Max Horkheimer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Max Horkheimer

Western Philosophy 20th century philosophy
Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg.
Full name	Max Horkheimer
School/tradition	critical theory
Main interests	social theory, Counter-Enlightenment
Notable ideas	Critical Theory, The Culture Industry, the Authoritarian Personality, Eclipse of Reason
Influenced by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Weber, Freud, Pollock, Adorno
Influenced Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, Honneth

Max Horkheimer (February 14, 1895 – July 7, 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist, and a founding member of the Frankfurt School).

[edit] Biography

Horkheimer was born in Stuttgart to a Jewish family. Due to parental pressure, he did not initially pursue an academic career, leaving secondary school at the age of sixteen to work in his father's factory. However, after World War I he enrolled at Munich University, where he studied philosophy and psychology. He subsequently moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he studied under Hans Cornelius. There he met Theodor Adorno, several years his junior, with whom he would strike a lasting friendship and a fruitful collaborative relationship.

In 1925, Horkheimer was habilitated with a dissertation entitled Kant's Critique of Judgement as Mediation between Practical and Theoretical Philosophy written under Cornelius. He was appointed Privatdozent the following year. When the Institute for Social Research's directorship became vacant in 1930, he was elected to the position. In the same year Horkheimer took over the chair of social philosophy at Frankfurt University. The following year publication of the Institute's Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung began, with Horkheimer as its editor.^[1]

Horkheimer's venia legendi was revoked by the new Nazi government, and the Institute closed in 1933. He emigrated to Switzerland, from where he would leave for the USA the following year, where Columbia University hosted the Institute in exile.^[2]

In 1940, Horkheimer received American citizenship and moved to Pacific Palisades, California, where his collaboration with Adorno would yield the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Unlike Adorno, Horkheimer was never a prolific writer and in the following twenty years he published little, although he continued to edit Studies in Philosophy and Social Science as a continuation of the Zeitschrift. In 1949 he returned to Frankfurt, where the Institute reopened in 1950. Between 1951 and 1953 Horkheimer was rector of the University of Frankfurt,^[3] where he continued to teach until his retirement in the mid-1960s.

He returned to America in 1954 and 1959 to lecture at the University of Chicago. He remained an important figure until his death in Nuremberg in 1973. He is buried at the Jewish cemetery in Berne, Switzerland.

[edit] Philosophy and writings

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (March 2007)

Horkheimer's work is marked by a concern to show the relation between effect (especially suffering) and concepts (understood as action-guiding expressions of reason). In this, he responded critically to what he saw as the one-sidedness of both neo-Kantianism (with its focus on concepts) and Lebensphilosophie (with its focus on expression and world-disclosure). Horkheimer did not think either was wrong, but insisted that the insights of each school could not on their own adequately contribute to the repair of social problems.

Eclipse of Reason

Horkheimer's book, Eclipse of Reason, deals with the concept of reason within the history of Western philosophy. Horkheimer defines true reason as rationality, which can only be fostered in an environment of free, critical thinking. He details the difference between objective, subjective and instrumental reason, and states that we have moved from the former through the center and into the latter (though subjective and instrumental reason are closely connected). Objective reason deals with universal truths that dictate that an action is either right or wrong. It is a concrete concept, and a force in the world which requires specific modes of behavior. The focus in the objective faculty of reason is on ends, as opposed to means. Subjective reason is an abstract concept of reason, and focuses primarily on ends. Specifically, the reasonable nature of purposes of action are irrelevant - the ends only serve the purpose of the subject (generally self-advancement or preservation). To be "reasonable" in this context is to be suited to a particular purpose, to be "good for something else". This aspect of reason is universally conforming, and easily furnishes ideology. In instrumental reason, the sole criterion of reason is its operational value or purposefulness, and with this, the idea of truth becomes contingent on mere subjective preference (hence the relation with subjective reason). Because subjective/instrumental reason rules, the ideals of a society, for example democratic ideals, become dependent on the "interests" of the people instead of being dependent on objective truths. Nevertheless, Horkheimer admits that objective reason has its roots in Reason ("Logos" in Greek) of the subject. He concludes, "If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate - in short, the emancipation from fear - then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service we can render."^[4]

Writing in 1941, Horkheimer outlined how the Nazis had been able to make their agenda appear "reasonable", but also issued a warning about the possibility of this happening again. Horkheimer believed that the ills of modern society are caused by misunderstanding of reason: if people use true reason to critique their societies, they will be able to solve problems they may have. Despite the explicit common referrals to "subjective" reason in the book, his frequent connecting of it with relativism could be an indication that by "subjective reason" Horkheimer also means "relativist reason".

[edit] Select bibliography

• Authority and the Family (1936)
• Traditional and Critical Theory (1937)
• Critique of Instrumental Reason (1967)
• Dawn & Decline
• Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) - with Theodor Adorno
• Eclipse of Reason (1947) orig. 1941 "The End of Reason" Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences Vol. IX
• Egoism and the Freedom Movement
• The Authoritarian State
• The Longing for the Totally Other

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Max Horkheimer Internet Archive contains complete texts of Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944), Theism and Atheism (1963) and Feudal Lord, Customer, and Specialist (1964).
• Short Description of Eclipse of Reason