Horkheimer and Adorno’s collaboration fused two distinct materialist methodologies

Evidence

All in all, the astonishing process which had begun in Frankfurt at the beginning of the 1930s was thus continued after 1934-5: the collaboration between Horkheimer and Adorno. Horkheimer was a materialist social theorist, attempting, through a philosophically initiated interdisciplinary analysis of society as a whole, to meet the demand for happiness asserted by mortal human beings who depend on the here and now. Adorno was an interpretative materialist who, by means of `constructive interpretation’ and elucidation of what was small, fragmentary, accidental and infused with idealism, aimed to liberate dialectically the elements which would be capable of rescuing these phenomena and producing a better form of rationality. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 662

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely distinguishes Horkheimer’s ‘materialist social theorist’ approach from Adorno’s ‘interpretative materialist’ one, a key terminology distinction for Critical Theory reference.
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer and Adorno’s collaboration required assimilating their differing materialisms. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 662; Adorno’s 1950s empirical method preserved the Institute’s Fromm-Horkheimer schema of economy, psyche, and culture — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1933; Horkheimer and Adorno anchored their critique of reason in different ideals — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1308 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer and Adorno rejected history as autonomous substance and grounded theory in social material #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 186
• Horkheimer and Adorno anchored their critique of reason in different ideals #expands (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1308
• Horkheimer and Adorno reworked Buber’s religious insight into a materialist concept of mimesis #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1439