The Frankfurt School Critique of Capitalist Culture

A Critical Theory for Post-democratic Society and Its Re-education

Ronald Jeremiah Schindler

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138343634
• eBook ISBN: 9780429798801
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this volume is an impressive contradictory cultural phenomenon. It addresses almost every existing contemporary school of thought whilst belonging completely to none of them through an absence of external signifiers. With remarkable erudition, Ronald Schindler reveals to official society the truth about itself through explorations of areas including the origins of dialectical intelligence, a metatheoretical reconstruction of Marxism, Habermas' historical materialism and hermeneutics and political visions for the universities.

1 The dialectical intelligence: Its origins in German philosophy

Introduction

Without Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the historical materialism of Marx would have been stillborn. With this new genre of critique, philosophy and politics in a revolutionary age developed together both coherently and in problematic contradiction - the ‘lag’ in the ‘superstructure’ took an unexpected institutional materialization, becoming a transformative force in history in its own right. The question of the significance of history for the Phenomenology and the particular nature of its own historicity remain problematic. The idiosyncratic historicity of the Phenomenology of Spirit, as exhibited in the ‘Preface’, in the concluding sections of the work, and more particularly in the overall movement of this development evidenced in conjunction with Hegel’s full life’s work, has motivated philosophy to query, more fastidiously, in what sense the antinomy of a ‘history of the Absolute’ tested against a lived reality is conceivable, justifiable, and, ultimately, adaptable by other scholars in a general schema. Marx, of course, owed much to this dialectical form.

There is a difference between an ‘immanent’ disquisition, which endeavors to interpret the Phenomenology without displaying any philosophical tendentiousness, and an ‘assimilative’ account. Present-day examples of such assimilation can be discerned in the projects to interpret the Phenomenology - or sections of it - from a phenomenological, ontological, Marxist, existentialist, or history-of-Being vantage point. As was already the case with Marx, the majority of these assimilations are conceived by the needs of the time and undertake to effect a basic transfiguration of humanity and reality. Lukács, Kojéve, Bloch, and Habermas are some of the more prominent figures on this ‘highway of despair’.

In the ‘history of consciousness’ of German classical philosophy, Hegel found ‘knowledge’ unfolded up to the point at which - in the Absolute - it arrives at insight into the identity of subject and object and, hence at a denial of the opposition between knowing and objecthood. We do not simply start from a self-restriction of the primary intellectual intuition, but from a curtailment of ‘spirit’, which becomes ‘other to itself and alienates itself in order to find itself again in otherness, in which process the aspect of otherness, namely objectivity, then makes a more compelling presence.

The construction of subject-object identity in German Idealism is rooted in Kant’s idea of ‘transcendental apperception’, the idea that the pure subject, forged as a structure of fundamental logic acts, employs its synthesizing power of conception to confer logical form on the universe confronting it. The subject is hence the genesis of an a priori identity of cognition and objectivity, in the modality Kant delineated in his Critique of Pure Reason as the ‘supreme principle of all synthetic a priori judgements’: ‘… the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience’ (A158/1965, p. 194).

Kant writes in the Critique of Pure Reason: ‘The transcendental unity of apperception is that unity through which all the manifold given in an intuition is united in a concept of the object’ (B139/p. 157). That is, transcendental apperception, pure subjectivity of the pure self, is what constitutes objectivity, in that it brings the manifold of intuition into the necessary relation with the concept. This necessary conjunction of the concept ‘is’, for Hegel’s design, ultimately the transcendental apperception of the self, that is, ‘of the concept. He thereby interprets Kant’s insight into the structure of transcendental apperception. The unifying oneness of the self which fulfills itself as concept is the basis of the universal and necessary association with objectivity. In the dialectic, the subject can find itself again in the other - in the sphere of objectivity it has ‘grounded’. The analogous process will occur in the ‘Idea’ of the Phenomenology: consciousness must forsake the idea of an objectivity independent of its knowledge and recognize everything else is ‘permeated’ by categories of the self; the concept (conceiving in its ‘otherness’, insofar as it is ‘thought’) remains at home with, and is identical with, itself.

