Encore Magic

Reviewed by: Street Life and Morals: German Philosophy in Hitler’s Lifetime by Lesley Chamberlain Jeremy Best Street Life and Morals: German Philosophy in Hitler’s Lifetime. By Lesley Chamberlain. London: Reaktion Books, 2021. Pp. 237. Cloth $40.00. ISBN 978-1789144949. Street Life and Morals: German Philosophy in Hitler’s Lifetime details a survey history of philosophical thought in Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At various times in Lesley Chamberlain’s book, she stresses that philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Hannah Arendt struggled to answer a trio of questions raised by the forces of modernity: how to manage liberal, capitalist social relations; technological change and innovation; and the fate of reason itself. [End Page 322] The sections of the book lay out in detail the various interventions and suppositions made by major philosophers of Germany’s early twentieth century to answer these questions. Organized in a basically chronological order, the book conforms to the titular lifetime of Adolf Hitler and begins roughly in 1889 and continues to 1945. An introductory chapter opens the book and then the narrative proceeds to a second chapter detailing the social, economic, and urban transformations of Germany as perceived by philosophers like Georg Simmel and Siegfried Kracauer. The next chapter discusses “Kantianism” in Germany and twentieth-century attempts to adapt what Chamberlain emphasizes was an eighteenth-century philosophy to urban industrial life. Ernst Cassirer and Edmund Husserl figure prominently in this chapter. The most substantial chapter, the fourth, discusses the thought of key figures including Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Arendt of the Frankfurt School along with Martin Heidegger. Chamberlain details their engagement with the crisis of modernity and philosophy posed by the Weimar and Nazi period. The concluding chapter attempts to show that the philosophy that came out of this period, particularly from the Frankfurt School and its affiliates, was a “positive outcome,” a remnant of a lost German tradition. The book ends with two appendices, one on Kant’s relevance to National Socialism and one on the experiences of philosophers during the Third Reich. The strengths of Chamberlain’s book lie in its intense and erudite interest in the thought and lives of the philosophers detailed in the book. For a reader unfamiliar with the corpus, this book provides a useful overview of the era’s major ideas and their interconnections. Chamberlain’s overview of Simmel and Arendt, in chapters two and four, respectively, are of noteworthy quality. These virtues mean that Street Life and Morals would be especially suitable for an educated, non-academic reader who desires to understand the history of philosophical ideas in Germany during the Interwar period. Similarly, a scholar seeking a general overview for reference would benefit from the text. Disappointingly, the book examines the crisis of philosophical confidence and sensibility during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries without satisfactorily showing the connections to the wider social and political crisis that lay at the root of the Nazis’ ascendance. Reading the book’s chapters is to immerse oneself in a traditional history of ideas; a discussion of philosophers, their lives and ideas, and their relationships. Only infrequently does Chamberlain connect the wider historical context of Weimar Germany and the Third Reich to these histories. It reduces the lifetime and impact of Adolf Hitler on Germany to little more than a framing device. It would have been highly productive to have the shifts and changes in the ideas of Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, or others connected to the rapidly and radically shifting social, political, and cultural history playing out in Germany at the time. Nor does Chamberlain bring in the extensive scholarship on the intellectual lives of German [End Page 323] academics and cultural figures during the Weimar era. These weaknesses limit the book’s utility for historians and cultural scholars of the period who are not expressly interested in one, some, or all of the philosophers that Chamberlain examines. The approach and tone of the book are uneven when read from an academic perspective. Frequently, Chamberlain inserts herself into the narrative with critiques of the quality of a philosopher’s prose or similar asides. In fact, this approach reinforces the general...

