do so many working class people, who are getting abused by this system, stand among its most vocal supporters?” You have to get to the root of this problem in order to nurture any hope of emerging from the contradictions imposed by capitalism.
Critical School Theorists developed a compelling synthesis of psychoanalysis and Marxist thinking in order to try to understand why we still regressive oppressive systems of social organization. They encouraged us to reflect on why it is so hard for people to recognize that capitalism, as a system of social organization, is a major barrier to creating human self-fulfillment and happiness. The answer they came up with, derived from psychoanalysis, was simply this: that capitalist ideology is socialized and thus internalized (into the super-ego). That’s another way of saying that people have become more or less brainwashed to act against (vote against) their own best interests.
Where it gets more interesting is how there are people who have mastered the con of playing the the role of the Super-ego: they act like an authoritarian father and either make demands, make people feel guilty, and correspondingly make them feel loved when they conform. This is often why the the working class continues to act against their own best interests. In essence, they complete the work of the authoritarian father figure, who despite their claims of strength are not strong enough to accomplish this feat alone.
This explanation goes a long way in explaining why many of us, despite all of our education, remain in the thrall of capitalism and hence throw our weight behind the authorities who are constantly telling people that they should love it and that anyone who is against it is a “loser.” Again, the questions we are still left with are compelling: Why are people so easily cowed by authority? Why do they conform? Why don’t people stand up for themselves?
Criticisms of Critical Theory
One critique of Critical Theory making the rounds of late is that the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist communist philosophers and sociologists, was at a loss regarding how to reinterpret Marx and help working people achieve class consciousness, so they could, in turn, initiate Marx’s theorized revolution.
The leaders of the school turned their attention to the cultural institutions of society. It is not an unfair criticism to say that Adorno was excessively pessimistic, offering almost no way out of the problem of culture and its ability to dominate the thinking of the masses. Put another way, critics have said that their view culture comprises a totalizing system. Of course, they advocate escape, even as they also lament that escape is impossible. Their views, while compelling, are not backed up by empirical data, nor are they generalizable.
Critics, likewise, have argued that the products of mass culture would not be popular if people did not enjoy them. Culture is in this sense self-determining – people get what they desire.
Traditional Marxists accused the Critical theorists of claiming the intellectual heritage of Karl Marx without feeling the obligation to apply theory to the project of political action, or what Marx referred to as Praxis. Here again, it is argued that Critical Theory offers no practical solutions for societal change.
Positivist philosophers and social scientists accuse Critical theorists of not submitting their theories to empirical tests (they base this critique on Karl Popper’s revision of Logical Positivism). And in this they are correct. But that does not mean that the ideas fully lack merit. Counter-arguments leveled against positivists are that they are invested too heavily in the idea of standpoint objectivity – that they can magically stand outside of the field they are studying and construct variables to study that are completely without bias (very difficult as often the categories and variables they study are infused with one form of bias or another). This counter-critique also holds merit.
More recently, neoconservative critics in the United States have dismissed the entire canon of Critical Theory to what they have termed “Cultural Marxist” rubbish. They have reduced the complexity of thought on offer by a school of diverse thinkers as a refuge for “political correctness.” Of particular annoyance is how Critical Theory and its proponents tend to be e people who reject plain language and simple expression, preferring (or so it is argued) obscurantism and long-winded justifications for dubious schemes of social engineering.
In his book, The Death of the West, former Fox television personality and political pundit Pat Buchanan argues “the Frankfurt School must be held as a primary suspect and principle accomplice in the titular catastrophe.”
Nonetheless, Frankfurt School critical theory, contrary to the claims of many critics and media polemicists, can help put into context what appear to be the rising tide of authoritarian tendencies on both the right and left of the political spectrum. Though, to be sure, the aims of the two polarized camps are not the same.
Adorno was, in fact, very concerned about the bureaucratizing tendencies of capitalism (as was Weber) and its effects on social equality, politics, and culture. He thought that overly bureaucratized governments could inspire left as well as right-wing totalitarianism. At the same time, he worried this culture similarly might foster right and left-wing fascism.
Tyranny from the left, unmoored from disciplined and systematic intellectual reflection, is perhaps one example of what happens when people rise up against an over-administered society. Alternatively, tyranny from the right, which has also given up on reflective engagement and similarly decries government overreach, leads us to the same place. The way out; that is, the escape, cannot be a world with no government, no social order, and no social bonds between people. How we negotiate the ground between the extremist poles will determine where we go from here.
Summary
Whenever plainspoken self-proclaimed truth tellers tell you that complex social problems can be solved with simple “common sense” solutions, you should let that be a warning that you’re about to get “played.” If you find the logic of plain-spokeness and simplicity appealing, take a moment and ask yourself – why? What is the appeal?
Reading Critical Theory can be difficult, but the theories and the ideas contained in them are compelling even if they aren’t perfect. Unlike conspiracy theory, which offers simplified full-circle solutions to every problem (blame it all on the lizard people), critical theory says “life is complicated…humans are complicated.” At the very least, Critical Theory aims to speak truth to power, as they attempt to mobilize people to action, this way people don’t sit back and accept government gridlock, status quo inertia, and social policies that only serve the wealthy and privileged. Who would be threatened by that?
Keep thinking. Take all the time you need.
Sources
Martin Jay, The dialectical imagination : a history of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston : Little, Brown, 1973) – provides a history overview.
