Kracauer’s position of ‘Those Who Wait’ rejected both dogma and principled scepticism

Evidence

Unlike Scheler and Lukács, whose religious urge and metaphysical passion' he admired but could not share, and quite unlike Bloch, whom he held up before Lowenthal as a warning example of fornicating with God’, Kracauer was one of Those Who Wait'. In an article with this title published in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1922, the style of which was inspired by Nietzsche, he sketched out some of the paths along which many people at that time believed they had found a new spiritual home, not so much (he believed) in reaction to the chaos of the present time’ as in reaction to a `metaphysical suffering from the lack of deep meaning in the world’. Examples were the anthroposophical teaching of Rudolf Steiner, the messianic communism of Ernst Bloch and others, the belief in structure held by the George circle, and the renewed sense of community, not only in the Protestant and Catholic churches, but also in Judaism. The attitude that impressed Kracauer most was that of the sceptic on principle, the intellectual desperado, of which Max Weber was the most striking example. But Kracauer himself pleaded for a form of scepticism which would not degenerate into scepticism as a principle, but which was linked to a hesitatingly open-minded waiting. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 273

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Kracauer’s distinctive middle position between Scheler-Lukács religious fervour and Weber’s despairing scepticism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 273
• XREF: connects to: Kracauer rejected Weber’s principled scepticism for an open-minded waiting. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 273

Broader Connections

• Kracauer rejected Weber’s principled scepticism for an open-minded waiting. #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 273