Critical Theory

Critical theory aims to articulate an overall theory of society by using an interdisciplinary approach to the practical conditions of historic ways of life. The designation critical theory is intimately tied to the work of the Frankfurter Institut für Sozialforschung (Frankfurt Institute for Social Research), later called the Frankfurter Schule (Frankfurt School). At the same time, critical theory represents a philosophical and theoretical paradigm that extends beyond that circle and that follows from, along with continental Marxist thinking and theory, both the philosophical analysis and criticism of rationality practiced by Kant and Hegel and the psychoanalysis of Freud.

The circle of researchers around Max Horkheimer at the Institute undertook a fundamental and interdisciplinary approach to establish, on a scientific basis, the necessity and possibility of changing society. To be closely investigated, along with social institutions and practices, were the convictions and attitudes of the members of society. In this setting, social theory (to the extent that it is concerned with the society in which it exists) constitutes a portion of its own subject matter. Even science is a component of society and accordingly must take account of this in self-criticism. This position is in contrast with the image of bourgeois science, which in Horkheimer's view fits itself unquestioningly into the process of investigation and participation in solving problems prescribed for it by dominant social organs. Critical theory was not directed simply toward resolution of this or that injustice but took as its object society itself. In his inaugural lecture of 1931, in which he also addressed the duties of an institute for social research, Horkheimer understood the goal of social philosophy as the philosophical interpretation of man's fate to the extent that men are not simply individuals but members of society. Social philosophy thus was required to concern itself with those phenomena that can be understood only in the context of man's life in society: the state, law, polity, economics, religion—in short, all human material culture.

The Institute for Social Research was founded in 1924 as an independent investigative body associated with University of Frankfurt am Main. When in 1930 Max Horkheimer succeeded Carl Grünberg as the Institute's director, the conditions were established for the supra-disciplinary studies that were published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Studies in Philosophy and Social Science) from 1932 until 1941 (vol. 9). Forced to dissolve in 1933 when National Socialism came to power, the Institute emigrated first to Geneva, where a branch already had been sited, and then to Paris, as the Société Internationale de Recherches Sociales. In 1934 it arrived in New York, where, as the Institute for Social Research, it was associated with Columbia University. In later years of its exile in America, some members, like Theodor W. Adorno and Horkheimer, moved to Los Angeles, though the Institute maintained its headquarters in New York. Marcuse and Lowenthal worked from 1943 or 1944 for the Office of War Information. After the war Horkheimer and Adorno returned to Germany, while Marcuse, Lowenthal, and others stayed in America to begin academic careers at Brandeis University and the University of California, Berkeley.

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