THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

A group of philosophers, cultural critics, and social scientists based around the Frankfurt (Germany) Institute for Social Research were primarily concerned with integrating philosophical analysis with then-recent results in the social sciences as part of a political critique of society. Early work in the Frankfurt School, exemplified by Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), sought to interpret the social sciences within a Marxist framework, whereby norms of evaluation were to be understood as determined by historical context. Such Marxist restrictions were later relaxed, but the Frankfurt School remained committed to the idea that philosophical interpretation of the social sciences could be used as a tool for political emancipation. Following World War II, this emphasis turned to an increasingly pessimistic “critique of instrumental reason,” a term for the dehumanization of man caused by a bureaucratic society that treats nature as nothing more than a resource. In response, Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) argued that only aesthetic experience allowed the possibility of a genuine (that is, non-instrumental) relationship with the world. The second generation of the Frankfurt School has been more optimistic. Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) developed theories of communication, arguing that the possibility of political emancipation lies not in Marxist dialectic, but the discursive practices of liberal democracy.