Horkheimer defended teaching Marxism as a university’s scientific duty

Evidence

Following newspaper reports of his `temporary suspension’, Horkheimer sent a letter, three closely written pages long, to the Minister for Science, Art and People’s Education in Berlin on 21 April. In the letter, written in the style of a dignified, liberal citizen, he concisely and pointedly gave reasons for the significance of Cornelius, Kant and Hegel in his teaching activities. He admitted in particular having taken into account the economic view of history, among other more recent social theories. Naturally, I presented this theory positively, to the extent that it seemed scientifically productive to me, and referred to its epistemological value. I consider it to be one of the tasks of a university that students, as distinct from the mass of the population, must also learn to know in detail those theories about which they will have passionate viewswhether positive or negativein their future lives. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 149

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Horkheimer’s later arguments on the social function of theory and the university’s pedagogical task. — connects to: Horkheimer defended his teaching by invoking Cornelius, Kant, and Hegel — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 528; Horkheimer adopted Marxist theory slowly and kept it a private matter; Horkheimer rejected vulgar Marxists’ passive materialism by reviving Marx’s active, dialectical epistemology — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 219
• SEED: Angle: how persecuted scholars justified politically suspect teaching as pedagogy rather than politics — a genre of self-defense letter.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer defended his teaching by invoking Cornelius, Kant, and Hegel #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 528
• Horkheimer adopted Marxist theory slowly and kept it a private matter #complicates (0.80)
• Horkheimer rejected vulgar Marxists’ passive materialism by reviving Marx’s active, dialectical epistemology #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 219