Author: M. Farahi Tojegi
A Brief Overview of the Frankfurt School (Part two)
Stages of the Formation of the Frankfurt School
The first stage of the Frankfurt School was between 1923 and 1933. In this stage, the Center for Social Studies was established, and the main focus was on studying new issues of capitalist society from the perspective of Marxism, without a specific perspective. During this period, the research conducted at the institute was completely diverse and different, and in no way was it considered a specific interpretation of Marxist thought, as it was later included in critical theory. Researchers during this period paid more attention to historical materialism.
The second stage coincided with the exile of the founders of critical theory from Frankfurt to America and other places. From 1950 to 1933, Hegelian ideas were the dominant aspect of critical theory and the direction of the research and activities of this school. Freudian tendencies were also raised during this period with the election of Horkheimer as the head of the Center for Studies and Cooperation with Adorno and Marcuse; Thus, the philosophical-psychological rather than the economic-historical orientation is the distinguishing feature of these two periods. The critical perspective began in 1937 with Horkheimer’s article on Traditional and Critical Theory and was further developed by Adorno and Marcuse. [1]
During this period and until the end of the 1940s, the critique of positivism and scientism led to the examination of scientism based on instrumental technological rationality.
In the third stage, since the Institute returned to Frankfurt in 1950, the main ideas and perspectives of critical theory were clearly formulated in a number of major works by the Institute’s member thinkers and writers, and the Frankfurt School gradually established a fundamental influence on German social thought, and its influence later expanded throughout Europe and also in the United States, where many of the Institute’s members (notably Marcuse) remained. This was a period of great intellectual and political influence of the Frankfurt School, which reached its peak in the late 1960s, following the rapid growth of radical student movements.
From the early 1970s, which can be considered the fourth stage in the history of the Frankfurt School, the influence of the Frankfurt School began to slowly decline, and indeed, with the deaths of Adorno in 1669 and Horkheimer in 1773, it effectively ceased to exist as a school of thought. In its final years, the Frankfurt School had become so distant from Marxism, which had once been its main source of inspiration, that, according to Martin Jay, it lost its right to be among its many branches, as its entire approach to social theory developed and was increasingly called into question by new or accepted forms of Marxist thought. Nevertheless, some of the basic concepts of the Frankfurt School have found their way into the works of many social scientists (both Marxist and non-Marxist), and Jürgen Habermars has also seriously elaborated on these concepts in a new critique of the conditions of possibility of social cognition and a reassessment of Marx’s theory of history and modern capitalism. [2]
The real founders of critical theory
The real founders of critical theory are Lukács and Gramsci. While remaining Marxists, these two thinkers revised Marxism based on the views of Hegel and Weber. Gramsci criticized Marxism in terms of materialism and mechanical insight. His problem is hegemony, which refers to a kind of durable and coherent authority. This problem is not only about the way of dominating production, but also the element of culture. [3]
Gramsci paid attention to examining several issues, including:
A: How does a civil society acquire its existing form? In response to this question, he analyzed the behavior of intellectuals based on intellectual organization. In his opinion, the main factor in the structure of civil society is intellectual organization.
B: His problem is to find the mechanisms existing in society that are used for collective consensus. These tools and mechanisms are not merely tools of the ruling class’s domination, but are also effective cultural elements. On the other hand, Lukács, since the philosophical trend in Germany (neo-Kantian) was towards the separation of empirical research from theoretical and logical issues, tried to differentiate between empirical and theoretical issues and the value of truth. He was also influenced by Georg Simmel, a contemporary sociologist of the time, and emphasized the separation of nature and culture. He condemned the positivist view or the application of the principles of empirical science in the humanities. On the other hand, he was influenced by the phenomenological school of Edmund Husserl, and focused on ethics, philosophy, and aesthetics. The developments of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe (1914-1924), especially the First World War and the social and national intellectual movements, had a major impact on the formation of Lukács’s thought. In addition to these developments, he was influenced by two intellectual currents: positivism and the negation of empiricism. [4]
In the book History and Class Consciousness, Lukács presents one of the key concepts of his thought, namely reification. He presents this concept in line with Marx’s concept of alienation, while Marx claimed that the worker becomes alienated in the process of production and had presented alienation at the level of the working class. Lukács has made Marx’s concept of alienation more general and has claimed that in the capitalist system, in addition to the working class, other classes, sectors and organizations also suffer from a kind of reification. According to Lukács, the way to salvation is class consciousness and the coming to their senses. [5]
Later, we will see that one of the key concepts in the Frankfurt School is the change in the view of the working class and the failure to recognize its revolutionary nature, to the point where the intellectual class was introduced as the main factor in the changes.
Continues…
Previous Part / Next Part
References:
- Azad Armaki, 1376, p. 141.
- Batomor, 1370, p. 15.
- Azad Armaki, 1376, p. 137.
- Azad Armaki, 1376, p. 138.
- Azad Armaki, 1376, p. 137.
