The Frankfurt School condemned treating philosophy as a tool for activism.

Evidence

In fact, the Frankfurt School increasingly treated any attempt to realize the promises of philosophy as instrumentalization. In an aphorism on propaganda, Horkheimer and Adorno excoriated the instrumental use of philosophy and language to bring about social change. In Eclipse of Reason Horkheimer made a similar point: “Is activism, then, especially political activism, the sole means of fulfillment, as just defined? I hesitate to say so. The age needs no added stimulus to action. Philosophy must not be turned into propaganda, even for the best possible purpose.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 801

Categorization

• XREF: This anti-praxis stance underlies the recurring charge that Critical Theory is politically quietist — see later debates with Habermas and the 1960s students.
• SEED: Angle: the Frankfurt School’s principled refusal of propaganda as a forerunner of today’s debates about whether scholarship should be openly political.