ABSTRACT
The term ‘critical theory’ has come to be associated with the diverse body of work which emerged out of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, a privately funded organisation that was established in Germany in 1923 by a group of Left intellectuals. Apart from this geographical dislocation and the intellectual ‘parting of ways’ of several of the members of the Frankfurt ‘circle’ during this period, the experience of Nazism and of American ‘mass culture’ had profound effects on the formulation of critical theory, especially that of Adorno and Horkheimer. The suggestion here of a theoretical foreclosure into a historically frozen moment raises matters concerning the notion of ‘critique’ and the nature of theory formation in the work of the Frankfurt theorists. The critical reception of Lukacs’ Hegelian Marxism-especially the notions of totality and reification-was the single most important Marxist influence on the Frankfurt circle.