Susan Buck-Morss, The origin of negative dialectics : Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (New York : Free Press, 1977)
Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance, trans. M. Robertson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994)
Helmut Dubiel, Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory, trans. Benjamin Gregg (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985)
Zoltán Tar, The Frankfurt School: The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977)
Joel Anderson, “The Third Generation of the Frankfurt School.”
Alex Ross, “The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming.”
Martin Jay, “Trump, Scorsese, and the Frankfurt School’s Theory of Racket Society,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020.
Stephen M. Sales and Kenneth E. Friend, “Success and Failure as Determinants of Level of Authoritarianism,” Behavioral Science 18(3) (May 1973), 163.
Glenn D. Wilson, The Psychology of Conservativism (New York: Academic Press, 1973).
More Reading
Additional reading might be found on the blog – Introducing the Frankfurt School
For information on the current activity of the Institute, see the following website linked here.
Discussion Questions
How can we use the tools provided by Critical Theory to understand some of the more pressing problems that characterize the present moment in regards to culture and politics? Problems like police brutality, war, racial antipathy, the disappearance of the middle class, and other problems in connection with social inequality.
If the project of modernity was to achieve Enlightenment, do you think this vision has been fulfilled?
What role do you see science playing in this process? Has science been put to good use in a way that allows us to be self-reflective and democratic, or has it too occasioned “new forms of barbarism?”
Critical thinking helps people understand the problems that occurring in society today. This type of thinking is still used today because it is used all over social media to help provide society with details informing them of issues, for example, critical thinking helped society know what was causing the riots. Critical thinking can be used within different cultures by introducing people to different ways people think and react to certain situations and problems. Police brutality, war, and racial antipathy are just some of the few problems society deals with daily. Critical thinking falls into these problems because without this way of thinking, people would not be able to understand for themselves all of the reasons these problems are occurring. Society is concerned with why police brutality, war, and racial antipathy is occurring; it is because society simply just does not understand. Therefore, without critical thinking, people would not be able to intervene these problems, and find solutions to fix them.
Personally, I do not believe that the project of modernity was to achieve Enlightenment has been fulfilled. The article states that Enlightenment was used for its force and focus was directed towards controlling nature and humans. If Enlightenment was fulfilled in society, then police brutality would not be occurring. If police/law enforcement was able to control the nature and humans, then the riots that occurred would have happened. Maybe, enlightenment was successful in previous years, but in today’s years, enlightenment has not been as successful. Science plays different roles in this process. Some aspects of science can be interpreted differently to different individuals. For example, the media can twist science to use to their own benefits.
Critical theory allows individuals to use critical thinking and apply their knowledge to situations that are happening within modern day society. The critical theory is revenant to modern day society because it can be used to understand politics. The critical theory can be used today to understand culture because peoples understanding of culture is based off their own personal experiences. Police brutality, social injustice, systemic racism, and racism as a whole are some big topics in todays society. If individuals were not able tp use critical thinking in these times where all of the social injustice is taking place, the world would get no where. People have to question whitings are happening instead of just being okay with it. without critical thinking, there would be no growth and change within the system.
In the concept of modernity and whether or not it achieved enlightenment, I believe in some ways it did, but it didn’t fully achieve it. Based off this article, modernity was achieved because it questioned a lot of traditions and ultimately began rejecting them. Due to this, self-identity and the send of freedom took the place of social identities. This was because the concept of rejecting and questioning allowed for individuals to recognize themselves. However, enlightenment was not fully achieved because even though the sense of freedom was established, it wasn’t fully achieved because individuals were still not voicing their problems with the current changes. Due to this, individuals sense of freedom and identity became similar to each other in mass media culture. Instead of individuality, it turned into conformity and individualistic thinking was replaced by the idea of capitalism.
I believe science as brought new ideas than “forms of barbarism” because it allowed for multiple different platforms (internet, social media, news) to be create for people to speak out on injustices or any issues they faced. It also allowed for people to come together to make a stand or just voice their individuality. These platforms can help people come together to make social changed they feel need to be made or even talked about. However, science has also negatively affected this way of thinking. On these platforms, anyone can be anyone and say or do anything. The internet can be a black hole that ransack you into something you should not be in. On top of that, social medias have created this false idea of what people need to be like which ultimately took away individuality and created conformity.
Indeed, things are very complex and fluid. While technology has made many great things possible; it simultaneously offers the promise of social connection, liberation, and freedom…it also constrains people…can make some feel trapped, compels conformity, and leave them sad, angry, isolated, and depressed.
In an attempt to move from modernity to enlightenment, the process of critical thinking that uses empirical facts rather than theories to understand society has emerged, but maybe not for the better. Although it is an accepted idea that science has revolutionized the world in a seemingly positive way, Science and technology also may cause more harm than good in societies. Of course, it is not easy to negatively criticize the ongoing growth of science and technology as we are able to look up information in seconds, relax on an air conditioned bus and even enjoy social media and entertainment at ease, but it is imperative to remember the more abusive aspects of this growth. Including but not limited to advanced weaponry and surveillance, technology may be causing more harm than good in our societies as it dominates us in such ways that it has created new forms of barbarism. For example, even though science and technology has brought about astonishing changes in the way we communicate as it is now more efficient, it is not necessarily more effective. In this case specifically, we’ve in a sense sacrificed pieces of our culture like direct personal interaction, emotions and dialect to be more efficient. Technology has allowed us to become more self-reflective which may not be a bad thing, but it has also enabled us to be more reflective of others in the means by which our society becomes so individualized that it loses that idea of culture and civilization that it once hoped to attain through these technologies.
