Georg Lukács inwards 1962 used the colorful icon of a fictional "Grand Hotel Abyss" to limited his disappointment inwards the ...
Georg Lukács inwards 1962 used the colorful icon of a fictional "Grand Hotel Abyss" to limited his disappointment inwards the theorists of the Frankfurt School. Here is a passage inwards which the thought is described inwards "Preface to the Theory of the Novel" (link):
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 considerable purpose of the leading High German intelligentsia, including Adorno, receive got taken upward residence inwards the ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’ which I described inwards connectedness alongside my critique of Schopenhauer every bit ‘a beautiful hotel, equipped alongside every comfort, on the border of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the abyss betwixt splendid meals or artistic entertainments, tin mail away solely lift the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered.’ (The fact that Ernst Bloch continued undeterred to cling to his synthesis of ‘left’ ethics as well as ‘right’ epistemology (e.g. cf. Frankfurt 1961) does award to his strength of grapheme but cannot modify the outdated nature of his theoretical position. To the extent that an authentic, fruitful as well as progressive opposition is actually stirring inwards the Western earth (including the Federal Republic), this opposition no longer has anything to produce alongside the coupling of ‘left’ ethics alongside ‘right’ epistemology.)The thinkers of the Frankfurt School -- Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, Benjamin, Wellmer, Marcuse -- were for Lukács also much devoted to theorizing capitalism as well as barbarism as well as also lilliputian most changing it. They were similar imagined world-weary residents inwards the Grand Hotel Abyss, observing the unfolding catastrophe but doing zero to intervene to halt it. They were most theory, non praxis.
Stuart Jeffries uses this trope every bit the organizing subject of his grouping biography of these figures inwards Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School, and, inwards a word, he finds that Lukács's critique is unfounded.
Jeffries emphasizes the mutual social origins of these boundary-breaking critics of capitalism. The volume is detailed as well as insightful. Jeffries emphasizes the mutual social as well as cultural origins of almost all these men -- German, Jewish, bourgeois, affluent -- as well as the mutual threads of their criticism of the capitalism as well as consumerism that surrounded them inwards the early on as well as middle twentieth century. The fundamental inquiry of how it came to compass that ordinary people inwards cultured, philosophically rich Federal Republic of Federal Republic of Germany came to back upward the Nazi ascent to ability was of vital trouble to all of them. But consumerism, authoritarianism, as well as the suffering both created yesteryear as well as hidden yesteryear capitalism are also inwards the see stage.
The volume is primarily most ideas as well as debates, non the particulars of personal biography. Jeffries does an impressive project of walking readers through the debates that swirled inside as well as across the Frankfurt School -- is capitalism doomed? Are workers inherently revolutionary? Is fine art purpose of the back upward organization for capitalism? Is Marxism scientific or dialectical? Jeffries does an especial as well as fascinating project of telling this complex even of intellectual history as well as social criticism.
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 especially of import excogitation inside the intellectual tradition of critical theory was the pointed critique these theorists offered of volume culture. Unlike orthodox Marxists who gave main emphasis to the workings of the forces as well as relations of production -- economic science -- the critical theorists took real seriously the powerful role played inside advanced capitalism yesteryear volume culture, film, media, as well as television. (The publication inwards 1927 of Marx's Economic as well as Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 appears to receive got been an of import impetus to much of the theorizing of the Frankfurt School.) Here is i illustration of the social criticism of Hollywood offered yesteryear Adorno as well as Horkheimer inwards Dialectic of Enlightenment:
Consider, for instance, Donald Duck. Once, such cartoon characters were ‘exponents of fantasy every bit opposed to rationalism’, wrote Adorno as well as Horkheimer. Now they had move instruments of social domination. ‘They hammer into every encephalon the one-time lesson that continuous friction, the breaking downwardly of all private resistance, is the status of life inwards this society. Donald Duck inwards the cartoons as well as the unfortunate inwards existent life acquire their thrashing so that the audience tin mail away larn to accept their ain punishment.’ (225)So what is a to a greater extent than progressive role for plant of fine art as well as civilisation to play inwards a guild embodying serious social exploitation as well as domination? One move that was an of import hollo for of consideration for several theorists was the Brecht as well as Weill opera, Rise as well as Fall of the City of Mahogany. Adorno as well as others regarded this move every bit i that gave appropriate as well as unblinking attending to the suffering of the modern social order.