To Kant, pure self-consciousness in its centripetal motion was of import for the possibility of synthetic judgements a priori, that is, ultimately, for generating the basis of the empirical knowledge of natural science and its ‘objectivity’. The problem for German Idealism, for Hegel in particular, was more rudimentary. For Hegel subjectivity was the movement which ‘logicizes’ the whole of Being, not just natural science. It therefore has the significance that the Logos had possessed for Greek philosophy. For post-Kantian philosophizing, the knowing subject is the source of the order of the categorialized objectivity of the objects which are mediated by the concept. Hegel remains faithful to this ‘conversion’. For him the concept, the Logos expressing itself as subject, constitutes the order and intelligibility of everything which exists. Here the term ‘subject’ certainly does not refer to human or even individual knowing. It includes also the order mirrored in the forms and laws of nature, the ordering objective spirit of ethical life, and the ‘Absolute Spirit’, which presents itself in the hierarchized structures of art, religion, and philosophy. Human cognition does not produce all these orders but rather plumbs their genealogy with comprehension. Because this logicization has always taken place already, knowing is not, as in Kant, a bestowal of form to what was previously primeval, but a becoming manifest to itself of the movement of the concept which, as Logos, governs everything. The concept reaches a condition of being completely manifest to itself once it has interpenetrated everything ‘other’ to it and ‘sublated’ this medium to itself. The path of this ever mounting self-permeation is the dialectical movement which occurs in the distinction between the knowing and knowingly acting self and its ‘object’. This whole presentation is no less than the ‘phenomenology of Spirit’.

Within the traditional sense of Logos by which Hegel is inspired lie further determinations which have also become operative in the Phenomenology. The Logos by tradition signifies more than the identity of thinking and Being (in modern terms, subjectivity and objectivity). Even for the Greeks it already had the import of an order (a value-laden structure) which - at least potentially - must be obvious to those initiated into dialectical discourse. The Logos as thought or thinking continues to preserve this illumination in Nous - ‘spirit’ or ‘reason’, which is light-imparting principle. Thinking, as noesis, the possibility bestowed on human beings for intuitive apprehension which evokes insight, is infallible. The realization of Logos and dianoia - ‘understanding’ - occurs as a knowing which apprehends, judges, infers, induces, deduces, and is able to conjugate definitions and determine essences.

For the Greeks this power of nous and Logos culminated in a philosophy which was grasped as an ontology, as a quest for the ultimate categorical determinations of the existent, theos, insofar as ontology was always at the same moment theology. Aristotle considered the most important category in the ontological order to be that of ousia, or substance, which was articulated into a plethora of types, particularly that of telos, or goal. It is crucial to keep this determination of telos in mind, because the thought of an ‘attained goal’ or a ‘fulfilled purpose’, which from the beginning refers everything back to itself, could thereby lend a definite sense of ‘necessity’ both to what is individually and to the association of all that is, the cosmos. The limitations of Kant prepare us for the Copernican revolution in dialectical exposition made possible by the interplay of Hegel and Marx in the nineteenth century, a revolution which transformed critique into a mode of radical political criticism and a ground for revolutionary commitment to radical social change.

The emergence of dialectical reason - the ‘Creation’

Subject and object, Hegel claimed, should not be conceived of as stable entities but, on the contrary, as two moments in the single process of becoming. Hegel’s concept of ‘becoming’ needs meticulous elucidation. Becoming alludes to an epistemological structure in which both subject and object undergo an irreversible and coalesced process of self-transformation. The knowing subject and the known object continually dissolve and refashion themselves, and in the process of this dissolution and re-creation the ‘moments’ thoroughly interpenetrate each other. The reunification of subject and object is conceivable because in the ultimate reconciliation the two are identical. External objective reality must be comprehended as a continually changing consequence of activities by the thinking subject. Conversely, the thinking subject breaks through to reality only by activities which continuously create and re-create the objective world.