I believe modernity did achieve certain aspects of Enlightenment, but did not accomplish Enlightenment completely. By rejecting and questioning tradition, social identities were no longer formed by the same social factors as they had been before, but now had many new influences. These new and different influences helped with the emergence of the individual’s sense of self and created a new sense of freedom. However, the individual never actually had complete freedom because they still did not have a voice in the actual social changes that were taking place; the individual actually played the role of a victim.
Modernity is what achieved this new sense of freedom where people began to recognize themselves as individuals. People also realized that they had a place in helping to create what society is and what the future could be. Nonetheless this idea of individuality has been significantly affected by the culture industry. This is one reason why Enlightenment cannot be said to have been fulfilled by modernity. The media has manipulated mass society to conformity rather than individuality. People are distracted by the entertainment that is provided to them by Capitalism in order to prevent their independent thinking. This monopolized diversion is used so that the social injustices we are governed by will not be identified and therefore not challenged. This system ultimately negates the whole idea of Enlightenment and prohibits society from achieving it.
One of the features of the traditional theory is considering academic fields in an isolated way, and disregarding the connection between the different fields. It is similar to factory workers who work on an assembly line, and might not know how the task they are working on plays a role as a whole. Traditional theorists, as well, ignore the grand scheme of things and practicality of what they study. In some cases, knowledge that is theoretically beneficial can be harmful in the real world. For example, although the invention of the atom bomb is beneficial in the sense of the progress of science, but caused a catastrophe; the inventors of the bomb didn’t consider how it will be used practically, and what it will bring to this world. When we apply this theory to the French revolution, traditional theorists didn’t recognize the fault in the social stratification at the time, and the need for social revolution. Even if they understand the structure of the social problems, they don’t try to work on them; they accept the present structure passively as bystanders.
On the other hand, the critical theory, provided by the Frankfurt School, was to study how things play a function in society in a broad historical context. Critical theorists capture the society as full of contradictions; they are aware that contradictions were naturally generated from the society, and they have a purpose toward the real world. They want to solve the contradictions of society by recognizing and criticising them. In other words, their aim is social change. The critical theory is not only to observe and analyze the current situation like traditional theorists do, but to use the outcomes from science to help with overcoming the contradictions of society. Critical theorists criticize any of the theories and ideologies which are unconscious of how they are functioning in society. The critical theory was adapted to the idea of sociology. Critical theorists revealed that the background of philosophies, religions, and cultures are the interests of social class; thus to criticize the philosophies means to criticise social class as well. They encourage people not to follow the norms blindly but to change society. The critical theory, however, doesn’t actually offer practical “solutions” for societal change. It is rather used as a trigger of beginning of actions. Critical Theory has instigated a variety of social actions, such as the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Feminist Movement in modern society.
When it comes to the concept of Enlightment, I don’t think we as a society have successfully achieved this. Taking into account Marx’s theory of Enlightment and what it truly means to be free, we would have to fully own the means of production otherwise even if we are CEOs and Presidents of companies and may think that we have some form of control, the reality is we don’t. We can also see this as a general problem in society as well with people chasing the idea of a free spirited life.
Critical theory gives us the tool of critical thinking within a supporting structure, which allows people can to be able think outside of the box what is learn/taught self to them something new and to understand both sides. The enlightenment is related to knowledge of one’s place in the world and it’s important to helps the problem of better understanding and changing society from their own experiences. Critical theory offers that we must use in order to better understand the politics and culture around us. The case as an example of transgender in the bathroom is hot topic to debate in the United States and candied to be a president as authoritative figure in politics. Both of the cases, people use their critical thinking and their own experiences. Using critical theory as a tool help people understand better with social problems, which it may not help, find a solution. However, helps us to see the negative of social issues and see in opposite way.
The World has never been more similar to the world of 1930s and 1940s when critical theory was emerging. As Adorno and Horkheimer propose, the question is why the most irrational and barbaric conducts of human beings have emerged from the heart of the western civilization, which claimed to have replaced ideology, religion, superstation with reason. Today we are living in a world that this question is relevant again.
After the end of WWII and the formation of the so called “new global order” and its institutions and laws, such as the United Nations and international law enforcement mechanisms, it was promised that the madness and brutality of WWII would never happen again. Moreover, after the fall of the Soviet Union and collapse of the real existing socialism, it was also globally accepted that the liberal democracy is the triumphant of the history and no other socio-political system can be sustainable. Liberal democracy was considered as the only “rational” system, which can implement the values of enlightenment.
But two decades after the fall of the Berlin wall, the world does not seem to have accomplished any of those goals. The everyday increasing inequality in the world, and particularly in the United States, is exacerbating the social and political conflicts. The rise of the new far right political parties, Donald Trump in the US and ultranationalist parties in Europe, are threatening democracy. The finical crisis of the Eurozone has devastated democracy in Greece, the cradle of democracy. The civil war in the Middle East has shown the most horrifying features of humanitarian crisis since WWII and the flow of refugees into Europe has shown the contradictions of the democracies, which are being haunted by Xenophobia. The famine and hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia has not vanished and many “emerging economic powers” such as China are only emerging on the shoulders of the masses of poor workers, who work in horrible condition and earn nothing. The global warming is threatening the future of species, but the world leaders are incapable of prevent that from happening, since they don’t have enough power to challenge the interests of the corporations which benefit from fossil fuels.
