Horkheimer treated his entire prior oeuvre as groundwork for the planned dialectics book.

Evidence

In February 1939 he wrote to Mme Favez, the secretary of the Institute’s Geneva office: `All of my plans at the moment are directed towards working over the next few years on the book for which all of my earlier studies, published and unpublished, have merely been the groundwork.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 197

Categorization

• SHARE: For anyone tracking the Frankfurt School’s publication history: the Geneva office correspondence preserves Horkheimer’s own framing of his career as prolegomena.
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer joined the dialectics project to situate his critiques of positivism and bourgeois anthropology. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 349; Horkheimer planned a mimeographed volume of the dialectics fragments. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 346
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Horkheimer joined the dialectics project to situate his critiques of positivism and bourgeois anthropology. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 349; Horkheimer planned a mimeographed volume of the dialectics fragments. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 346