Horkheimer carved out the Institute’s identity by playing rivals off each other.
Evidence
Horkheimer’s achievement in the field of academic politics was that he gave the work of the Institute of Social Research a distinct identity and at the same time protected it from defensive reactions among those who felt that their intellectual property was being threatened by the Institute’s reorientation. Vis-à -vis the Frankfurt public, Horkheimer played up the greater relevance to reality of his project, and his command of `a great empirical research apparatus’. At the same time, he distanced himself in this way from humanistic and metaphysical tendencies in German sociology. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 131
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the Institute’s later strategic self-censorship of Marxist vocabulary for American funders — an institutional survival pattern visible from the start. — connects to: Early Frankfurt friendships shaped lifelong Institute member rivalries; Accepting industry funding would force the Institute to compete on rivals’ terms — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 518
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Early Frankfurt friendships shaped lifelong Institute member rivalries; Accepting industry funding would force the Institute to compete on rivals’ terms — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 518