| Summary |
Annotation Max Horkheimer is well known as the director of the Frankfurt Institute for SocialResearch and as a sometime collaborator with Theodor Adorno, especially on their classic Dialecticof Enlightenment. These essays reveal another side of Horkheimer, focusing on his remarkablecontributions to critical theory in the 1930s.Included are Horkheimer's inaugural address asdirector of the Institute, in which he outlines the interdisciplinary research program that woulddominate the initial phase of the Frankfurt School, his first full monograph, and a number of otherpieces published in the 1930s. The essays, most of which have not appeared in English before, aresurprisingly relevant to current post-philosophy debates, notably "On the Problem of Truth," withits focus on pragmatism, and "The Rationalism Debate in Current Philosophy," a sustained critique ofthe post-Cartesian philosophy of consciousness. Horkheimer's 1933 critique of Kantian ethics,"Materialism and Morality," is of particular interest given the current reaction to the neo-Kantianaspect of Habermas's work. There are also essays relevant to the current foundations debate withinContinental philosophy, and the rationality/relativism question is sustained throughout thevolume. |
