ABSTRACT
Fundamental to an understanding of the Frankfurt School's view of theory and their critique of instrumental reason is their analysis of the heritage of Enlightenment rationality. According to the Frankfurt School, the outcome of positivist rationality and its technocratic view of science represented a threat to the notion of subjectivity and critical thinking. In order to explore the depth of the conflict between the individual and society, the Frankfurt School accepted with some major modifications most of Freud's most radical assumptions. The Frankfurt School's theory of culture offers new concepts and categories for analyzing the role that schools play as agents of social and cultural reproduction. At the core of the theory of culture advanced by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse was an attempt to expose, through both a call for and demonstration of critique, how positivist rationality manifested itself in the cultural realm.