While are these phenomena are directing us to barbarism and destruction, the mainstream discourse of the media, political establishment and even academia is fully ignorant and is not courageous enough to reexamine its presumed axioms. The reexamination, which is the premise of the critical theory.
The purpose of Enlightenment was to question traditional authority and bring about change. According to Adorno and Horkheimer the vision of Enlightenment was not fulfilled. Instead of having a society where people are encouraged to think outside of what is taught to them and be individuals people have been taught to conform. If we look at our education system teachers are taught in order to make students pass a test. It’s like the saying goes “if we judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will go on its whole life thinking that it’s stupid.” It is expected in society to comprehend information in the same way, apply it the same way and live out our lives in the same way. We have not brought about social change and transformation, we have achieved the complete opposite. We live in a society today where we conform in the way in we dress, think, our image, and even the status we hold in society. We all want the next big shiny thing, fetishism of the commodities like Marx would say in order to really please other people. We only ever want to get the bigger iPhone because that’s what the next person has. We have been conformed in these square spaces where we grow up to go to school in order to get that prestigious job in order to be able to buy that house and car because that’s what has been embedded to us as young children. Even children who migrate to this country conform to American ideals of what it means to be successful where if they go back to their home country they would be seen as more than affluent. The Enlightenment period was supposed to break the mold of this one way of thinking but instead it has allowed us to not only continue to be in this mold but it has made it a lot harder to break.
This form of analytical reasoning, dialectical thinking is rather idealist. It poses a solution method with no real solution. Additionally, dialectical thinking assumes that everyone is equal in power and that everyone is willing to acquiesce and compromise. In reality that is not the case. If it were so, many of the conflicts worldwide would have been resolved. It completely disregards hierarchy in terms of economic and social status. In regards to the United States, it is evident that the majority of the country’s wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a sliver of the nation’s populace. Those higher on the socioeconomic ladder stomp on those below and they have more control on the dos and don’ts of a society, in terms of what is socially accepted and the policies to be enacted in a society—which impacts the society as a whole.
Furthermore, dialectic thinking, in sense, denies history. When looking at who owns the majority of the wealth and who is most influential in the United States, it is pretty clear that most of them possess the same characteristics. More specifically, they are white men. In looking at history, those same demographics of people who are most powerful today are the same ones that held of the power since the conception of the nation. Dialectic thinking does not take into consideration that there are institutions in place that have either inhibited or set back other groups of people from obtaining that same socioeconomic status.
If everyone in a society were equal in power and status, dialectic thinking may be viable. This way of thinking seems more like a dream. In reality, humans are greedy and power hungry, especially in the United States where the rhetoric of pulling oneself by the bootstraps and the individualistic mindset is on the forefront of American identity.
The object of modernity was to allow individuals to think for themselves and challenge traditional ideas and thought processes, which is something that individuals have been able to do. However, that’s not to say that Enlightenment was fully achieved. We were supposed to have challenged these traditional ideas and have gotten out of it the ‘Great Society’ that Herbert Marcuse mentions at the very beginning of his article “The Individual in Great Society”. This is a society where individuals’ ability to think freely can allow it to grow and prosper significantly and where individuals feel safe. Most of us don’t ask questions and we won’t ask questions because a lot of the time we are taught about certain things in a very one-sided way. For example, in elementary school, we are taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America and that was that. We are also taught that things are to be done in one way. If we do not conform or accept these ideas, we are ostracized or looked down on when all we are trying to do is question and find reason. Unfortunately, asking questions is often looked down on and people who do ask these questions are seen as a threat.
The only people that are likely to feel the safest and most comfortable in today’s society are the affluent, which Marcuse also refers to. What’s more is that we live in a capitalist society in which the affluent prosper more than the classes under them. Marcuse mentions that the affluent are often on the defense and the reason for that is because there are so few of them and so many of the non-affluent. If the non-affluent decide to push for change, the affluent are outnumbered and their power in society is ultimately threatened. Of course, the only ones pushing for change are the few that dig deeper on the issues of the world today. They don’t feed into what the media puts out. They don’t just accept one answer. Instead, they approach issues from different angles and refuse to just accept one view or one perspective. People have become too comfortable with things the way they are and as a result have continued to walk that straight line, either afraid of straying away from it or simply just unaware that there are different pathways the can take.
Through critical theory, it allows us to think about the world in terms of power relations and how human beings are treated as subjects. This ties into the present moment because in politics, it works in an authoritative kind of way, in the sense that through laws, the government shapes how people are supposed to act and what they are supposed to do and not do. Critical thinking also allows for us to question everything being done and not conform to how society wants us to act. In terms of culture, we live in a world where there are a lot of different things going on such as mass shootings, legalization of same-sex marriages and the presidential election. Without critical thinking, we would just live in a world where we would be fine with the many events happening instead of questioning why things are happening.
Science in a way has allowed us to be self-reflective and democratic because as opposed to many years ago, many people weren’t allowed to speak their minds and if they did they would be punished for that, but in present time, people are allowed to voice their opinions through many different platforms such as social media and blogs but at the same time science can be seen as a new form of barbarism because we live in a time where technology has taken over in the sense that many people rely on their phones, laptops, computers etc. heavily to go about their daily lives.
