The Institute resisted American empirical fieldwork demands in favor of philosophical humanities work

Evidence

When we became aware that a few of our American friends expected of an Institute of Social Sciences that it engage in studies on pertinent social problems, fieldwork and other empirical investigations, we tried to satisfy these demands as well as we could, but our heart was set on individual studies in the sense of Geisteswissenschaften [the humanities] and the philosophical analysis of culture … There may be many who don’t share our philosophical standpoint and who contend that today is not the time for studies which seemed to be so utterly aloof. (My personal opinion is that it is just this kind of intellectual work which, exception made of everything necessary to win the war, this time needs more than anything else. The pragmatism and empiricism and the lack of genuine philosophy are some of the foremost reasons which are responsible for the crisis which civilization would have faced even if the war had not come.) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1446

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s broader ambivalence about American empiricism and pragmatism during exile, which resurfaces throughout the Institute’s U.S. period. — connects to: Horkheimer rejected pure philosophical work in favor of expert-assisted collaborative research — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1329; The Institute suppressed overt politics in favor of indirect critical presentation — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 539; The Institute’s American relocation muted its Marxist revolutionary language for multiple reasons — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 192

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer rejected pure philosophical work in favor of expert-assisted collaborative research #contradicts (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1329
• The Institute suppressed overt politics in favor of indirect critical presentation #expands (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 539