Horkheimer consistently translated Marx’s transcendence of bourgeois science into interdisciplinary social research.

Evidence

As to the goals and tasks of the Institute, he said that much of what he had mentioned in his inaugural lecture of 1931 was still valid, for example, the demand for collaboration between philosophers, sociologists, economists, and so on. `The blinkerswe might add todaythe blinkers must fall away, both those of individual disciplines and those of particular national or school traditions.’ Earlier German sociology, which had tended to be rather more theoretical, and also the newest, most efficient empirical social science methods developed in the USA, would be given equal emphasis in the teaching programme at the Institute. This was an extension of his characterization of his own work as a combination of European ideas and American methods, a description that had long since degenerated into a mere formula, but also applied to the role of the Institute and its director as a bridge between the USA and Germany. … In his inaugural lecture, he had substituted an apparently independent materialist transformation of German idealist philosophy for Grünberg’s appeal to Marxist theory. And he had substituted a demand for interdisciplinary work and a combination of philosophy and the various scientific disciplines for Lukács’s demandtaking up a theme from Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburgthat the division of labour in bourgeois science should be transcended. So, too, he now used a general circumlocution which opened up an unimpeded vista compared with rigid and dogmatic left-wing theoretical positionswhile also sounding melodious and non-committal in establishment ears. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1901

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader critical theory tradition and the Institute’s institutional history detailed elsewhere in this book and the reader’s critical-theory reading project. — connects to: Horkheimer’s unity-of-social-sciences program revived Gerlach’s original founding vision. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 156; Horkheimer reframed empirical social research as the renewal of enlightenment’s emancipatory project — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 149; Horkheimer steered the Institute toward empirical research while retaining theoretical control — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1495

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer reframed empirical social research as the renewal of enlightenment’s emancipatory project #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 149
• Horkheimer steered the Institute toward empirical research while retaining theoretical control #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1495