Horkheimer grounded ethics in desire as a fact needing no justification
Evidence
The desire of human beings for happiness was, for the materialist Horkheimer, a fact which needed no justification. The finest nuance of desire was sacred to philosophy. And now human nature and the silent appeal to the situation contained imperious demands which would be audible when subjective reason was silent. Horkheimer’s view, more hinted at than stated here, was thus: independent thought would rescue the `last trace of significance’ not by attempting to revive something but by putting a halt to something destructive and distracting. Independent thought did not seek to renew worn-out ideals on the intellectual level, but instead attempted to link itself to their equivalents in human nature. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1464
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the broader theme in Wiggershaus’s account of the Frankfurt School’s late Horkheimer moving toward an ‘aesthetic existentialism’. — connects to: Horkheimer’s materialism rested on happiness as an unjustified demand resolvable through planning — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 545; Horkheimer’s personal ethics derived from love and appealing to privileged consciences — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 169; Horkheimer grounded Critical Theory in natural reason emanating from innate sympathies. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2155 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Desire is consciousness troubled by its own inapprehensible facticity
#expands(0.85) - Horkheimer defended egoism but insisted gratification flows through communal interaction
#expands(0.82) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 233 - Horkheimer’s personal ethics derived from love and appealing to privileged consciences
#qualifies(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 169 - Adorno-Horkheimer’s instinct-based utopian critique rested on unproven biological assumptions
#corroborates(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1121 - Horkheimer grounded Critical Theory in natural reason emanating from innate sympathies.
#corroborates(0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2155 - Crimes of passion require no theoretical justification because passion extinguishes reason
#exemplifies(0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 375