Horkheimer’s critical theory aimed to combine factual knowledge with normative urgency

Evidence

Horkheimer’s thinking about this problem identified one essential goal: to keep discontent with the earthly order of things', which had formerly been hidden by religion, free from any new types of camouflage by criticizing every form of metaphysics and by throwing his energies into the scientific theory of society’. In this way he would be able to combine, at the level of theory at least, what had been split into two at the level of reality by the division of the working class: factual knowledge' and clarity about fundamental principles’that is, the experience of the total inhumanity of this [capitalist labour process]' and the urgent necessity for change’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 199

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures Horkheimer’s definition of critical theory’s task: uniting factual analysis of capitalist inhumanity with the imperative for change, after religion stopped performing that unifying function.
• XREF: This is the germ of Horkheimer’s ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ program, and contrasts with Marx’s own assumption that the proletariat would unify theory and practice. — connects to: Horkheimer sought applied topics that could present his theory as expert social knowledge — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1338; Horkheimer sought to fuse European critical theory with American empirical methods — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1520; Horkheimer reframed empirical social research as the renewal of enlightenment’s emancipatory project — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 149 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Critical Theory grounds truth claims in possible futures rather than present facts #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 302