traditional and critical theory, max horkheimer (1937)

(347-348): tracing the rise of theory as the science of society ("all this adds upt o a pattern which is, outwardly, much like the rest of life in a society dominated by industrial production techniques...")

(348-349): weber's attempt, too, he is arguing, is not substantively different--it is also "traditional theory"

(349): key--"beyond doubt, such work is a moment in the continuous transformation and development of the material foundations of that society. but the conception of theory was absolutized, as though it were grounded in the inner nature of knowledge as such..., and thus it became a reified, ideological category."

(349): "the traditional idea of theory is based on scientific activity as carried on within the division of labor at a particular stage in the latter's development... in this view of theroy, theferfore, the real social function of science is not made manifest; it speaks not of what theory means in human life, but only of what it means in the isolated sphere in which for historical reasons it comes into existence... "

(350): seems to want to emphasize the perpetual situatedness of theory -- it is always unfolding in concrete historical and social contexts, but cannot see that itself

(350): towards ideology--"the world which is given to the individual and which he must accept and take into account is, in its present and continuing form, a product of the activity of society as a whole. the objects we perceive in our surroundings... bear the mark of having been worked on by man. it is not only in clothing and appearence, in outward form and emotional make-up that men are the product of history."

(350): "to the extent then that the facts which the individual and his theory encounter are socially produced, there must be rationality in them, even if in a restricted sense."

(351): reading Kant's honest contradictions as a product of the general contradiction of bourgeois society: "the collaboration of men in society is the mode of existence which reason urges upon them and so they do apply their powers and thus confirm their own rationality. But at the same time their work and its results are alienated from them, and the whole process with all its waste of work-power and human life, and with its wars and all its senseless wretchedness, seems to be an unchangeable force of nature, a fate beyond man's control..."

(352): key passage--"the two-sided character of the social totality in its present form becomes, for men who adopt the critical attitude, a conscious opposition... in recognizing the present form of economy and the whole culture it generates to be the product of human work..., these men identify themselves with this totality and conceive it as will and reason. it is their own world. at the same time, however, the experience the fact that society is comparable to nonhuman natural processes, to pure mechanisms, because cultural forms which are supported by war and oppression are not the creations of a unified, self-conscious will. that world is not their own but the world of capital."

(352): "...at the same time they consider it rank dishonesty simply to accept the interpretation; the critical acceptance of the categories which rule social life contains simultaneously their condemnation..."

(352): "reason cannot become transparent to itself as long as men act as members of an organism which lacks reason..."

(353): a bit like what Weber was stressing--theory must take its contingency, and the contingency of its larger context, as its starting-point. "for men of the critical mind, the facts, as they emerge from the work of society, are not extrinsic in the same degree as they are for the savant or for members of other professions..."

(353): "if activity governed by reason is proper to man, then existent social practice, which forms the individual's life down to its least details, is inhuman, and this inhumanity affects everything that goes on in the society."

(354): important, and true--it's not to be simply subordinate to what the 'proletariat' thinks, but rather ought to facilitate the making of that true, universal subject: "...it must be added that even the situation of the proletariat is, in this society, no guarantee of correct knowledge... the intellectual is satisfied to proclaim with reverent admiration the creative strength of the proletariat and finds satisfaction in adapting himself to it and in canonizing it. he fails to see that such an evasion of theoretical effort (which the passivcity of his own thinking spares him) and of temporary opposition to the masses (which active theoretical effort on his part might force upon him) only makes the masses blinder and weaker than they need be. his own thinking should in fact be a critical, promotive factor in the development of the masses..."

(355): just like the ideas bourgeoisie can't really tell you what's going on, it is also the case that a "systematic presentation of the contents of proletarian consciousness cannot provide a true picture of proletarian existence and interests..." instead, one must pursue a "dynamic unity" with the oppressed class.

(355): the necessary 'obstinacy' of fantasy

(355-356): critical theory begins with capital, in effect

(356-357): yes--"but the critical theory of society is, in its totality, the unfolding of a single existential judgment... the theory says that the basis form of the... commodity economy on which modern history rests contains in itself the internatl and external tensions of the modern era... after an enormous extension of human control over nature, it finally hinders further development and drives humanity into a new barbarism..."

(357): again, the object of theory cannot and must not exist outside of us: "a consciously critical attitude, however, is part of the development of society: the constructing of the course of history as the necessary product of an economic mechanism simultaneously contains both a protest against this order of things, a protest generated by the order itself, and the idea of self-determination for the human race, that is the idea of a state of affairs in which man's actions no longer flow from a mechanism but from his own dcsision... if we think here of the object of the theory in separation from the theory, we falsify it and fall into quietism or conformism."

(358): as such, a different understanding of 'necessity'--"both elements in this concept of necessity--the power of nature and the weakness of society--are interconnected and are based on the experienced effort of man to emancipate himself from coercion by nature and from those forms of social life... which have become a straitjacket for him..."

(358): stability of critical theory owing to the endurance of class society

(359-360): speaking of 'monopoly capitalism'--"the end reslut of the process is a society dominated no longer by independent owners but by cliques of industrial and political leaders." liberalism is dead--"the individual no longer has any ideas of his own. the content of mass belief, in which no one really believes, is an immediate product of the ruling economic and political bureaucracies..."

(360): "it is possible for the consciousness of every social stratum today to be limited and corrupted by ideology, however much, for its circumstances, it may be bent on truth... the critical theory has no specific influence on its side, except concern for the abolition of social injustice. this negative formulation, if we wish to express it abstractly, is the materialist content of the idealist concept of reason..."