Frankfurt theorists and pure sociologists accused each other of totalitarian tendencies.

Evidence

Their differences in views' involved nothing less than mutual accusations of having totalitarian tendencies. Even before the Tübingen workshop, this had once again become clear at the Fourteenth German Sociology Conference in Berlin in 1959. In consecutive papers, Horkheimer had spoken on Sociology and Philosophy’ and König on Changes in the Position of the Sociological Intelligentsia'. Horkheimer had emphasized that, if sociology failed to concern itself with the fate of the whole, if it failed to fulfil its task of allowing society to reflect on itself’ in the light of its purposethe correct form of human co-existence'then it would fail in the struggle against the totalitarian world, which threatens the European world both from without and from within’. König was bound to see this as a reference to himself, since he rejected precisely what Horkheimer was demanding, on the grounds that it was no longer appropriate to a `pure’, specialist sociology. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2403

Categorization

• XREF: Competing claims to be the true anti-totalitarian position echo the reader’s concerns with how institutions police ideological legitimacy. — connects to: German postwar sociologists accused each other of totalitarian tendencies; German sociologists accused each other of fascist and communist totalitarian leanings. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 595; Germany’s 1961 sociology disputes split along moral and political lines, not just method. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 595 (+1 more)