According to critical theorists Horkheimer and Adorno, enlightenment had opposite effects of those intended. What resulted, instead, was a culture of conformity. This is why critical theory is significant, because it allows us to reexamine things we learn and internalize and address the problems that go unnoticed and become normal and accepted. The age of enlightenment brought forward new ideas and new ways of thinking about and approaching religion, science, and politics. The name itself suggests that prior to this age, people were living in the dark, so to speak. Horkheimer and Adorno examine the possibilities of modernity to produce social progress, however they suggest that only barbarism and violence has come from it. This vision enlightenment has not yet been fulfilled, because we are living in a culture of ignorance. The mere fact that we have a presidential candidate that has no real political experience, and is proposing racist, sexist, and overall ignorant ideas to public that is widely accepting it can attest to this. Overall, we live in a culture where the way you look is more significant than your education. Ignorance is applauded, bodies are hyper-sexualized, and we have a reality TV star running for president. This candidate is getting more votes than a candidate that is proposing real change and critiquing a system where the wealthy and politically influential rule. This is where critical theory becomes almost indispensable because if we don’t acknowledge or question these social problems then we conform to our own undoing.
This notion of escape mechanisms is something that is definitely something that exist in society today. If you look at the three parts in which it is broken down into, you can easily make the connections to the way life is lived by people today. First we can look at authoritarianism, which Fromm states as being one of two things, submitting to an authority figure of some sort, or becoming some sort of authority figure yourself. We can look at the roles that police officers play in society today and tie it into authoritarianism. Officers are placed in these positions of power where they basically are set in place to apply structure to our society. Who these officers may become when they put on that uniform may be completely different from who they are when the badge and uniform comes off. There are many cases where you do have these officers abuse their power, but in the bigger picture they are not truly free to choose their own actions and are still part of this system that is set in place. Then there is the idea of submitting and being compliant to power which could also be looked at in the world of law enforcement. In order to avoid conflict or not get arrested, it becomes easier to just do what ever these officers say (to some) when at times it may not even be legal for whatever is taking place to take place. Society is dependent on these officers to protect and serve them so this belief of being compliant and passive gets etched into our consciousness when it comes to anything dealing with them.
Then we look at destructiveness which in today’s society is more alive than ever. Fromm argues that with destructiveness an individual is in a sense eliminating themselves. The idea of “if I destroy the world, how can it hurt me” can be seen through these mass shootings that have been occurring in the U.S. You have these individuals who go into this “kill all” mindset with no true regard for their own life, just one goal in mind, hurt the world, and I will no longer hurt. A recent example of this was the shooting which took place in Orlando. This shooter had no real intent on leaving that club after his heinous act and living a normal life, he was responding to whatever pain he was going through by basically striking out against the world, in this case a gay club.
Finally automaton conformity is evident in everyone’s daily life. Here there is an idea of being this social chameleon and basically blending in with society, hiding within our mass culture to escape freedom. Just look at the name brand clothing people wear, how people dress to be just like others. The Nike brand that people must have even though everyone has it, it not just for a fashion sense but to blend in with his or her surroundings. If everyone in the Bronx is wearing Jordan sneakers, wearing New Balance makes you that outcast who stands out. These mechanisms definitely help explain why people behave the way they do.
Critical theory gives us the tool of critical thinking within a framework, that allows us to view the world differently. Every individual views and analyzes the world given their own experiences. Critical theory offers that framework that we must use in order to better understand the politics and culture around us. Recently, there have been many cases that would be of interest to Horkheimer and Adorno, such as the Stanford Rapist case as an example of the rape culture we perpetuate in the US and Trump as an authoritative figure in politics. In both of these cases, each individual is using critical thinking and their own experiences to shape their world. However, both individuals offer an opposing view to a vast amount of the public. In other words, in order to have dialectical thinking, you need two points of view at the very least. In the Stanford rapist case, the view of Brock Turner, his father, and evidently the judge, offer an opposing view to that of the 1.2 million people around the US who have signed a petition to overturn the judge’s ruling. From the periphery, one can use this dialectical thinking approach to analyze the culture that is around us, some of which is comprised of those who further perpetuate rape culture, and others who have had enough of it and push for it to end. Without critical theory, we would not be able to use this analytical approach to understand and form our own opinions. Similarly, Trump has many supporters who are willing to elect him as president. These supporters, along with Trump, share the same views of the world, and how they want it to be. On the other end, are those that do not want Trump to be president and who have opposing viewpoints on what he stands for. However, without the framework of critical thinking, we would not be able to understand the authoritative figure that Trump is, and how closely his campaign resembles that of Adolf Hitler’s. Critical theory gives us the framework on how to think critically, using previous theorists’ ideas, and allows us to compare and contrast current situations with that of the past, to be able to analyze and maybe even predict what is going to happen and where our society is headed.
Critical thinking allows us to critique the social structures, like culture and politics. This specific thinking allows us to step away from the given everyday information and question these social apparatuses that control our daily life. In politics, usually we are used to an authoritarian figures that tells us what to do. Like Marcuse hinted , we run with the policies that are thrown at us and regulations from these authoritarian figures in society, without questioning their logic. We can’t even fathom to step away from the framework and think for ourselves. This is clearly shown with the forever on-going cycle of continuous consuming in popular culture. We constantly buy things we don’t need. As Marcuse suggested in One Dimensional Society, we constantly try to satisfy “false needs”, we have “false consciousness”, in the present moment things may satisfy us, but in the long run, the ever growing consumer habit doesn’t end. Critical theory allows us to step back and look at the drenching robotic system we’ve been induced into. It allows us to question the structures that have a huge impact on us. It even allows us to come up with propositions or critical analysis of society. It’s a fundamental critical thinking that invokes us to create progress in society and break away from these institutional apparatuses. Like capitalism, politics, institutions. As Marcuse stated,without this critical thinking society becomes, ” One dimensional”. That’s when we really mess up, because will simply be puppets subjected to these strong political powers and capitalism. For the sole purpose of capitalism and no self-individuality at all will be reflected from this outcome.
