The vicissitudes of the politics of “life:” Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse’s reception of phenomenology and vitalism in Weimar Germany

Authors

  • John Abromeit State University of New York, Buffalo State

Abstract

The following article attempts to clarify the ambivalent relationship that Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse developed with the vitalist and phenomenological tendencies that permeated philosophy and the social sciences during the Weimar Republic. More precisely, it traces how both thinkers, in spite of acknowledging the “truth moment” contained in the criticism that the philosophical exponents of both movements (Husserl, Bergson, Dilthey) developed of 19th century positivism, also recognized in its shallow popularization the advancement of a dangerous philosophical irrationalism, suspicious of science and Enlightenment values, that would soon become an accomplice to the rise of fascism.

Keywords

Frankfurt school, critical theory, irrationalism, conservative revolution

References

ABROMEIT, John (2004). “Herbert Marcuse’s Critical Encounter with Martin Heidegger, 1928–33”. In: ABROMEIT, John and COBB, Mark W. (eds.). Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader. New York and London: Routledge.

ABROMEIT, John (2011). Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

FREYER, Hans (1931). Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft: Logische Grundlegung des Systems der Soziologie. Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner.

GOLDMANN, Lucien (1977). Lukács and Heidegger: Toward a New Philosophy. London: Routledge.

HEIDEGGER, Martin (1962). Being and Time. San Francisco: Harper.

HORKHEIMER, Max (1987a). Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 9. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. Schmidt, Alfred (ed.)

HORKHEIMER, Max (1987b). Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 11. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. Schmidt, Alfred (ed.).

HORKHEIMER, Max (1990). Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. Schmidt, Alfred (ed.).

LUKÁCS, Georg (1971). The Theory of the Novel. Boston: MIT Press.

MARCUSE, Herbert (1941). Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. New York: Oxford UP.

MARCUSE, Herbert (1968). Negations. Boston: Beacon.

MARCUSE, Herbert (1978). Schriften, vol. 1. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

MARCUSE, Herbert (1987). Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

MARCUSE, Herbert (2005). Heideggerian Marxism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

MULLER, Jerry (1987). The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism. Princeton: Princeton UP.

RAULET, Gérard (ed.) (1994). Intellekteullendiskurse in der Weimarer Republik: Zur Politischen Kultur einer Gemengelage. Frankfurt: Campus.

Author Biography

John Abromeit, State University of New York, Buffalo State

John Abromeit is an associate professor of history at SUNY, Buffalo State, where he teaches courses on modern European history and intellectual history, historiography and critical social theory. He is the co-editor of Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader (Routledge, 2004) and Herbert Marcuse: Heideggerian Marxism (University of Nebraska Press, 2005). He is the author of Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Most recently he was the lead editor of Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas: History and Recent Tendencies (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/enrahonar.1231

Published

2019-03-07

How to Cite

Abromeit, J. (2019). The vicissitudes of the politics of “life:” Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse’s reception of phenomenology and vitalism in Weimar Germany. Enrahonar. An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason, 62, 39–58. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/enrahonar.1231

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