Max Horkheimer - Biography, Philosophy and writings

Philosopher and social theorist, born in Stuttgart, SW Germany. He studied at Frankfurt, where he was director of the Institute for Social Research (1930–3) (the ‘Frankfurt school’). He moved with the school to New York City when the Nazis came to power, and returned to Frankfurt in 1950 as professor at the university. He published a series of influential articles in the 1930s, collected in two volumes under the title Kritische Theorie (1968), which expound the basic principles of the school in their critique of industrial civilization. His other major works include Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947, Dialectic of Enlightenment), with Adorno, and Eclipse of Reason (1947).

Max Horkheimer (February 14, 1895 – July 7, 1973) was a Jewish-German philosopher and sociologist, a founder and guiding thinker of the Frankfurt School/critical theory.

Biography

Horkheimer was born in Stuttgart to an assimilated Jewish family;

In 1925 he was habilitated with a dissertation entitled Kant's Critique of Judgement as Mediation between Practical and Theoretical Philosophy written under Cornelius.

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.

Philosophy and writings

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. He details the difference between objective and subjective reason and states that we have moved from objective to subjective. Objective reason deals with universal truths that dictate that an action is either right or wrong. Subjective reason takes into account the situation and social norms. Actions that produce the best situation for the individual are "reasonable" according to subjective reason. The movement from one type of reason to the other occurred when thought could no longer accommodate these objective truths or when it judged them to be delusions. Under subjective reason, concepts lose their meaning. All concepts must be strictly functional to be reasonable. Because subjective 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.

Writing in 1946, Horkheimer was strongly influenced by the Nazi legacy in Germany. He 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 the misuse and misunderstanding of reason: if people use true reason to critique their societies, they will be able to identify and solve their problems.