No, enlightenment will never provide fulfillment, because as Adorno and Horkheimer suggested, this rational thinking has only been a devastation. It’s created a “totalitarian system”. Everything is guided by formulas and numbers, nobody steps out of the mathematical formulas and question how the information is actually come to.There is no critical thinking. The major reason we stood up for thinking for ourselves and rationalizing was to break away from these overly imposing ideas of religion. The purpose was to free ourselves from these imposing structures and think beyond, critically about things and question. It’s turns out, in the modern age , instead of religion, we are now guided by mathematical formula. And as Adorno suggested, anything outside of these formulas, don’t make sense to people. Mainly being because we subject ourselves to these formulas, instead of critical thinking and coming up with our own concepts. This then can lead to this totalitarian “techno-rationality” exploited capitalistic system we now live in. Enlightenment will not lead us to fulfillment, because this so called rationality and science actually exploits us, in any way in can.
Science in all it’s modern forms of technological breakthroughs in my opinion has graduated to new levels of barbarism. In this American capitalist society we witness on a daily basis how many lives are reduced to a time slot or a number. Doctors are now more concerned with the amount of patients they see in a day than the quality of care they provide or the quality of health their patients are in. To say that we are no longer in the days of Henrietta Lacks who was used by John Hopkins Hospital like a guinea pig for their various experiments is to say that violation of patients’ rights is not something that occurs in today’s society. The problem with this thinking can be found in the ways in which we view doctors as the know it all of human health.
Science as I see it has stripped us of our human sense. We place such high expectations and responsibility on science that we have become in a sense crippled. I won’t be surprised if in the near future humans would be required to have a tracking chip implanted into their bodies for whatever reasons scientist can come up with and would convince the one percent that this to is the safest way in protecting humans. But in reality it would be the more advance way in controlling a/the population.
As humans we are required to think for ourselves but stay in line with what society deems appropriate (not going against the point or logic of reasoning). This idea raises many questions for me as to what if we decide to object to chip implant, what would happen to that group of humans? What if a human breaks some “code” of these tractable chips and uncovers some hidden information that was not meant for humans to be informed of? What will become of humans who reluctantly agree to these new forms of science, what would their individuality be if there be any?
Modernity has allowed society to advance but at the same time it limits us in actions and in thoughts. Many times I see someone base their thoughts off of something that they saw on Facebook or on some other social network. Rather than actually investigating for themselves and finding out the facts, most people tend to agree with what the next person thinks. A couple of times I have seen the same argument that people shouldn’t buy Jordans because Michael Jordan invests in the prison system but when you actually research it, it’s a different Michael Jordan. In the terms of technology advancement it does help make things easier, but at what costs. Many people rely so much on their phone or computer that they can’t function without it. Enlightenment allowed society to become lazy and because of this we become victims to modernity. So when asking if the enlightenment has been fulfilled the answer would be yes and no because we have opened our eyes to certain things while closing it on other things.
I believe that we are in a time period where technology and social media are complimenting the market world. Every individual in present society has access to an electronic device, which is used to interact on social media, and social media is then used to market and advertise goods. Take for example the famous celebrities on Instagram that promote goods by taking a picture with their good informing their audience that they should attain that same good. We are enslaved beings in the market world. We live in a totalitarian society where we are controlled to the core. The market world tells us what we should buy and when we should buy it. Companies like Adidas and Nike team up with celebrities to sell their product where high number of sales is the result. The millions of fans attain these products since they have received that celebrity approval. We might not be forced in bodily form to buy a certain item but we are surely exposed to many different name brands that are ranked in value, therefore mentally forcing us to buy the most expensive good since it allows us to become a member of the popular culture. As consumers we seek expensive name brands first since those specific goods bring upon social approval and demonstrate economic competency. And it is at this point where I can state that enlightenment has not yet then be reached. We will never be free since the market world will always remain alive.
Modernity has not achieved Enlightenment as “understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought… aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters” (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1). Instead, modernity and technology has led us to a false sense of unity through conformity and irrationally accepted truths. Since dialectical thinking is reduced, the Enlightenment can be seen as mass deception in a capitalist society in which it presents individualism but actually supports conformity. Technology has served this system as a standardizing tool for the masses and has arguably undermines individual choice. For example, our industry offers a wide variety of choices in products and services that in essence, serve the same purpose. However, these “choices” are used for categorizing consumers. Take a look at the MAC vs PC war, avid supporters in each group only serves to maintain the appearance of competition and range of choices, though they both have many of the same quality, “Something is provided for all so that none may escape”. And these companies do not serve the consumers, but rather it serves and sustains itself, supporting its own constant growth through advertisement.
This culture fosters a powerful distraction. Technology has given us the opportunity to not be self-reflective, for example the film industry, real life is becoming indistinguishable from television shows, like reality T.V.. We accept shows as genuine, and leave no room for imagination or reflection as part of the audience as we are unable to respond within the structure of the film. In addition, the cinema projects a persistent sameness by following the same dramatic structure in similar contexts; the audience then mistakes these spectacles for reality and imagines these lives as our own, especially in romantic films.