It is still a relatively open question if and how sustainability fits into a critical theory of society. This paper's aim is to makes a contribution to the critical social theory foundations of sustainability and to reflect on the links between capitalism, class and sustainability. Sustainability has not been a very popular concept in sociological theory. One of the reasons may be that sociology has a strongly critical tradition focusing on the analysis and critique of power structures in modern society. It is therefore often sceptical of ideas coming from the policy world that are susceptible to having an administrative character. The article argues that, although sustainability has a strongly ideological character, a critical theory of society should not simply discard this notion, but aim to sublate it. Some foundations of a way to integrate sustainability into a critical theory of society are presented. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The article examines the history and current state of the studies of the ideas of the Frankfurt School by the Chinese scholars based on examples of the most characteristic scientific articles and monographs. It shows the formation of studies of the Frankfurt School in China (1970s – early 21st century), which theoretical concepts were used not only as a critical theory of modern society, but also for the further development of the theory of Chinese Marxism by the Chinese scholars. It is noted that the interest of the Chinese philosophers in the Frankfurt School increased at the beginning of the 21st century, as can be seen in relevant histories and reviews of Western Marxism (Yu Wujin, Chen Xueming, Yi Junqing, Zhang Yibing, Zhou Suiming, etc.). In addition, this study analyzes more narrowly focused works that explore certain concepts of this direction of Marxist thought (Wang Fengcai, Fu Yongjun, Wang Xiaosheng, Ye Xiaolu, Chen Shibu). The considerable attention is paid to the definition of the Chinese scholars’ interpretations of concepts of the leading representatives of the Frankfurt School – “Dialectic of the Enlightenment” and “Critical Theory” by M. Horkheimer (Chen Beijie, Bao Guiqin, Bao Guoxiang, Hu Xuming, Chen Xueming, Yang Haifeng, Wu Youjun, Wang Fengcai, Fang Jinggang, Huang Xiaohan); T. Adorno’s “culture industry” and idea of non-identity (Xie Yongkang, Zhao Yong, Kou Yao, Zhang Wenxi, Wang Fusheng); H. Marcuse’s social-critical theory and theory of alienation (Shi Wenxue, Jiang Chongmu, Zhu Chunyan, Wang Shouchang, Ou Litong, Chen Xueming, Wei Hongjuan); E. Fromm’s theory of social criticism, theory of alienation and theory of personality (Tian Xinyuan, Chen Aihua, Sun Zhe, Li Xin, Han Wenyan, Liu Lidan, Xie Hui); J. Habermas’s theory of communicative action (Chen Xueming, Huang Zhifang, Bai Yongxue, Xu Lijuan, Han Miao). It is proved that in the works of the Chinese philosophers the greatest focus is paid to the Frankfurt School’s criticism of pop culture, ideology, instrumental rationality, as well as to the problems of science and technology, alienation, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, etc. The article provides an overview of the Frankfurt School’s research directions in China – humanitarian issues (Chen Zhenming, Jin Yu, Rong Jian, Li Zhongshang, Zhang Fengyang, Chen Zhenming), social and critical theory (Xu Chongwen, Chen Zhenming, Li Chaozong, Zhang Yibing, Hu Daping, Zhao Min, Yue Haiyun, Chen Yixin, Cao Weidong, Yang Haifeng, Feng Ziyi, Xi Ge), cultural criticism (Chen Zhenming, Du Jun, Ji Jingyan), understanding modernity (Feng Ziyi, Xi Ge).

Habermas is known for being at the forefront of the second generation of Frankfurt School theorists. His work is an on-going response to the critical theory of the first generation of Frankfurt School theorists. ‘Habermas and Frankfurt School critical theory’ outlines the history of the Frankfurt School and the beliefs of those who belonged to it. It started off as a group of philosophers, thinkers, and cultural critics who were active around the time of the Second World War. They were an intellectual minority. They looked at questions of morality, religion, science, reason, and rationality. What part did Habermas play in the Frankfurt School?

During the interwar years in Japan, discourse on culture turned sharply inward after generations of openness to Western ideas. The characterizations that arose - that Japanese culture is unique, essential, and enduring - came to be accepted both inside and outside Japan. Leslie Pincus focuses on the work of Kuki Shuzo, a philosopher and the author of the classic 'Iki' no Kozo, to explore culture and theory in during the interwar years. She shows how Japanese intellectual culture ultimately became complicit, even instrumental, in an increasingly repressive and militaristic regime that ultimately brought the world to war. Pincus provides an extensive critical study of Kuki's intellectual lineage and shows how it intersects with a number of central figures in both European and Japanese philosophy. The discussion moves between Germany, France, and Japan, providing a guide to the development of culture in a number of national settings from the turn of the century to the 1930s. Inspired by the work of Foucault, the Marxist culturalists, and the Frankfurt School, Pincus reads against the grain of traditional interpretation. Her theoretically informed approach situates culture in a historical perspective and charts the ideological dimensions of cultural aesthetics in Japan. Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan makes an important contribution to our understanding of modernity, nationalism, and fascism in the early twentieth century.

