Horkheimer rejected formal epistemology for material evidence about life’s meaning

Evidence

The more philosophy takes hold of me, the further I find myself moving away from what they call philosophy at this university. It’s not formal laws of knowledge, which are basically completely unimportant, but material evidence about our life and its meaning that we have to look for. I know now that Heidegger is one of the most significant personalities ever to have spoken to me. Do I agree with him? How could I, when all I know about him for certain is that for him the motive to philosophize does not spring from intellectual ambition or a preconceived theory, but every day afresh out of his own experience. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 177

Categorization

• XREF: This early Horkheimer letter prefigures the Frankfurt School’s later turn to social philosophy and material critique of bourgeois formalism; connects to the book’s institutional origin narrative and the eventual split from academic neo-Kantianism. — connects to: Horkheimer rejected pure philosophical work in favor of expert-assisted collaborative research — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1329
• SEED: An essay angle: how a young thinker’s encounter with a magnetic senior figure (Heidegger) reshaped his entire philosophical telos, without him actually agreeing with the mentor’s conclusions.