The purpose of the industry is produce needs, control these needs, and discipline these needs. Amusement aims to affirm status quo, and creates a sense of pleasure free of thought and lacking in opposition.
The topic of Critical Thinking can be used when talking about many of the issues that are going on today. One very important issue to is what is going on in the United States in terms of politics. The fact that in general, majority of those who live in the US are used to being amused and aren’t at all thinking how that is an issue when it comes to this topic of amusement coming alive when it comes to choosing your next president. We are so used to the idea of the media getting into every aspect of our lives and of it telling us what to do and what to think, that it has become normal to us. It takes a true critical thinker to question these things. To question why someone like Trump is getting as far in the presidential race as he has. He is a true example of the fact that this world lacks critical thinkers and he knows that if he gets his supporters riled up enough to have them agree with the things he says, without them actually thinking through about what his words mean and what his intentions are, that he will be able to get far in the race. It is very scary because, in my opinion, that might put a small minded individual in power.
If the project of modernity was to achieve Enlightenment, do you think this vision has been fulfilled?
Enlightenment has brought us to new heights, but at the same time has limited us. Because of man domination over nature, it has created a world of instrumental rationality, which leaves things as numeric characters. It’s created formulas and calculation. Probability is rational and anything that can not be calculated is irrational. But this becomes internal, and limits the way we think. It diminishes theory and alternatives, reducing it to numbers that in itself, is one dimensional. Life has many dimensions that can not be calculated. That doesn’t mean that something isn’t real and alive. Because of this one dimensional thinking which is due to calculation, our society will not reach it’s full capabilities to explore alternative dimensions that may be there.
We understand knowledge is the key component for economic, social and human progress. Our contemporary society is technology, capital and corruption based. As the book Dialectic of Enlightenment addresses “something went wrong with the Enlightenment.” Enlightenment, in their view, became totalitarian; now it’s all about controlling nature and humans. In terns of controlling human I want to relate it to the education system United Sates. Education policy in United States has been a topic of discussion ever since “no child left behind” act was applied in bush administration period. There was a big question on how these assessments can figure out standard of the education children are getting. Most of all how these assessment that school, teachers and students invest most of the year preparing for can help to improve their education. Standardized test is a weapon DOE and state uses with a help of capitalist to control and micromanage teacher, student and school by making test itself a focus of education. Where school and teachers are forced to spend most of school year to polish students test skills undermining important learning. It only tests in two areas math and English that encourages neglecting important courses like Arts, Science, social studies, music that teaches students to think critically. State spends millions of dollar on Pearson (the private company) to make computer system designed common core test while cutting massive amount of budget on Public school funds. “ The overemphasis on standardized testing has led to narrower and weaker curricula in schools nationwide, with substantially more class time being devoted to test preparation at the expense of richer and more well-rounded instructions. This, in turn, has led to increased student disengagement and alienation, both of which foster disruptive behavior and lead to increased use of exclusionary discipline”( ESEA Reauthorization, and the School-to-Prison Pipelin) This kind of policy in public education turn the value of education into commodity by measuring the diverse apparatus of human intelligence with one scale. This not only treats students as a commodity but as a mass production of commodity who’s critical thinking capacities are robbed through public education system since childhood. It just becomes a dogmatic worshiper of fetish world and slave of capitalism micromanaged by its own monomania.
Although we understand knowledge is the key component for economic, social and human progress. Our contemporary society is technology, capital and corruption based. As central premise of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment addresses “something went wrong with the Enlightenment.” Enlightenment, in their view, became totalitarian; now it’s all about controlling nature and humans. In terns of controlling human I want to relate it to the education system United Sates. Education policy in United States has been a topic of discussion ever since “no child left behind” act was applied in bush administration period. There was a big question on how these assessments can figure out standard of the education children are getting. Most of all how these assessment that school, teachers and students invest most of the year preparing for can help to improve their education. Standardized test is a weapon DOE and state uses with a help of capitalist to control and micromanage teacher, student and school by making test itself a focus of education. Where school and teachers are forced to spend most of school year to polish students test skills undermining important learning. It only tests in two areas math and English that encourages neglecting important courses like Arts, Science, social studies, music that teaches students to think critically. State spends millions of dollar on Pearson (the private company) to make computer system designed common core test while cutting massive amount of budget on Public school funds. “ The overemphasis on standardized testing has led to narrower and weaker curricula in schools nationwide, with substantially more class time being devoted to test preparation at the expense of richer and more well-rounded instructions. This, in turn, has led to increased student disengagement and alienation, both of which foster disruptive behavior and lead to increased use of exclusionary discipline”( ESEA Reauthorization, and the School-to-Prison Pipelin) This kind of policy in public education turn the value of education into commodity by measuring the diverse apparatus of human intelligence with one scale. This not only treats students as a commodity but as a mass production of commodity who’s critical thinking capacities are robbed through public education system since childhood. It just becomes a dogmatic worshiper of fetish world and slave of capitalism micromanaged by its own monomania.
