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  • Cited by 91
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
2011
Online ISBN:
9780511977039

Book description

This book is the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Max Horkheimer during the early and middle phases of his life (1895–1941). Drawing on unexamined new sources, John Abromeit describes the critical details of Horkheimer's intellectual development. This study recovers and reconstructs the model of early Critical Theory that guided the work of the Institute for Social Research in the 1930s. Horkheimer is remembered primarily as the co-author of Dialectic of Enlightenment, which he wrote with Theodor W. Adorno in the early 1940s. But few people realize that Horkheimer and Adorno did not begin working together seriously until the late 1930s or that the model of Critical Theory developed by Horkheimer and Erich Fromm in the late 1920s and early 1930s differs in crucial ways from Dialectic of Enlightenment. Abromeit highlights the ways in which Horkheimer's early Critical Theory remains relevant to contemporary theoretical discussions in a wide variety of fields.

Reviews

‘Abromeit’s book is the most exhaustive study of Horkheimer to date. His critical examination of the secondary literature is unparalleled, and his extremely detailed archival work, citation of sources, and textual exegesis, is exceptional. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone in the future adding much more to what he has accomplished here. This book will be the benchmark by which future Horkheimer scholarship will be measured.’

David Ingram - Loyola University, Chicago

‘John Abromeit has written what will be the standard work on Horkheimer and early Critical Theory. This superb study deepens our understanding of Horkheimer’s central significance for the constitution of Critical Theory in the 1920s and 1930s, clearly distinguishing his theoretical approach prior to 1941 from that later expressed in Dialectic of Enlightenment. In so doing, it argues powerfully that a sophisticated critique of capitalism is centrally important to an adequate critical theory of the modern world, one that could get beyond the limits of the ‘cultural turn’ in the human sciences.’

Moishe Postone - University of Chicago

‘Abromeit’s ambitious study of Horkheimer will become the standard secondary work in English on this important figure. Part intellectual biography, it is also an intervention in contemporary debates over the direction of Critical Theory in the Frankfurt tradition. Abromeit’s goal is nothing less than to vindicate Horkheimer’s distinctive vision of Critical Theory by placing his anthropology of the bourgeois epoch in the foreground and by reconstructing the unfinished project of a dialectical or materialist logic that Horkheimer himself abandoned in Dialectic of Enlightenment.’

John McCole - University of Oregon

‘In what will likely become the definitive study of the life and work of Max Horkheimer, John Abromeit illuminates as never before both the singularity of this surprisingly neglected thinker and, at the same time, his towering intellectual presence during the creation and development of Critical Theory as a distinctive school of thought. In analyzing Horkheimer’s critical appropriation of Hegel, Freud, and, above all, Marx, Abromeit reinterprets Critical Theory in its classical phase as a continuing source for the critique of modern capitalist society.’

Kevin Anderson - author of Marx at the Margins

'John Abromeit’s Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School is the most thorough study yet of Horkheimer’s life and work up to 1941 … Abromeit has written an excellent intellectual biography of Horkheimer that will be necessary reading for scholars of the Frankfurt School for some time to come.'

