The Frankfurt School

Mid-twentieth century school of social philosophy and cultural criticism, originally centered around the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (hence the name). A highly unorthodox school of Marxism, strongly influenced by Hegel and Freud. Its period of greatest social influence was the late 1960s and early 1970s, when one of its members (Marcuse) was much cited by student radicals, perhaps with more enthusiasm than genuine understanding. (Another leader of the school, Adorno, becaming notorious for setting the police on student protestors who disrupted his classes.) Jürgen Habermas is the last living representative of the school, being from a younger generation than the founders, and a very different order of scholar.

At some point I might try to summarize the leading ideas of the school. They are very extreme examples of ways of thinking about society, both normatively and descriptively, for which I have very little sympathy, yet are closely affiliated to ideas I am receptive to. (E.g.: so far as I can see, they were all what Marxists would call "idealists", which is not a compliment, yet they claimed to be Marxists, even historical materialists!) My interest in them is thus interest in my notorious and embarrassing ideological cousins...

Perceptions by outsiders. Ties to US gov't, military, industry, academy. (Marcuse, for instance, worked for the OSS during the Second World War, and by the end of it was something like their number two man for Europe; Lowenthal worked for Voice of America; and I think Adorno did something like that too, though I can't imagine what the man was good for, other than ranting about the benevolent horrors and horrible benevolence of capitalism. N.B., working for Allied intelligence was not a bad thing.)

Theodor Adorno, "The Stars Down to Earth"
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations [Compare the last chapter, on the philosophy of history, with e.g., The German Ideology, and tell me how this man could think of himself as a Marxist? A remarkably stylist, yes...]
Erich Fromm ["The Feuerbach of our time" --- Kolakowski], Escape from Freedom
Ernest Gellner, "Positivism against Hegelianism", in his Relatvisism and the Social Sciences
Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, vol. III The Breakdown. [A chapter on the school in general, and another on Marcuse in particular. Deservedly withering.]
Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman, Prophets of Deceit: A Portrait of the American Agitator [Free full text. Right-wing American demagogues of the '30s and '40s. Lowenthal seems to be a drop-out from the school: too empirical, too sane, and too well-adjusted to being a professor at Berkeley. The book deserves to be read with care, because these people are now a majority in Congress. See "Mother of All Conspiracies".]
Alasdair MacIntyre, Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man [Deserves to be withered.]
Eliseo Vivas, Contra Marcuse [Almost inspires sympathy for the poor man.]
Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism [A magnificent work of scholarship. Unfortunately it has no connection to anything else the school has produced, and subsequent research has proved that much of its factual basis is just wrong.]

Raymond Guess, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School [Blurb]
Jürgen Habermas
- Communications and the Evolution of Society
- Knowledge and Human Interests
- Theory of Communicative Action
- Towards a Rational Society
Martin Jay, Dialectics of Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923--1950
Gertrude J. Robinson, "The Katz/Lowenthal Encounter: An Episode in the Creation of Personal Influence", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciencce 608 (2006): 76--96
Richard Wolin
- Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption
- Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse [Blurb]

Notebooks

The Frankfurt School