Horkheimer mapped rationalism and irrationalism onto distinct class-historical conditions

Evidence

On the one hand, rationalism (represented for Horkheimer mainly by positivism) considered the scientific disciplines in their current form to be the only legitimate form of knowledge, and saw speculative thought as not competent to discuss the problems of society as a whole. In Horkheimer’s eyes, rationalism was therefore only an imperfect, inflexible, impoverished rationality. On the other hand, irrationalismrepresented for Horkheimer by the `philosophy of life’ (Lebensphilosophie), for example, and by existential philosophycondemned thought as a destructive force, and made the soul or intuition the sole deciding authority in all the critical problems of life. This school of thought thus demanded less rather than more rationality. Horkheimer saw rationalism as a fitting expression of the over-estimation of his or her own abilities by the type of individual never able to view matters as a whole, a type which had flourished in the liberal period of bourgeois-capitalist society. In irrationalism, by contrast, he saw an expression of the growing powerlessness even of most members of the middle classes in the phase of monopoly capitalism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 547

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later Frankfurt School critique of instrumental reason and Dialectic of Enlightenment’s treatment of myth and enlightenment as the same totalizing force. — connects to: Borkenau explained seventeenth-century epistemology as class ideology of production methods — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 505; Horkheimer broke with Marxist orthodoxy by treating irrationalism as heterogeneous — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 208; Irrationalism correctly diagnoses rationalism’s crisis but serves power’s interests. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 548

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer broke with Marxist orthodoxy by treating irrationalism as heterogeneous #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 208