Source: Philosophy in Review

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Contents

Selected Bibliography
Horkheimer’s Works
In German
In GermanGesammelte SchriftenSchmidt, AlfredNoerr, Gunzelin SchmidFrankfurt a.M.Fischer Verlag 1985 1996
In English
In EnglishA Life in Letters: Selected CorrespondenceManfred, R.Jacobsen, EvelynLincoln and LondonUniversity of Nebraska Press 2007
In English 2005
In EnglishBetween Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early WritingsFrederick Hunter, G.Kramer, Matthew S.Torpey, JohnCambridge, MAMIT Press 1993
In EnglishCritical Theory: Selected EssaysO’Connell, Matthew J.New YorkContinuum 1992
In EnglishCritique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays since the End of World War IIO’Connell, Matthew J.New YorkContinuum 1996
In EnglishDawn and Decline: Notes 1926–1931 and 1950–1969Shaw, MichaelNew YorkSeabury 1978
In EnglishEclipse of ReasonNew YorkContinuum 1974 Jephcott, EdmundNoerr, Gunzelin Schmid
Other Key Works Cited
Adorno, TheodorGesammelte SchriftenTiedemann, RolfFrankfurt a.M.Suhrkamp 1997
Adorno, TheodorThe Adorno ReaderO’Conner, BrianOxford, UK and Malden, MABlackwell 2000
Adorno, TheodorAgainst Epistemology: A Metacritique. Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological AntinomiesDomingo, WillisCambridge, MAMIT Press 1983
Adorno, Theodor 1984
Adorno, TheodorKierkegaard: Construction of the AestheticHullot-Kentor, . RobertMinneapolisUniversity of Minnesota Press 1989
Adorno, TheodorMinima MoraliaJephcott, EdmundNew York and LondonVerso 1974
Adorno, TheodorNegative DialecticsAshton, E.B.New YorkContinuum 1973
Asbach, OlafVon der Erkenntnistheorie zur Kritischen Theorie des Gesellschaft: Eine Untersuchung zur Vor- und Entstehungsgeschichte der Kritischen Theorie Max Horkheimers 1920–27Opladen, GermanyLeske und Budrich 1997
Asbach, OlafKritische Gesellschaftstheorie und historische Praxis : Entwicklungen der Kritischen Theorie bei Max Horkheimer 1930–1942/43Frankfurt a.M., Berlin, Bern, New York, Paris, and ViennaLang 1997
Benjamin, WalterIlluminationsZohn, HarryArendt, HannahNew YorkSchocken 1968
Buck-Morss, SusanThe Origins of Negative Dialectics: Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt InstituteNew YorkFree Press 1977
Claussen, DetlevTheodor Adorno: One Last GeniusLivingstone, RodneyCambridge MAHarvard University Press 2008
Dubiel, HelmutTheory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical TheoryGregg, BenjaminCambridge, MAMIT Press 1985
Arato, AndrewGebhardt, EikeNew YorkContinuum 1982
Fromm, ErichThe Dogma of Christ: And Other Essays on Religion, Psychology, and CultureAdams, James LutherNew YorkHolt, Rinehart and Winston 1963
Fromm, ErichThe Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological StudyWeinberger, B.Warwickshire, UKBerg 1984
Habermas, JürgenThe Philosophical Discourse of ModernityLawrence, Frederick G.Cambridge, MAMIT Press 1987
Habermas, JürgenThe Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois SocietyBurger, ThomasCambridge, MAMIT Press 1989
Habermas, JürgenTheory of Communicative ActionMcCarthy, ThomasBostonBeacon 1984
Habermas, JürgenTheory of Communicative ActionMcCarthy, ThomasBostonBeacon 1987
Marcuse, HerbertNegations: Essays in Critical TheoryShapiro, Jeremy J.BostonBeacon 1988
Jay, MartinThe Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950Boston, Toronto, and LondonLittle, Brown and Company 1973
Küsters, Gerd-WaltersDer Kritikbegriff in der Kritischen Theorie Max HorkheimersFrankfurt and New YorkCampus 1980
Löwenthal, LeoAn Unmastered Past: The Autobiographical Reflections of Leo LowenthalJay, MartinBerkeley, Los Angeles and LondonUniversity of California Press 1987
Lukács, GeorgHistory and Class ConsciousnessLivingstone, RodneyCambridge, MAMIT Press 2002
Lukács, GeorgThe Theory of the NovelBostock, AnnaCambridge, MAMIT Press 1971
On Max Horkheimer: New PerspectivesBenhabib, SeylaBonß, WolfgangMcCole, JohnCambridge MAMIT Press 1993
Migdal, UlrikeDie Frühgeschichte des Frankfurter Instituts für SozialforschungFrankfurt and New YorkCampus 1981
Müller-Doohm, StefanAdorno: A BiographyCambridge, UK and Malden, MAPolity Press 2005
Postone, MoisheTime, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical TheoryCambridge, UKCambridge University Press 1993
Sichel, KimGermaine Krull: Photographer of ModernityCambridge, MAMIT Press 1999
Stirk, PeterMax Horkheimer: A New InterpretationHemel HempsteadHarvester Wheatsheaf 1992
1936
1999
Wiggershaus, RolfThe Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political SignificanceRobertson, MichaelCambridge, MAMIT Press 1994
Wolin, RichardWalter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of RedemptionBerkeley and Los AngelesUniversity of California Press 1994

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