Because of this understanding, Hegel sharply rejects the Kantian distinction between the knowing subject (Kant’s theoretical reason) and the acting subject (Kant’s practical reason). Thought and action, theory and practice, can be separated neither empirically nor analytically. Likewise, the object of knowledge is necessarily also the object of moral action or human practice. Therefore the process of knowing must not only trace the process of ‘becoming’ of the object of knowledge but actually collaborate in the movement of that process.

The effort of reason (i.e., the knowing subject) to comprehend the process of becoming is what Hegel calls dialectic. Hegel in his Logic cultivates the dialectical method in the context of a general theory of logic which analytically separates several interlocking steps of cognition:

In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides: (a) the abstract side or that of understanding; (b) the Dialectical, or that of negative reason; (c) the Speculative, or that of positive reason. (1975, p. 113)

The dialectical mode of cognition makes conceivable a deeper and more encompassing penetration of the objects than ‘understanding’ can adequately comprehend:

In the Dialectical stage these finite characterizations or formulae supersede themselves, and pass into their opposites. … In its true and proper character, Dialectic is seen as the very nature and essence of everything predicated by mere understanding - the laws of things and of the finite as a whole. … By Dialectic is meant the indwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light, and shown to be the negation of them. (pp. 115-6)

This deeper fathoming of the universe comes about through three interrelated thought processes: negation, contradiction, and totalization. Negation decomposes the fixity of the object by conceiving it as a complex configuration of alternative potentialities, some of which stand in direct opposition to each other. Hegel evaluates all real entities as the unification of opposites; hence his frequent reference to a thing turning ‘suddenly into its opposite’.

Contradiction focuses on the recognition of an internal dynamic propelling the object of knowledge away from whatever its present finite condition might be:

For anything to be finite is just to suppress itself and put aside. … Wherever there is movement, wherever there is life, wherever anything is carried into effect in the actual world, there Dialectic is at work. … The finite, being radically self-contradictory, involves its own self-suppression. … [Dialectic’s] purpose is to study things in their own being and movement and thus to demonstrate the finitude of the partial categories of the understanding, (pp. 116-7)

Dialectical reason refuses to comprehend the objects of knowledge as distinct categories and entities, conceiving them as moments of a totality in the process of becoming.

Totalization alludes to the process by which thought supersedes separation and fashions a conceptual unity out of what had appeared at the level of understanding as distinct, self-sufficient existence. Totalization envelops not only the entire sequence of transformations undergone by the known object, but also the self-transformation of the knowing subject. Hence the subject/object dualism posed by Kant’s theoretical reason is banished.

The concepts Hegel employed occur in pairs which I shall refer to as dialectical categories. Every stable entity must be dissolved into a process before its existence can be coherently apprehended. The dialectical categories illuminate the internal logic of the process into which stable entities have been dissolved. The concepts occurring in such pairs are both opposing and complementary. The process to which the dialectical category is applied cannot be apprehended as a whole except as an interpenetration or synthesis of the opposing concepts which identify the category itself. We develop here four dialectical categories intended to render the fundamental methodological dicta of negation, contradiction, and totalization more concrete and available to the ‘initiate’ for the purpose of understanding Hegel’s political theory: (a) subjectivity-objectivity; (b) universality-particularity; (c) freedom-necessity; and (d) rationality-positivity.

The subjectivity-objectivity category has been illustrated above. The universality-particularity category concerns the relationship between any concept or idea, on the one hand, and a finite instance of the concept, on the other. In another sense the universality-particularity category focuses on the concept and its historical incorporation in space and time. Insofar as an entity to which a concept refers encompasses only those facets necessarily implied by the concept and nothing more, it manifests universality. Conversely, insofar as the entity contains other facets in addition to the ones implied by the concept, it evidences particularity. The universality or essence of a concept can only acquire concrete existence in the real world through particular entities, whereas the meaning or identity of one of these finite particulars only becomes apparent through the universal concept it elaborates.

