A leading Marxist theoretician could in private life be a Schopenhauerian

Evidence

Korsch had written that one would have to regard Marxism (as the Marxist theoreticians of the Second International had done) as not implying specific attitudes to philosophical questions, for it not to seem an impossibility that a leading Marxist theoretician could in private life be a supporter of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer'. One of the Institute of Social Research's scholarship holders at that time was Willy Strzelewicz, who had come to Frankfurt in the summer of 1928 and took his doctorate in 1931 with a dissertation on The Limits of Science in Max Weber. He was one of the young leftwing intellectuals whose break with the Communist Party was delayed by their enthusiasm for Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Lenin. Strzelewicz's impression was that Horkheimer was a middle-class philosopher who was close to Marxism and communism, who was half neo-Kantian, half positivist, a lecturer who enjoyed open discussions, who seldom mentioned Marx by name, and who thought just as little of Lukács's Marxism as of the interpretative’ philosophy of Adorno and Benjamin. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 204

Categorization

• SEED: The portrait of Horkheimer as half neo-Kantian, half positivist who rarely named Marx directly — a corrective to textbook readings of the Frankfurt School as orthodox Marxists.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 204
• XREF: connects to: Schopenhauerian finitude consciousness grounded Horkheimer’s historical-materialist critique — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 203; Horkheimer’s Buddhist and Schopenhauerian leanings were held in abeyance through Adorno’s dialectical negation. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1113

Broader Connections

• Schopenhauerian finitude consciousness grounded Horkheimer’s historical-materialist critique #exemplifies (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 203
• Horkheimer’s Buddhist and Schopenhauerian leanings were held in abeyance through Adorno’s dialectical negation. #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1113