Adorno’s Weinheim lecture revived Horkheimer’s early programme for Critical Theory.

Evidence

At the close of his lecture, Adorno had thus reached a position that represented a kind of Adornoesque variant of Horkheimer’s old programme. Indeed, the lecture Adorno gave in Weinheim was more or less what one might have expected Horkheimer to say at the reopening of the Institute. Did this mean that Adorno was prepared to take over from Horkheimer, who had taken on a purely ceremonial role, and to ensure that the Institute from now on would, at least under someone else, carry out projects that would help to advance the materialist theory of society? — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 479

Categorization

• XREF: Links back to Horkheimer’s original interdisciplinary programme of the 1930s and forward to the Institute’s postwar institutional direction. — connects to: Habermas explicitly renewed Horkheimer’s distinction between traditional and critical theory. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 603
• DEFINE: Marks the moment Adorno effectively inherits Horkheimer’s leadership role as the latter becomes ceremonial.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Habermas explicitly renewed Horkheimer’s distinction between traditional and critical theory. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 603