ABSTRACT

Horkheimer, in the address delivered on the occasion of his official installation as director of the Institute in January 1931, indicated clearly, while paying tribute to the work of his predecessor, that the Institute was about to take a new direction. ‘Social philosophy’ now emerged as its main preoccupation; not in the sense of a philosophical theory of value which would provide a superior insight into the meaning of social life, nor as some kind of synthesis of the results of the specialized social sciences, but rather as the source of important questions to be investigated by these sciences and as a framework in which ‘the universal would not be lost sight of’.[1] In subsequent essays of the 1930s Horkheimer developed his conception of the role of philosophy primarily through a criticism of modern positivism or empiricism (the terms are used interchangeably), and in particular that of the Vienna Circle. His argument in one important essay, ‘The latest attack on metaphysics’ (1937), proceeds on two levels. First, in a framework of ideas derived from the sociology of knowledge, he asserts the connection between a style of thought and the situation of a social group, though unlike Karl Mannheim, for example, he does not attempt to analyse the precise filiations between thought and

socio-historical conditions. Thus, he simply claims that ‘neo-romantic metaphysics and radical positivism alike have their roots in the present sad state of the middle class’ (Critical Theory: Selected Essays, New York, Herder & Herder, 1972, p. 140), and again, ‘the entire system of modern empiricism belongs to the passing world of liberalism’ (ibid., p. 147).