One manner of conceptualizing the relationship between freedom and necessity is through the notion of authenticity. The unity of freedom and necessity pertains to the realization of the authentic nature (that is, the genuine essence) of an entity. The authentic nature of an entity is the self-determined unraveling of its concrete potentialities, in comparison to those facets imposed from without. Authenticity incarnates freedom because it engenders self-determination rather than external causation. Authenticity embodies necessity because it rejects arbitrariness in any form, expressing instead the indubitable requirements of determinate being.

Authentic human beings, for example, are those who comprehend their essential being and real potentialities and always remains true to this ideal. A particular individual, while fully partaking of all the delights of the senses, is shielded by particular interests and not dominated by capriciousness or spiteful whims, false needs, or impulsive desires. On the contrary, protected by a strictly defined status hierarchy, the individual can self-consciously choose to act in congruence with those true needs which flow through one’s own essential and vital being, and to act in a manner true to the real potentialities of the specific historical situation. The actions of the authentic person embody the basic unity of freedom and necessity. Finally, rational individuals materialize their potential in the positivity of making empirically engendered history.

The combined interests pursued by those enjoying their authenticity in freedom form the collective universality organized by the State, especially the mechanism of a bureaucracy, constituted by an ‘interest-free’ mandarin ‘class’ independent even of the major branches of government, to assume ‘rationality’ within the terms posed by necessity.

Hegel defines freedom as human self-consciousness, and comprehends the realization of freedom as the absolute aim of world history. Therefore in the Philosophy of History he construes world history as the development of the consciousness of freedom.

In the history of the World, only those peoples can come under our notice which form a state. For it must be understood that this latter is the realization of Freedom, i.e., of the absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses - all spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence - Reason - is objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker of morality - of a just and moral social and political life. (1956, p. 19)

The emerging categorically bound self-consciousness of freedom, therefore, approximates itself best through the concrete political structure of individual nations, which are to date the most complete embodiments of the unfolding essence of humanity.

… all the worth which the human being possesses - all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the state. … The state is the divine Idea as it exists on Earth. (p. 39)

The state will, moreover, coincides with the will of a hypothetical individual perfectly harmonized with the institutions and culture of society conceived as dynamic processes and stripped of all particularizing, egocentric traits. Such an individual can only be a theoretical abstraction, but an abstraction which finds historical incarnation in the potential of all concrete members of society to reconcile their socio-political differences.

In a very abbreviated examination, we can say that Hegel’s view of the state as the sublime and superordinate incorporation of freedom by no means implies that the state will advance the desires of the majority. The existence of the state embodies the capacity for individuals to act collectively. The state mobilizes the potency for action - the potential power - which resides in the holistic human community. Without the supervision of the state (that is, under conditions of lawlessness) the exercise of the human will would be stymied at every turn. Sustained collective actions would be totally inconceivable, while the uncharted interaction of individual wills would make precarious even those actions conceived on a smaller, subcollective scale. The state will provides the basis for the exercise of individual will. The state will fashions the crucible for the very existence of individual wills.

Consider, for example, the first dialectical category, universality-particularity. Hegel perceives the state as a representative of the universal facts of social life. The state, at least in principle, encompasses the totality of society and its generalized interest and acts as steward of the values and interests implicit in this totality. Under stress (class conflict), successive historical eras will appear in the form of particularities; that is, the state, without canceling its essential universality, will appear as an agent for a particular class. Such situations often generate vapid critiques of the state, critiques which are misinformed because they fail to understand the universal essence beneath the par...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface to the revised edition
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The dialectical intelligence: Its origins in German philosophy
• 2 Toward a metatheoretical reconstruction of Marxism
• 3 Philosophy and critico-practical activity
• 4 Habermas’s historical materialism and semiotic phenomenology
• 5 Contemporary modalities of alienated consciousness
• 6 False consciousness: Ideology and mental pathology
• 7 Materialist phenomenology of language
• 8 Work and communicative competence
• 9 Whither critical theory and its exponents
• 10 Hermeneutics and political visions for the universities
• 11 Toward a post-Auschwitz ethics
• 12 Conclusions
• Postface
• Appendix 1: Black nationalism and emancipation
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Afterword
• Bibliography