Critical Theory_A Very Short Introduction

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Critical Theory_A Very Short Introduction Page 14

by Stephen Eric Bronner


  as inspiration to Frankfurt School, 2–4, 3–4, 20–21, 26, 36, 104

  on revolutionary bourgeoisie, 28, 52

  on socialism, 2, 21, 48–49

  and theology, 30–31

  utopian visions, 2, 35, 48–49

  See also Western Marxism

  Marx, Karl

  biography, 23

  The Communist Manifesto, 28

  Das Kapital, 40–41, 60

  Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 35, 45, 48–49

  grave site, 104

  smuggled writings, 35, 42

  mass culture

  Frankfurt School investigation of, 4, 7, 26, 80–81

  impact on subjectivity, 7, 77–79

  Massing, Paul, 11

  mass media, 79, 83, 85–86, 113

  mass movements

  civil rights, 83, 91, 109

  critical theory as influence on, 7, 15, 89

  Frankfurt School opinions on, 6–7, 12, 14, 17, 84, 89–91

  labor, 9, 26, 109

  left-wing, 111

  modern, 90–91

  right-wing, 111

  role of public sphere in, 82–83

  student, 18, 83, 84, 89

  women’s liberation, 83, 109

  mass society

  education, 5, 7, 22, 103, 111

  loss of individuality in, 5, 27, 49

  power imbalances in, 8, 102, 108

  technology, 3, 37, 72, 86, 114

  See also mass culture

  materialism, 24, 34, 99, 100

  metaphysics

  in critical theory, 51–52, 60–61, 64, 99, 102

  shortcomings of, 8, 24, 33, 104–5

  metapsychology, 29, 73–74

  Mills, C. Wright, 115–16

  Minima Moralia (Adorno), 29, 74, 82, 88, 93

  modernity, 52–53, 60

  More, Thomas, 74

  Munzer, Thomas, 64

  music critique, 16–17, 80, 88, 93

  Mussolini, Benito, 21

  Naptha (fictional character), 66

  nature, 55, 63, 67, 71, 107–8

  Nazis/Nazism, 5, 27, 45, 52, 60–61, 93–94

  negative dialectics, 3–4, 7–8, 17, 54, 74, 84, 112

  non-identity between individual and society, 7, 17, 97–99, 100

  Negt, Oskar, 82

  Neumann, Franz, 101, 108

  New Left, 84, 85, 91, 100

  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4, 29–30, 54, 59, 71, 80–81

  Nobel, Nehemiah, 13

  Odyssey (Homer), 53, 60–61

  Ortega y Gasset, José, 80

  Orwell, George, 74

  Pachter, Henry, 49

  performance principle, 70, 71

  performative contradiction, 102

  phenomenology, 4, 24, 33, 46

  philosophy

  critical theory as alternative to, 1, 4, 23, 100

  as expression of inexpressible, 93, 98, 116

  as the highest incarnation of reason, 38

  ontology of false conditions, 33, 96, 100, 103, 104–5, 112

  traditional forms of, 1, 4, 23–24, 46, 100

  Piccone, Paul, 87

  Plato, 1

  play impulse, 63, 70, 71

  poetry, 17, 27, 72, 93

  Pollock, Friedrich, 9, 10, 101

  Popper, Karl, 59, 106–7

  positivism, 4, 24, 46, 59, 107–8

  progress

  and barbarism, 5, 62, 72

  illusion of, 5, 54–56, 97

  material, 71

  meaningful, 77

  proletariat/working class

  alienation and reification of, 39–42

  and class consciousness, 20–21, 25–26, 28, 44–45, 60

  as commodity, 40–42

  effect of culture industry on, 86, 89–90

  Marx on, 39–40, 52

  political consciousness, 86–87

  as revolutionary agent, 3, 22, 23, 28, 42, 44, 48, 89–90, 105

  role in capitalism, 28, 39–42, 86

  See also Russian Revolution

  Prometheus, 36

  Proust, Marcel, 4, 16, 17

  psychology. See Fromm, Erich

  public sphere, 8, 82–83

  See also mass movements

  Rabinkow, Salman Baruch, 13

  radical action

  Frankfurt School on, 6–7, 15, 24, 65, 85

  Marx on, 36, 42, 49, 52

  reality principle, 70, 74

  redemption

  in art, 93, 96

  in everyday life, 30–31

  new forms of, 30, 116

  utopian visions of, 32, 36, 67–68, 75

  Rehearsal for Destruction (Massing), 11

  Reichenbach, Hans, 59

  Reichmann, Frieda, 12

  reification