The Frankfurt School and Dialectical thinking create a view of how social theory has grown, but the world has yet to have caught up to it. Beginning with dialectical thinking in our political sphere, we see its use in our presidential races; each opponent is placed on a stage facing the others where they argue two sides of the same coin. From the democratic party’s side, they argue about how liberal and social their policies can get without going too far, and the republican party argues about how conservative their policies can get, both parties are arguing about the same policies just fighting on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The construction of critical thought from the enlightenment according to Horkheimer and Adorno the enlightenment created a controlling environment through controlling nature and humans. If we extract the idea of the enlightenment and commodify it, the exchange of creation, information, and invention for an enlightenment becomes real. At the time of the original enlightenment we see science, ideas, philosophy, and life begins to take on new meaning because of all the progress being made. Although the progress allowed something as world encompassing (and totalitarian) as religion to take on the guise of a key in the enlightenment man, we saw progress none the less.
Currently we see ourselves in a technology boom, information is at our finger tips every second of every day. The access to information has the possibility to teach society and construct it into one of the most well informed and educated societies to have ever existed, a true enlightenment with perspectives from every corner of the world. By having this information accessible, members of society tend to believe themselves enlightened whether or not they take the time to do research and become educated. The advancement of technology gave our society the idea of enlightenment and forced a fake rationality on people who use skewed logic to produce totalitarian, repressive, orange, dictators with bad haircuts.
The problem of Enlightenment is that furthermore, created a culture that violates individuality by compelling conformity. the potential of the individual is not being destroyed by fascism alone rather, it is the positivist turn of modern science and the Enlightenment. In today’s society individuals are to comfortable with the lives they live and what goes around them even if they don’t agree with everything. Adorno and Horkheimer both seemly assume that all life takes places in front of the Tv (which we can agree with right now with he presidential elections, where it has become a reality Tv show and a daily entertainment). Their view of culture is that it compromises a totalizing system, from which they say we must escape, but from which there can never be any form of escape. But critics who read their work also argue that the products of mass culture would not be popular if people did not enjoy them. Culture is in this sense self-determining people get what they desire, but are people really getting what they desire or are they just to comfortable with whats around them to change or do anything. For many their daily routine is better then dealing with something different.
Critical theory allows us to be, like you stated in class, “theoretically promiscuous”, in the sense that it does not only look into Marx/Hegel theories, but it explores new concept and ideas through other human sciences, such as psychology and philosophy. Using Critical Theory as a tool helps evaluate social problems in a deeper level. Culture and Politics are both social atmospheres filled with contradicting values and beliefs that affect society. Although it may not help find a solution to societal issues, Critical Theory helps us recognize the negative aspects of social issues and exposes opposing views. Critical Theory takes Classical Theory to the next level and applies it to contemporary culture by not only focusing on the society as a whole but by considering individuals as humans capable of being rational.
I found these videos that provide a glimpse of what these prominent figures believed-
Max Horkheimer on Critical Theory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBaY09Qi-w0
Video on Theodor Adorno:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YGnPgtWhsw
*‘The School of Life’ YouTube channel has more videos on influential philosophers and sociologists that make it easier to understand their ideas and theories*
If the critique of Enlightment (from a critical theory) perspective is that is encourages conformity, then yes, I believe modernity has achieved it. When we fail to reach dialectical thinking, when we are unable to or refuse to think objectively, that’s when conformity becomes dangerous. I go back to the segment we watched on Samantha Bee’s show where she interviewed several Trump supporters. This elitist idea of what success looks like appeared to resonate with the group. The idea of winning, of regaining success seems to truly pull at people’s emotions, so much that choosing politics that would affect a greater good isn’t important. The demand for policy that forces conversation above a fifth grade level isn’t required when you’re being promised false hopes of success. Trump is the symbol of capatalistic endeavors (whether his ventures have been successful or not is another story), and the incredible amount of support he has garnered shows the conformity in which people are caged in. Even those who have had the tools to think outside of themselves, educated citizens would prefer to support a potential leader whose campaigns runs on hate mongering. Our political atmosphere continues to lack dialectical conversation and it is evident in the conversations surrounding issues of healthcare or minimum wage. It is apparent in our debates that resemble lowbrow reality television.
The tools provided by Critical Theory can provide a lot of insight into the rationale of many politicians in today’s society. The theory that humans being rational beings and thus our reality is based on rational capacities rather than things we can see, hear or feel, can be seen characterized in many arguments on pressing issues in the political arena. Many arguments are not based in fact, but rather the plausibility of a certain situation coming to fruition. Many politicians use this to their advantage and create stories of “what-if’s” and hypothetical scenarios to appeal to the rationalization processes of their audience. If the scenario seems realistic enough, it becomes reality to many individuals and the results are sometimes a large group of individuals following behind a leader blindly based on false premises, such as those supporting the Trump candidacy. While a rational society is possible, if the rationale is influenced by misleading banter, it can very well end up with irrational thoughts being held in the same capacity as logical thoughts.
Furthermore, as it relates to the challenge of contradiction and dialectical thinking, while it can lead to progress, sometimes the pursuit of truth and the achievement of progress through this discourse may not be possible. Dialectical thinking in today’s society seems to be more of an issue than it is a resolution, as opposing sides of thought usually remain in opposition rather than reason together to find a synthesis. Critical theory argues that formal rationality underlies repression and leads to totalitarianism, but dialectical reasoning can only be successful if both parties are open to hearing opposing arguments and willing to reach an agreement on a solution which may be different from both points of view and incorporates both trains of thought. Dialectical thinking, in theory, can be a solution to many of the problems America presently faces politically, however, the atmosphere which exists today does not allow for any kind of rational reasoning. It is primarily based in hearsay and personal vendettas which makes dialectical thinking nearly impossible.