Critical media theory can be traced back to the development of critical theory by thinkers associated with the so-called Frankfurt School in the 1920s and 1930s. The critical theory of the Frankfurt School was generally neo-Marxist and Hegelian, and established powerful critiques of positivist, mainstream forms of social science and philosophy. The Frankfurt School’s approach to theorizing the emergent 20th century “mass media” therefore founded a powerful critique of mainstream, positivist, “administrative” mass communication research that became dominant in the early decades of the discipline. Arguably the most direct theoretical descendants of Frankfurt School critical theory (via the latter’s critique of industrialized culture) are the forms of political economy of the media that emerged in their wake. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, competing Marxist analyses began to challenge what they took to be the economism, reductionism, and determinism of Frankfurt School and political economy approaches. The most important movement in these respects came out of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The so-called Birmingham School developed forms of structural and cultural Marxism that drew heavily on the work of Althusser and Gramsci in particular. Additionally, the CCCS developed semiotic and ethnographic approaches to critical media studies that drew upon thinkers such as Barthes and Geertz, and thus gave rise to theories of media audiences that differed sharply from those of the Frankfurt School and political economists. During the late-1970s and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the critical media theory of the Birmingham School engaged closely with feminist theory and politics, and with critical race theory; it also engaged in dialogues and debates with poststructuralism, postmodernism, post-Marxism and postcolonialism, and spread internationally under the stripped-down heading of “Cultural Studies.” Though not unrelated, critical media theory can be differentiated from film theory: many film theorists reject the characterization of cinema as a “communication medium,” and equally rejected (for many years, at least) the engagement with television that spurred the development of a great deal of critical media theory and that helped give rise to the field of television studies in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical media theory in general, and television studies in particular, have incorporated some forms of psychoanalysis to one degree or another, but neither has been anywhere near as absorbed by psychoanalytic approaches as film theory was for many years (arguably as primarily a consequence of the specificity of the cinematic apparatus). In more recent years, new media theory in particular has been central to the continuing development and concerns of critical media theory more generally.

Responding to a call for systematic contributions on the theory of society, the principle aim of this article is to recover and reconstruct the Young-Hegelian core of critical theory’s theory of the dialectical development of society and, on that basis, to project its creative research-based continuation by analysing its largely neglected key concept of possibility. The acknowledgement of the critical theory lineage’s naturalist, realist and especially idealist features leads this reconstruction to ascribe a central role to certain pivotal concepts that deserve special attention – including nature, the construction of society, evolution, immanent–transcendence and the conceptual conditions or cognitive order of society. A side effect of this theoretical exposition is the exposure in the course of the argument of certain weaknesses often visible in the contemporary articulation of the theory of society in both critical theory and general social theory. Conceptual solutions to those deficiencies are simultaneously presented in a form appropriate to critical theory’s modal-based negative explanatory and positive disclosing critique.

By centering the question of Palestine, this article contributes to a decolonial critique of German critical theory à la Jürgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School. The article’s intervention is prompted by the November 2023 ‘Principles of Solidarity. A Statement’ (PoS), of which Habermas was a coauthor. Released amid a full-scale Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, which followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel, the PoS statement expressed unequivocal solidarity with Israel, and it defended the assault on Gaza as being ‘justified in principle’. Whereas some critics view the PoS statement’s conspicuous one-sidedness as a departure from Habermas’s universalist principles, this article argues that the statement’s neglect of Palestinian suffering aligns with the Eurocentric limitations and biases inherent in Habermas’s thought. These limitations and biases, the article contends, stem from a colonial unconscious running through successive generations of the Frankfurt School critical theory (FSCT). Recalling Edward Said’s warning that the FSCT’s silence on colonialism and imperialism undermines the tradition’s liberatory potential, the article identifies the PoS statement as marking the depletion of any such potential.