  causes of, 5, 35–43, 51–53, 61–62

  critical theory on, 2–3, 4–5, 46–48, 51–52, 55–56, 61–62

  defined, 4, 40

  erosion of selfhood in, 5, 39–43, 53

  in modern life, 84, 105–6

  religion, 2, 93

  See also theology

  repression, 70–71

  repressive tolerance, 85–86

  resistance

  as animating ideal of critical theory, 4, 7, 8, 88, 98–99, 100, 116

  existential form of, 100

  integration by mass society, 5

  revolutions

  in capitalist society, 28, 36, 48–49, 52, 66

  and Lenin, 28, 44

  and Marx, 48–49

  modern catalysts for, 90

  Rickert, Heinrich, 43

  right-wing movements, 111

  Robespierre, Maximilien, 63

  Romania, 60

  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 37

  Russian Revolution, 3, 11, 20, 22, 44, 56, 60

  Ryazanov, David, 35

  Sade, Marquis de, 55, 59

  Sartre, Jean-Paul, 72, 95

  Schiller, Friedrich, 63, 70

  Scholem, Gershom, 16, 30

  Schönberg, Arnold, 80

  Schopenhauer, Arthur, 4, 59

  scientific inquiry, 3, 43, 54, 55, 106–7, 109–10

  Simmel, Georg, 43

  social democratic labor movement, 83

  socialism

  and critical theory, 8, 21, 48–49, 110

  inevitability of, 2, 16, 21

  utopian visions of, 48–49, 67–68

  The Sociological Imagination (Mills), 115–16

  Socrates, 1

  solidarity, 99, 102, 105

  as animating ideal of critical theory, 98–99, 116

  Soviet Union, 60

  See also Russian Revolution

  Spartacus Revolt of 1919 11, 14

  Stalinism, 61, 65, 69

  Stalin, Joseph, 11–12, 38, 69

  Sternberg, Fritz, 9

  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn), 107

  student movements, 18, 83, 84, 89

  See also mass movements

  Studies in Prejudice (research project), 11

  subjectivity

  in alienation and reification, 5, 39–43, 53

  enmeshed in what it resists, 7

  Telos (journal), 87, 89

  theology

  “longing for the totally other,” 7, 92–93, 96, 98

  protecting scientific inquiry from, 54

  reframing Marxism through, 30–31

  Tiller Girls, 26–27, 26

  tolerance

  repressive, 85–86

  utopian visions of, 54, 69, 111

  Tolstoy, Leo, 66

  totalitarianism, 7, 11, 29, 59, 74, 97

  totally administered society

  and culture industry, 80, 88, 94

  individuality eradicated by, 32, 62, 94, 95

  and instrumental rationality, 54, 62

  and repressive tolerance, 85–86

  resisting, 51–52, 64, 84, 92–93, 104–5

  standardization in, 32

  Trotsky, Leon, 60

  United States<
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  conservatism, 14, 91

  critical theory introduced to, 14, 89, 100–101

  and fascism, 59

  Frankfurt School exiled to, 11, 20

  “paranoid” politics in, 5, 109

  universal pragmatics, 102

  universal reciprocity, 38

  utopia

  and alienation, 36–37, 105

  as always incomplete, 68–69, 75–76, 92

  in art, 14, 63–64, 66–67, 79, 80, 93

  in Eros and Civilization, 69–72

  everyday life as material for, 6, 31

  and Frankfurt School, 4, 7

  Garden of Eden as, 36, 67, 67

  and the individual, 76

  literary treatments of, 74–75

  longing for, 64–69

  as pastoral, 36–37

  redemption as key to, 32, 36

  and science, 106, 107, 108

  and socialism, 48–49, 67–68

  as transcendence, 92

  Vico, Giambattista, 21

  Wagner, Richard, 81

  Weber, Max, 33, 42–43, 54

  Weil, Felix, 9

  Weil, Hermann, 9

  Weimar Republic, 25, 27, 45, 57

  Western Marxism

  condemnation by Communist International, 21, 22, 45, 66

  critical theory origins in, 2–3, 20–22

  and Karl Marx, 35–36

  and liberalism, 56

  studies of alienation and reification, 4

  Wittfogel, Karl August, 9

  workers’ councils, 9, 21, 22, 44

  World War II, 1, 28

  Zamyatin, Yevgeny, 74

 

 

 


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