Abstract
The main difference between critical theory and others, as famously outlined by Horkheimer, is its critical aim: as opposed to “traditional” theories that mainly try to understand or even explain society, critical theory wants to overcome the current state of society and help erect a more “reasonable” society without exploitation, alienation and unnecessary suffering. However, culture has not always been the central interest of critical theory. The initial approach of Karl Marx rather stressed economic structures and political struggles, whereas later thinkers such as Habermas and Honneth almost exclusively focused on social norms. The focus shifted from political economy to psychoanalysis and culture in the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and further on to moral and legal philosophy in the second generation. This chapter mainly focuses on these theories, in particular on the works of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. In order to frame these approaches, the chapter starts with an overview of Marxian critical theory and ends with an outlook on the normativist stance of later theories.
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Notes
- 1.
“The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness” (Marx, MEW 13, 8).
- 2.
“Eine echt erklaerende Literaturgeschichte aber muss materialistisch sein. Das heisst, sie muss die oekonomischen Grundstrukturen, wie sie sich in der Dichtung darstellen, und die Wirkungen untersuchen, die innerhalb der durch die Ökonomie bedingte Gesellschaft das materialistisch interpretierte Kunstwerk ausuebt” (Loewenthal 1932, 318).
- 3.
“Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking” (Marx/Engels, MEW 3, 26f.).
- 4.
He is interested in “signs” that allow to group cultural artifacts to historical periods: “ Both the pragmatic reactions and contrivances of men and the so-called spiritual expressions of the life of peoples and classes show characteristic traits according as they belong to one or other of the great historical complexes which we call periods or stages of development of mankind. By such signs … the genuine student of history recognizes the historical location of a particular event or work” (Horkheimer 1936, 8, engl. 52).
- 5.
Today, “the disruptive element in the culture is making itself more strongly felt than the unitive” (Horkheimer 1936, 75, engl. 128). “In the face of this will to preserve, cultural forces themselves will come more and more to seem like counterforces which need regulation” (1936, 76, engl. 128). The original contradiction in Marx was between “forces” and “relations” of production. Note that the first edition of the Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung from 1932 pictured culture in general as a “force of production” (Wiggershaus 1993, 137f.).
- 6.
“[N]aked coercion cannot by itself explain why the subject classes have borne the yoke so long in times of cultural decline, when property relationships, like existing ways of life in general, had obviously reduced social forces to immobility and the economic apparatus was ready to yield a better method of production. The historian must here study the whole culture, although knowledge of material conditions is, of course, the basis of understanding” (Horkheimer 1936, 13, engl. 57f.). “[T]he periods of restoration last a long time, and during them the outmoded cultural apparatus as well as the psychic make-up of men and the body of interconnected institutions acquire new power. Then there is need to investigate the culture thoroughly” (1936, 15, engl 59f.).
- 7.
“The bureaucracy which operates the State’s coercive apparatus has its own interests and power, but so does the staff of any cultural institution in the strict sense” (Horkheimer 1936, 14, engl. 59).
- 8.
For example, “romantic love … is a social phenomenon which can drive the individual into opposition or even a break with society” (Horkheimer 1936, 14, engl. 58). “Within the family, however, unlike public life, relationships were not regulated through the market” (Horkheimer 1936, 63, engl. 114). This was even more “humanistic” than Fromm’s approach at the time: for Fromm, the family directly imprinted society’s imperatives on the child’s character.
- 9.
“Durch Philosophie und durch Kunst wird der große Abstand zwischen dem, was ist, und dem, was sein soll, an dem je Seienden selber offenbar” (Horkheimer 1960, 93).
- 10.
Heinz Steinert argued that Adorno never bothered to show how the exceptional modern works of art he relied upon (by Beckett, Kafka, Schönberg and Alban Berg) were possible socially or economically. It seems that a hint to the “talent” of the artists already was an answer for Adorno (Steinert 1993, 115, 181f.). However, if it was possible for them to overcome the imperatives of the cultural industry artistically, why was it not possible for others as well?
- 11.
Note that this was written long before Andy Warhol became famous. In recent decades, the demarcation between design and fine art has indeed become artificial in many cases—it is rather the context that defines how we define certain artifacts.
- 12.
In comparison, see Marcuse’s description of the classical ideal of personality: “The highest point which man can attain is a community of free and rational persons in which each has the same opportunity to unfold and fulfil all how his powers” (Marcuse 1937, 70, engl. 91, paraphrasing Herder). This is an egalitarian perfectionism.
- 13.
