Horkheimer’s reopening speech echoed West’s dominant Cold War rhetoric

Evidence

This was the background against which Horkheimer gave his speech. He did not take the opportunity offered by his establishment position to overstep academic bounds in the slightest. Social science, he declared, could contribute towards abolishing the evils of prejudice and a priori restrictions, and could help to make the structure of the world correspond more closely to the true needs of its inhabitants. Without the kind of free thought, unconcerned with domination, which philosophy and sociology were concerned with, the door to a society which was more free and more worthy of humanity would never open, and the world would stagger from one catastrophe to the next, in spite of periods of reconstruction. Such talk of the importance of free thought for a freer world was indistinguishable from the dominant jargon of the time, which contrasted the values Freedom = West' and Dictatorship = East’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1899

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to critical theory’s later self-critique of having accommodated itself to Western liberal-democratic Cold War discourse. — connects to: Horkheimer’s reopening speech mythologized Nazism as devilish powers — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1900; Late Horkheimer embraced anti-Communist and pro-American rhetoric — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1726; Cold War pressures drove Horkheimer and Adorno apart from Marcuse’s leftism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 864

Broader Connections

• Late Horkheimer embraced anti-Communist and pro-American rhetoric #corroborates (0.90) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1726
• Cold War pressures drove Horkheimer and Adorno apart from Marcuse’s leftism #corroborates (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 864