This long study of a group of the 20th century's most fecund
thinkers often fails to convey the intellectual excitement and
originality of much of their work. But the book represents the
first major attempt to consider as a whole the contributions of the
Frankfurt School, which included Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno,
Wittfogel, Borkenau, Fromm, Habermas, Well, Pollock, and Grossman.
The development of the School is described from its origins in
1922: its foundational "Critical Theory," its subsequent attempts
to integrate psychoanalysis with political thought, its studies of
Nazism, the "authoritarian personality," anti-Semitism, mass
culture, and philosophy of history. Jay probably places too much
emphasis on the Jewish background of most Frankfurt Schoolers,
rather than fully exploring the impact of Weimar politics on their
thinking. After the Nazi takeover, the School moved to the U.S.;
however its gradual abandonment of Marxism and its accommodation to
American sociological empiricism (which Jay recognizes but
minimizes) would be better attributed to the state of the left and
left theory at the time rather than merely chalking it up, as Jay
does, to the pressures of exile. After World War II the School was
reestablished in Frankfurt under indirect U.S. government
sponsorship. Despite Jay's claim that the School then "became a
major force in the revitalization of Western European Marxism," it
seems to represent an only nominally Marxist force on the postwar
scene. As for his exposition of Frankfurt ideas, he terms the
"Critical Theory" a negation of "naive positivism" and a search -
especially by Horkheimer - for non-closed philosophical systems.
Unfortunately Jay relies on internal comparisons among members'
views without sufficiently broad and rigorous conceptualization of
what the School stood for and against. The strongest chapter is on
the School's aesthetic theory and its critique of mass culture.
Despite its shortcomings, among them turgidity of style, this is a
pioneering work in intellectual history and will be indispensable
to students of the period and the School. (Kirkus Reviews)
Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Franz Neumann,
Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal--the impact of the Frankfurt School
on the sociological, political, and cultural thought of the
twentieth century has been profound. The Dialectical Imagination is
a major history of this monumental cultural and intellectual
enterprise during its early years in Germany and in the United
States. Martin Jay has provided a substantial new preface for this
edition, in which he reflects on the continuing relevance of the
work of the Frankfurt School.
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