The Institute’s empirical shift to family research happened without philosophical planning.

Evidence

Horkheimer did not let any of the topics he discussed in these essays develop into hypotheses which could have been used as material for, or even as the subject of, empirical research. The change of emphasis in the Institute’s empirical work which took place during the exile in Switzerland was not the result of a philosophical impulse of any sort (in a way which might have corresponded to the combination of philosophy, the scientific disciplines and empirical research which Horkheimer demanded in his inaugural lecture), but apparently came about quite naturally, and without any communication between those who were working on the collective research project. Research into the social-psychological mediation between material and intellectual culture in a specific social group, that of skilled manual and white-collar workers, was replaced by research into changes in the structure of the family at a period of particularly severe economic crisis, which many saw as the beginning of the end of capitalism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 549

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ongoing story of the Frankfurt School’s uneasy relationship between theory and empirical social research—relevant to any critical-theory reading of Adorno and Horkheimer’s methods. — connects to: The Institute’s empirical turn to family research had no stated philosophical basis