Max Horkheimer quotes - page 3
Max Horkheimer was a German philosopher and sociologist, best known as one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His work explored the relationships between society, reason, and freedom. He played a key role in the development of critical theory, influencing generations of thinkers on culture, politics, and philosophy. Here are 61 of his quotes:
Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding some its assertions, that the forms of knowledge and consequently the relations of man to nature and to other men never change. According to rationalism, too, all subjective and objective potentialities are rooted in insights which the individual already possesses, but rationality uses existing objects as well as the active inner striving and ideas of man to construct standards for the future. In this regard, it is not so closely associated with the present order as is empiricism.
Max Horkheimer
The French symbolists had a special term to express their love for things that had lost their objective significance, namely, ‘spleen.' The conscious, challenging arbitrariness in the choice of objects, its ‘absurdity' and ‘perverseness,' as if by a silent gesture discloses the irrationality of utilitarian logic, which it then slaps in the face in order to demonstrate its inadequacy with regard to human experience. And while making it conscious, by this shock, of the fact that it forgets the subject, the gesture simultaneously expresses the subject's sorrow over his inability to achieve an objective order. Twentieth-century society is not troubled by such inconsistencies. For it, meaning can be achieved in only one way-service for a purpose.
Max Horkheimer
If this truth has once and for all been discarded and men have decided for integral adjustment, if reason has been purged of all morality regardless of cost, and has triumphed over all else, no one may remain outside and look on. The existence of one solitary "unreasonable" man elucidates the shame of the entire nation. His existence testifies to the relativity of the system of radical self-preservation that has been posited as absolute.
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
Photo:
Jeremy J. Shapiro,
GFDL
Occupation: German Philosopher
Born: February 14, 1895
Died: July 7, 1973
Quotes count: 61
Wikipedia: Max Horkheimer
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