Horkheimer held that religious emancipation dehumanizes rather than liberates

Evidence

It appears to me that, in our epoch, men are undergoing much deeper changes than could be expressed psychologically. It is as if the substance of man itself had changed with the fundaments of our society … The religious emancipation of the middle classes, with all its appearance of progressiveness' reveals itself today as a force of dehumanization, however much it likes, or liked, to cloak itself as humanism. We witness a change that makes men into mere passive centers of reaction, into subjects of conditioned reflexes’, because they have left no centers of spontaneity, no obligatory measure of behavior, nothing that transcends their most immediate wants, needs and desires. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1135

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the secularization-as-loss theme and the Institute’s later thesis on the neutralization of religion and culture producing authoritarian character. — connects to: Horkheimer’s late turn to religion continued his earlier anti-humanist stance. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 799
• QUESTION: The excerpt trails off mid-passage; would need more of the letter to capture the full argument about centers of spontaneity.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer’s late turn to religion continued his earlier anti-humanist stance. #expands (0.90) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 799