Introduction

Abstract

When Max Horkheimer took over the directorship of the Institute for Social Research in 1930, his explicit aim was to foster a new style of philosophical practice—one that did not function within traditional academic disciplinary boundaries, and one that aspired to provide tools by which to approach everyday existence with a critical perspective that valued insight, critique, and social engagement. The interdisciplinary thinkers who came together at the Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, can be understood as working within the tradition of humanist or Western Marxism, in that they were inspired by the Hegelian foundations of early Marxian thought and some by the psychoanalytic theory of Freud. They believed deeply in the value of philosophical inquiry that coexisted with and relied on sociological and psychological examinations of existing material conditions, that used the tools of public life, and that benefited the public in their everyday life. They desired to produce research that could enlighten all who endeavored to seek their own version of liberation and heightened self-awareness within the increasingly regulated and commercialized social and cultural spheres of the advancing twentieth century. They called this experimental approach to transformative philosophy a “Critical Theory” of society.