The Institut’s interdisciplinary staffing enacted its anti-fetishization principle

Evidence

In stressing the totality, Horkheimer correspondingly criticized other social theorists for concentrating on one facet of reality to the exclusion of the others. This led to one of the methodological fallacies the Frankfurt School most frequently attacked: fetishization. More orthodox Marxists within the Institut, such as the economist Henryk Grossmann, were always criticized for their overemphasis on the material substructure of society. The composition of the Institut, with its deliberate diversification of fields, reflected the importance Critical Theory placed on the totality of dialectical mediations, which had to be grasped in the process of analyzing society. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 224

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘fetishization’ as the Frankfurt School’s core methodological fallacy — one-sided focus on a single facet of reality.