This chapter examines what the author understands to be the core theological concept that gives substantive meaning to Adorno's Negative Dialectics and his philosophy of suffering; that is the notion of bilderverbot , or the theological ban of images. It claims that the essence of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and specifically the core of Adorno's philosophy is the sensitivity toward the suffering of the finite individual in the unjust and violent world of history. The chapter elucidates the political, economic, and social ramifications of the philosophical deployment and radicalization of the concept of bilderverbot in the Frankfurt School's vision (or non-vision) of utopia. By determinately negating the original Jewish conception of bilderverbot and therefore preserving and extending the concept beyond its original and sole theological meaning, Adorno and the Frankfurt School clarify the inherent double negativity of bilderverbot as well as the concept of utopia. Keywords: Adorno's philosophy; bilderverbot ; critical theory; Frankfurt School; Jewish conception; Negative Dialectics ; Utopia

Critical theory is an always-evolving school of thought concerned with critiquing and transforming society. Critical theory refers to the theories developed by the Frankfurt School and other recent social scientists and feminist theorists whose theories aim to explain and transform social circumstances that enslave human beings. Critical theory has been the main source of analysis in the field of curriculum studies, particularly critical curriculum theory. Critical theory has particularly influenced the work of critical curriculum theorists focused on curriculum for social reconstruction. It is important to note that, however, the critical tradition in curriculum studies in the U.S. can also be traced back to the work of Dewey, Counts, Rugg, Macdonald, Huebner, and Greene. The integration of critical theory into this critical tradition contributes to the formation of critical curriculum studies, which is well represented in the scholarship of Michael W. Apple, one of the world’s foremost educational and curriculum theorists. Apple’s emphasis on critical examination of the social realities on the one hand and search for possibilities to empower people and transform society on the other hand points to crucial tasks of critical educational and curriculum studies. Possibilities about using the process of schooling for social reconstruction and designing curriculum for a new cultural order depend on how thoroughly the current problems of social realities can be uncovered. The ideas of ideology, hegemony, official knowledge, power, deskilling, reskilling, and work intensification will be introduced to help readers understand how critical curriculum studies use these notions to examine key critical theory themes such as the politics of domination, legitimation, oppression, and exploitation embedded in school curriculum. Recent development of critical theories has presented various directions for critical curriculum scholarship. The discussion of critical theory within curriculum studies is a way to revive the tradition of loosely termed critical curriculum studies (Sadovnik 1991) while simultaneously providing a contextual framework to build a rich conceptual foundation for engaging in a disciplined critical curriculum analysis. As new forms of critical theory have been and will be developed, critical curriculum studies continue to be enriched by this school of thought. The task of critical curriculum theory must be to open up more spaces for collective work for both critical analysis and social transformation.

The idea of a critical theory is famous across the world, yet it is today rarely practiced as originally conceived by the Frankfurt School. The waning influence of critical theory in the contemporary academy may be due to its lack of engagement with global problems and the postcolonial condition. This book offers the first systematic treatment of the idea of a critical theory of world society, advancing the conversation between critical theory and postcolonial and ecological thought. It develops a reconstruction of the Frankfurt School tradition as four paradigms of critical theory, in original interpretations of the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, and Axel Honneth, and considers how the global context has figured in their work and what might be salvaged for a critical theory of contemporary world society. It advances new interpretations of the relationship between critical theory and justice, the idea of communicative freedom, and three conceptions of power in the Frankfurt School tradition. The book further offers extended discussions of two emerging paradigms in the work of Amy Allen and Rainer Forst. The book argues that a critical theory of world society must combine and integrate a Kantian constructivist approach in a critique of global injustice, as defended by Forst, with the reflexive check of a self-problematizing critique of its blind spots and taken-for-granted assumptions regarding the postcolonial condition, as defended by Allen. Finally, the book rethinks the relationship between society and nature in critical theory, with far-reaching normative and methodological implications.