“Kultur in menschlichen Beziehungen bedeutet, nicht anders als in Speisen und Getränken, veredelte Natur. Sprache und Bild, Freundschaft, Liebe, alle Sitten sind aus dem Zusammenhang der bedingenden Situation gelöste Arten des Ausdrucks, die einst von den Oberen bewahrt und gepflegt, von den Unteren angenommen worden sind” (Horkheimer 1960, 105; cf. Horkheimer 1937, 180, engl. 232).
- 14.
“The traditional images of artistic alienation are indeed romantic in as much as they are in aesthetic incompatibility with the developing society. This incompatibility is the token of their truth. What they recall and preserve in memory pertains to the future: images of a gratification that would dissolve the society which suppresses it” (Marcuse 1964, 80, engl. 53).
- 15.
“Das überschwengliche Lebensgefühl des Künstlers strebt immer wieder nach Entfaltung, Erfüllung in der Wirklichkeit, nach Abfindung mit der Umwelt, nach einer [ihm] gemäßen Lebensform, und immer wieder findet es in der Wirklichkeit keinen Raum und drängt nach anderen Welten der Erfüllung” (Marcuse 1922, 25). Goethe is the role model per se in this book (1922, 72).
- 16.
Whether they had their own cultures was not a question Marcuse considered worthwile enough to pursue. In the few occassion where he cites artworks of lower cultures, he acknowledges their integration into practical life, but criticizes their lack of “form” (their “antiform”) which makes them an easy prey for commodification (he mentions Jazz 1972, 111, but also the language and music of “black people” in the USA, 96, 134—a few years earlier Marcuse was much more optimistic, see Marcuse 1969, 74f., engl. 47).
- 17.
The beautification (or, with Benjamin: “aesthetization”) of social reality that once was a radical idea has now become realized by the cultural industry—but in the wrong way (“cultural images” are incorpated “into the kitchen, the office, the shop”, Marcuse 1964, 61). Here, Marcuse preceedes the analysis of Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, who also mention a “realization” of the “articistic criticism” of earlier days.
- 18.
“Form … is essential to art” (Marcuse 1967, 120). “Jede unsublimierte, unmittelbare Darstellung ist zur Unwahrheit verurteilt” (Marcuse 1972, 133), denn sie “verliert mit der ästhetischen Form den politischen Inhalt” (136). One of Marcuse’s examples for revolutionary, but formless art, is the music of Jefferson Airplane (1972, 135, fn.). If one listens to their albums of the 1960s again, one may have second thoughts—today, these are classical works.
- 19.
“Aber die affirmative Kraft der Kunst ist gleichzeitig die Macht, die diese Affirmation negiert” (Marcuse 1972, 115).
- 20.
Benjamin cites accusations of a “littérature industrielle” or a “Fabrique de Romans” (GS I.2, 529 fn. and 531 fn.) and also describes how the administrative net of social control tightened already (549, from 1939).
- 21.
“Einzig die letzte dialektische Konsequenz aus jenem Prozeß, wie Schönberg und seine Nächsten ihn zogen: nämlich alle Brücken der Verständlichkeit hinter der monologischen Musik abzubrechen, damit sie vom bürgerlichen Geltungsraum zu emanzipieren, indem das Prinzip des bürgerlichen Individualismus bis zu seinem Umschlag getrieben wird, und damit Raum zu schaffen für die Konstruktion aus Phantasie in Freiheit – einzig diese letzte, in ihrer Tiefe und Gewalt kaum nur geahnte Konsequenz trägt das Bild einer zukünftigen Gesellschaft in sich und ist vom Diktat der bestehenden im Entscheidenden unabhängig” (Adorno GS 18, 723, from 1928). Adorno (1961) still praises Schoenberg. For immanence and transcendenz in Adorno see Klein 2004.
- 22.
“Ist aber das Material nichts Statisches, heißt materialgerecht verfahren mehr als die handwerkliche Bescheidung, die gegebene Möglichkeiten geschickt ausschöpft, so impliziert das auch, daß das Material seinerseits durch die Komposition verändert wird. Aus jeder gelungenen, in die es einging, tritt es als Neues frisch hervor. Das Geheimnis der Komposition ist die Kraft, welche das Material im Prozeß fortschreitender Adäquanz umformt” (Adorno 1961, 504f.).
- 23.
Even though the much-cherished Hegel left three large volumes on Aesthetics. The only exeception I am aware of in Honneths work are 13pages on Bob Dylan (Honneth 2006). It is interesting to see that in his Dissertation, Honneth (1985, 35) already reduces the term “culture”, as used by the early Horkheimer, to a producer of “norms”.
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Henning, C. (2017). Theories of Culture in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_12
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