Horkheimer urged Jews toward a theological-materialist stance that refused to deify any finite existence.

Evidence

Horkheimer’s advice to the Jews was: they should return to abstract monotheism, to the rejection of belief in images, to a refusal to make what was finite into the Infinite'. Lack of respect for a form of existence which had glorified itself into a god was the religion of those who, in the Europe of the iron heel, have never ceased to devote their lives to preparations for a better world’. Horkheimer was advising the Jews, therefore, to take a theological-materialist attitude. The prospect that beckoned was `the leap into freedom’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 281

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names and explicates ‘theological materialism’ as a hybrid stance — monotheism plus materialist refusal of idolatry.
• SEED: Essay angle: how Frankfurt School thinkers smuggled theology into materialism, and what that costs secular critique.
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer held that religious emancipation dehumanizes rather than liberates — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1135; Horkheimer opposed Israel’s creation partly to shield Judaism as a whole. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1566
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Horkheimer held that religious emancipation dehumanizes rather than liberates — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1135; Horkheimer opposed Israel’s creation partly to shield Judaism as a whole. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1566

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer held that religious emancipation dehumanizes rather than liberates #complicates (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1135