The Frankfurt School’s positivism label covered nominalist, empirical, scientific currents
Evidence
Throughout its history, “positivism” was used by the Frankfurt School in a loose way to include those philosophical currents which were nominalist, phenomenalist (that is, anti-essentialist), empirical, and wedded to the so-called scientific method. Many of their opponents who were grouped under this rubric protested the term’s applicability, as for example Karl Popper. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 2148
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the Frankfurt School’s loose, contested use of ‘positivism’ as a polemical umbrella term.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did Popper and others protest this categorization, and how did the School justify the label?
- XREF: connects to: Vienna Circle positivism out-competed Critical Theory in America due to philosophical congruence. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 243; The Frankfurt School subordinated empirical research to theoretical speculation — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 661; The Frankfurt School’s rejection of teleological progress anticipates postmodernism’s abandonment of meta-narratives (+1 more)