Horkheimer rejected vulgar Marxists’ passive materialism by reviving Marx’s active, dialectical epistemology

Evidence

Despite the impossibility of attaining absolute knowledge, Horkheimer held that materialism must not succumb to relativistic resignation. In fact, the monistic materialist epistemology of vulgar Marxism had been too passive. Echoing Marx’s critique of Feuerbach almost a century before, Horkheimer stressed the active element in cognition, which idealism had correctly affirmed. The objects of perception, he argued, are themselves the product of man’s actions, although the relationship tends to be masked by reification. Indeed, nature itself has a historical element, in the dual sense that man conceives of it differently at different times and that he actively works to change it. True materialism, Horkheimer contended, is thus dialectical, involving an ongoing process of interaction between subject and object. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 219

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach on the active element in cognition — useful for teaching the Frankfurt School’s recovery of the dialectical tradition. — connects to: Horkheimer’s Marxism was more historically self-reflective than Grunberg’s — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 148; Horkheimer and Adorno rejected history as autonomous substance and grounded theory in social material — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 186; Horkheimer and Adorno rejected orthodox Marxism as masochistic and outdated for social critique. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1665
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘true’ or dialectical materialism meant for Horkheimer in contrast to vulgar Marxism.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer and Adorno rejected history as autonomous substance and grounded theory in social material #corroborates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 186