ABSTRACT
In 1930, Horkheimer became director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, and also professor of philosophy at Frankfurt University to which the Institute was attached. Apart from Adorno, the most famous of those who were more or less closely connected to the 'first Frankfurt School' of 'critical theory' were Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and the psychoanalyst Eric Fromm. As both Jews and Marxists, the members of the Frankfurt School had two good reasons to emigrate when Hitler came to power in 1933. Horkheimer is clear that critical theory is philosophy, indeed the only valid form of philosophy: in the 1939 'The Social Function of Philosophy' he writes that, following the example of Socrates, 'the real social function of philosophy lies in its criticism of what is prevalent'. There are several crucial differences between the traditional and the critical theorist. Whereas both have a social effect that of the former is conservative while that of the latter is disruptive.
