Horkheimer’s postwar speech ignored Germany’s actual situation, reading as though delivered in America.

Evidence

It was noticeable that Horkheimer’s speech not only did not go beyond what had been said in Eclipse of Reason at any point, but did not even try to link what was said there with the situation in Germany. The speech might just as well have been given in New York or Los Angeles. The puzzled but precise report of it published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung showed how academic it had sounded in the end. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 471

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how critical theory’s abstract register functioned as a form of political avoidance in the Adenauer restoration, letting conformists and ‘politically incriminated’ off the hook.
• QUESTION: Was the abstraction a deliberate rhetorical shield or an out-of-touch habit of exile? The chapter leaves it open whether Horkheimer intended the evasion.
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer deliberately overstated his American standing to strengthen his hand in Frankfurt — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1744
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Horkheimer deliberately overstated his American standing to strengthen his hand in Frankfurt — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1744