Horkheimer never specified a criterion for distinguishing rational from regressive uses of tradition.
Evidence
But how was it to be decided which transformation of which elements of tradition should be viewed as the genuinely rational one? Would there not have to be a source independent of myth, superstition and religion? Must Horkheimer not have had such a source in mind when he spoke of `independent thinkers’ who, unlike the well-meaning metaphysicians, did not expunge the last trace of significance from tradition through attempts to revive it artificially? — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 371
Categorization
- QUESTION: Did Horkheimer ever supply the independent source of rationality that this passage demands? Worth chasing in his later essays and Eclipse of Reason.
- XREF: Connects to Habermas’s later attempt to ground critical theory in the rational potential of everyday language — directly responding to this gap. — connects to: Horkheimer rejected non-class-based accounts of ideas as perpetuating suppression — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 220; Adorno and Horkheimer never gave their social theory a coherent systematic exposition. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 570; Horkheimer never resolved how economic autonomy relates to reason’s self-destruction — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 336 (+1 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Horkheimer rejected non-class-based accounts of ideas as perpetuating suppression — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 220; Adorno and Horkheimer never gave their social theory a coherent systematic exposition. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 570; Horkheimer never resolved how economic autonomy relates to reason’s self-destruction — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 336 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Horkheimer never resolved how economic autonomy relates to reason’s self-destruction
#complicates(0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 336