Brecht’s libretto, too, sought to arrive clear that the bourgeois earth was absurd as well as anarchic. ‘In monastic tell to correspond this convincingly’, wrote Adorno of the dramatisation of the bourgeois earth every bit absurd as well as anarchic, ‘it is necessary to overstep the shut earth of bourgeois consciousness which considers bourgeois social reality to live on immutable. Outside of this framework, however, in that place is no seat to accept – at to the lowest degree for the High German consciousness, in that place is no site which is non-capitalist.’ This was to move i non bad subject of critical theory: in that place is no outside, non inwards today’s utterly rationalised, totally reified, commodity-fetishising world. When Marx wrote Capital inwards the mid nineteenth century, the to a greater extent than primitive capitalist organization he was diagnosing made commodity fetishism just episodic; straightaway it was everywhere, poisoning everything. ‘Paradoxically, therefore’, Adorno added, ‘transcendence must accept house inside the framework of that which is.’ Brecht’s onset on capitalist guild inwards Mahoganny was as well as then paradoxically both from inside as well as from without at the same time, both immanent as well as transcendent. (132)Jeffries also provides a fascinating as well as extended give-and-take of the deep interactions that occurred betwixt Thomas Isle of Man as well as Adorno inwards Los Angeles every bit Isle of Man worked at completing Doctor Faustus. Isle of Man wanted Adorno's practiced advice most modern music, as well as Adorno obliged. Jeffries argues that Adorno had a noun upshot on the novel:
Arguably, the finished novel reflects Adorno’s melancholic philosophy to a greater extent than profoundly than Mann’s. This is non to propose plagiarism: every bit Adorno wrote inwards 1957, the insinuation that Isle of Man made illegitimate utilization of his ‘intellectual property’ is absurd. The underlying aesthetic philosophy of the novel goes beyond the binary opposition betwixt the Apollonian as well as Dionysian, betwixt the orderly as well as the ecstatic, that Nietzsche gear upward out inwards The Birth of Tragedy as well as to which Isle of Man repeatedly appealed inwards his fiction... During the collaboration alongside Adorno, however, Isle of Man gear upward aside his original, Dionysian conception of the composer as well as every bit a termination Leverkühn became something much to a greater extent than interesting –a figure who dramatised something of the Frankfurt School’s, as well as inwards particular Adorno’s, distinctive contribution to the philosophy of art. (243)And what most fascism? This was a fundamental thrust of Frankfurt School research, as well as view was divided most the causes of the ascent of Nazism inwards Federal Republic of Federal Republic of Germany amid the Frankfurt School theorists. But hither is an interpretation that seems especially relevant inwards 2016 inwards the United States, given the pageantry of political rallies as well as the slogans most making America non bad again:
Fascism was, every bit a result, a paradox, beingness both ancient as well as modern: to a greater extent than exactly it was a organization that used a tradition hostile to capitalism for the preservation of capitalism. For Bloch, every bit for Walter Benjamin, fascism was a cultural synthesis that contained both anti-capitalist as well as utopian aspects. The Frankfurt School failed to emphasise inwards its analysis of fascism what Benjamin called the ‘aestheticisation of politics’. It vicious to Benjamin, Bloch as well as Siegfried Kracauer to reverberate on the Nazi deployment of myths, symbols, parades as well as demonstrations to command support. (250)The chapter on Habermas is also real goodness as well as tin mail away live on read separately every bit an introduction to Habermas's leading ideas (chapter 17). It is pregnant that this terminal vocalism of the Frankfurt School should live on i that provides a footing for greater optimism most the prospects for modern commonwealth than what emerges from the Dialectic of Enlightenment.
The perspectives of the Frankfurt School were developed inwards the context of crises of capitalism, fascism, as well as anti-semitism inwards the 1930s. But these theories are i time over again deeply relevant inwards the context of the politics of 2016. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 xenophobic, divisive candidate as well as political party receive got assumed the reins of ability inwards a populous democracy. The issues of propaganda as well as unapologetic political lies are earlier us i time again. The politics of loathe as well as intolerance receive got taken see stage. And the role of culture, media, as well as straightaway the mesh needs to live on examined carefully for its dependence upon the corporate monastic tell every bit good every bit its possible authorization every bit a machinery of resistance. The Frankfurt School thinkers had of import insights into virtually all these questions. Jeffries' real interesting intellectual history of the motility is timely.
Jeffries quotes from a alphabetic quality from Adorno to Isle of Man on the aftermath of Nazism inwards Federal Republic of Federal Republic of Germany alongside observations that may live on relevant to us today every bit well:
The inarticulate grapheme of apolitical conviction, the readiness to submit to every manifestation of actual powers, the minute accommodation to whatever novel province of affairs emerges, all this is just an facial expression of the same regression. If it is truthful that the manipulative command of the masses e'er brings most a regressive formation of humanity, as well as if Hitler’s drive for ability essentially involved the human relationship of this evolution ‘at a unmarried stroke’, nosotros tin mail away solely tell that he, as well as the collapse that followed, has succeeded inwards producing the required infantilisation. (273)These are words that may live on of import inwards the coming years, if the incoming authorities succeeds inwards carrying out many of its mean value promises. And how volition the institutions of media as well as civilisation respond? Let us non live on infantilized inwards the years to come upward when it comes to the fundamental values of democracy.
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