ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the Horkheimerian statements of problems that seem to be especially helpful when dealing with contemporary issues of philosophy such as the question with regard to the structure of history, idealism versus materialism, and traditional versus critical theory. “Structure” and “type,” the two Diltheyian categories, are cemented only in a theory of history that exposes those economic dynamics that constitute the basis for the succession of epochs. This is equally true of Dilthey’s demand that the study of history should be supplemented with “analytic psychology.” Critical Theory goes beyond the subjectivism and relativism of positivism to the extent that it has “for its object men as producers of their own historical way of life in its totality.” Some important consequences result from this materialistically colored Konstitutionslehre: First, an undogmatic evaluation of the social role of the sciences, and second, a dialectical theory of the process of cognition.
