Horkheimer subordinated empirical anti-Semitism research to abstract theory as mere illustration

Evidence

This made it sound as if an external stimulus had been necessary for the concentration on the topic of anti-Semitism to take placethe signing of a contract which must and indeed could be put to the best use. Above all, Horkheimer seemed to consider the dialectics project and the anti-Semitism project as two distinct items relating to one another in the way that an abstract theory relates to its application to a concrete topic, or in the way that Hegel’s logic relates to the Hegelian philosophies of history, law or aesthetics. … And was empirical research not thus being denied its status as a dimension of reflected experience, and degraded into a means of illustrating the theory? — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 342

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The charge that Critical Theory demoted empiricism from a dimension of reflected experience to handmaiden of speculation cuts to the epistemological core of the whole Institute program.
• QUESTION: Did the dialectics/anti-Semitism split really reproduce the Hegel logic-to-philosophy-of-history relation, or did it invert it? Worth chasing in the Studies in Prejudice reception.