The Frankfurt School’s residual faith in reason tempered its Weberian pessimism

Evidence

Yet whereas Weber faced the process with stoic resignation, the Frankfurt School still held out the hope for a break in the continuum of history. This was more apparent in the early years of the forties - once again “Authoritarian State” should be mentioned as its highwater mark - but it was not totally absent after the war. Perhaps the major source of this guarded optimism was the residual belief in the ultimate validity of Vernunfi that remained in Critical Theory. Vernunft, as noted earlier, meant the reconciliation of contradictions, including the one that split man and nature. Despite their distrust of absolute identity theories, Horkheimer and his colleagues stressed the importance of “objective reason” as an antidote to the one-sided ascendency of instrumentalized “subjective reason.” “The two concepts of reason,” Horkheimer wrote, “do not represent two separate and independent ways of the mind, although their opposition expresses antinomy. The task of philosophy is not stubbornly to play the one against the other, but to foster a mutual critique and thus, if possible, to prepare in the intellectual realm the reconciliation of the two in reality.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 782

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘Vernunft’ (reconciling reason) versus instrumentalized ‘subjective reason’ structured the Frankfurt School’s philosophical position.
• XREF: Relates to the reader’s engagement with Critical Theory — the subjective/objective reason distinction is central to Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason. — connects to: Weber’s neo-Kantianism barred him from hoping to restore substantive reason — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 783; The Frankfurt School saw Enlightenment’s collapse into totalitarianism as latent in its own reason — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 342; Weber’s ‘iron cage’ mistranslation overstates capitalist rationality’s rigidity — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 428 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The Frankfurt School saw Enlightenment’s collapse into totalitarianism as latent in its own reason #expands (0.82) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 342
• Weber’s ‘iron cage’ mistranslation overstates capitalist rationality’s rigidity #responds-to (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 428