Fil: Szpilbarg, Daniela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani; Argentina

Critical Theory and Film brings together critical theory and film to enhance the critical potential of both. The book focuses on the Frankfurt School, most notably the works of Adorno and Horkheimer, as well as associated thinkers. It seeks to demonstrate that cinema can help critical theory repoliticize culture and society and affirm the theoretical and political impact of cinematic knowledge. After discussing how the Frankfurt School saw cinema as an instrument of capitalism use to promote the cultural and political regimentation of the masses, Vighi then proceeds to demonstrate that critical theory can in fact suggest a different verdict on the progressive potential of cinema. Each chapter focuses on a key critical theory concept that is explained and redefined through film analysis to unravel the hidden presuppositions and most radical consequences of critical theory. A unique contribution to the literature, this volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series offer an innovative reading of film as a critical tool, drawing on the latest developments in Lacanian theory.

Marx's view of industrialization as the cul? mination of the social process of modern capitalism (especially the division of labor and its hierarchical control) has been strengthened and clarified by the critical Marxists' (Lukacs, Gramsci, the Frankfurt school) dialectical anal? yses of the deep cultural dimensions of that process. Technological development to aug? ment the hierarchical control of production for profit is formed by and in turn further shapes this sociocultural process. American mainstream politics, its mediating structures institutionally set in the corporate capitalist economy and allegedly rooted in a "pragmatic realist" tradition, is bounded, in reality, by the technological world-view. Activities undertaken within this horizon ultimately are aimed at domination, "mastery", or "control" inasmuch as the "outside world" is pictured as a field of resource objects to be exploited by calculative/ manipulative approaches. The Frankfurt "critique of instrumental rationality" is integral to a dialectical theory of this system which, in certain transfigured forms, overshadows the so-called "anti-capitalist" bloc as well. The Frankfurt critique should be understood as broadening, not replacing, the general Marxist critique of industrial capitalism. Perhaps what has yet to be thoroughly under? stood is the achievement of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse in helping to show that a self-critical socialism worthy of the name must slip the cultural yoke of the technological world-picture wherever the latter is projected. In confronting the cultural roots of the modern capitalist world system, along with the new sociocultural formations of the technological world-view, the Frankfurt school paved the way for insights into the recent anti-socialist politics of technocratic elites in the era of "detente" (e.g. Brezhnev vs. Brzezinski). Here I shall attempt to assess the relevance of (1) the Frankfurt school critique of instru? mental rationality and cultural reification, and (2) the critical phenomenology of the life world and the "material apriori" for (3) a post-modern perspective on the New Left, and the radical theory of social change (especially at the "metatheoretical" level) in the United States. A "post-modern" critical theory, con? cerned as it is with reconstituting social totality and cultural temporality as dimensions of modern political life, focuses not only on in? dustrial capitalism as its primary institutional setting but also on the technological world view as the predominant cultural horizon of contemporary elites. Such a theory must link critique and praxis in order dialectically to transform the time structures of human historical life as well as its social spatial condi? tions. Dialectic of Enlightenment by Hork? heimer and Adorno is a major work of critical marxism especially because it illuminates the Herbert G. Reid is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky.

Through an exploration of the term of “para-academic,” this article examines the Institute for Social Research’s liminal position of being “next to” but outside of the academy. Founded to be “next to” but independent from the University of Frankfurt in 1923, the Institute retained a para-academic structure during its American exile between 1934-1949. For over a decade, the Institute hovered at the margins of Columbia University under the auspices of a program called University Extension that effectively relegated its participants to the role of second-class citizens. This para-academic relationship with Columbia prolonged the Institute’s marginal, precarious status, but it also provided its members with the freedom to pursue their own research agendas that went against the grain of existing academic disciplines. With an eye towards the contemporary American resurgence in critical theory, this article interrogates the concept of the “Frankfurt School” as a school by focusing on how it diverged from traditional academic institutions. This history helps to explain the unexpected afterlives of critical theory in spheres beyond academia in a way that resonates with the Institute’s foundational principles. Precisely because it developed outside of traditional disciplinary structures, critical theory continues to be a fertile ground of critique today, exemplified by the rise of para-academic institutions like the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research modeled after its namesake.