Max Horkheimer - Thought

Thought

Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution
The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason
The Fear of Freedom
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Minima Moralia
Eros and Civilization
One-Dimensional Man
Negative Dialectics
The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action
Notable theorists
Max Horkheimer · Theodor Adorno
Herbert Marcuse · Walter Benjamin
Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock
Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas
Important concepts
Critical theory · Dialectic · Praxis
Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism
Popular culture · Culture industry
Advanced capitalism
Privatism · Non-identity
Communicative rationality
Legitimation crisis

Horkheimer's work is marked by a concern to show the relation between affect (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 on their own could not adequately contribute to the repair of social problems. Horkheimer focused on the connections between social structures, networks/subcultures, and individual realities, concluding that we are affected and shaped by the proliferation of products on the market place. It is also important to note that Horkheimer collaborated with Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin.

Read more about this topic:  Max Horkheimer

Famous quotes containing the word thought:

    Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
    Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 6:34.

    From the Sermon on the Mount.

    I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.
    Diane Arbus (1923–1971)

    How can one explain all the time and thought that goes into raising a child, all the opportunities for mistakes, all the chances to recover and try again? How does one break the news that nothing permanent can be formed in an instant—children are not weaned, potty trained, taught manners, introduced to civilization in one or two tries—as everyone imagined.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)