Enlightenment Dialectics - Philosophical Fragments - Library of the Century

Author: (German) Max Horkheimer
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: As a renowned German philosopher and advocate of the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer's "Critical Theory" holds a pivotal position in German intellectual circles. This book is one of his major works. As the author himself stated, the book explores the theme of various trends by which cultural progress turns into its opposite. The book attempts to reveal this theme by describing American social phenomena in the 1930s and 40s. As a renowned German philosopher and advocate of the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer's "Critical Theory" holds a pivotal position in German intellectual circles. This book is one of his major works. As the author himself stated, the book explores the theme of various trends by which cultural progress turns into its opposite. The book attempts to reveal this theme by describing American social phenomena in the 1930s and 40s. The centralized unification trend revealed in the book, although interrupted, has not been completely ended; its threat remains omnipresent amid authoritarianism and war. The book once diagnosed that enlightenment had transformed into positivism, had transformed into the myth of facts, and had transformed into the unity of intellect and an antagonistic spirit—all of these diagnoses are fully proven today. Our historical concept does not assume that they have been overcome, nor does it pursue superficial understanding from an positivist perspective. As a critique of philosophy, it does not intend to abandon philosophy.