The Frankfurt School kept Hegel’s memory of the past but rejected his transcendental idealism

Evidence

The process of emancipation was understood in part as the development of self-consciousness and the resurrection of the lost past. Here of course the Hegelian roots of Critical Theory were apparent. To Hegel, the process of history was the journey of the spirit becoming conscious of its alienated objectifications. Where Horkheimer and Adorno departed from Hegel was in their refusal, first, to hypostatize subjectivity as a transcendent reality above individuals, and, second, to treat it as the sole source of objective reality. The Frankfurt School never reverted to the idealist notion of the world as the creation of consciousness. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 805

Categorization

• XREF: Maps exactly how Critical Theory both inherits and breaks from Hegel on subjectivity — useful orientation point for the tradition. — connects to: The Frankfurt School rejected philosophical anthropology and eternal human essence — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 226; Horkheimer rejected introspective understanding of history because past was made unconsciously — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 209; Adorno and Horkheimer rejected immediacy and Hegel’s identity of subject and object. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 258 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno and Horkheimer rejected immediacy and Hegel’s identity of subject and object. #expands (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 258