Frankfurt School

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From left to right: some guy, Max Horkheimer, some guy, Theodor W. Adorno, some guy, Jürgen Habermas
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The Frankfurt School is a name given to a group of Marxist researchers associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main.[1] Members of the group developed the concept of "critical theory" (as opposed to traditional theory), which involves applying Marxist theories to social matters in order to - in the words of prominent Frankfurt School member Max Horkheimer - "liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them".[1][2]

The rise of Hitler in 1933 forced most of the Institute for Social Research's scholars to leave Germany, with many relocating to the USA, and the Frankfurt School became associated with Columbia University until returning to Frankfurt in 1949.[1]

Contents

[edit] Notable figures

People associated with the Frankfurt School include Georg Lukacs[wp] (though he was sometimes one of its strongest critics), Theodor W. Adorno,[wp] Jürgen Habermas[wp] and Herbert Marcuse.[wp]

[edit] Criticisms

The Frankfurt School has often been pointed to by right-leaning pundits as being responsible for a large number of modern social ills. In his book The Death of the West Pat Buchanan argues that "the Frankfurt School must be held as a primary suspect and principle accomplice" in the titular catastrophe:[3]

Using Critical Theory, for example, the cultural Marxist repeats and repeats the charge that the West is guilty of genocidal crimes against every civilization and culture it has encountered. Under Critical theory, one repeats and repeats that Western societies are history's greatest repositories of racism, sexism, nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, fascism and Nazism. Under Critical Theory, the crimes of the West flow from the character of the West, as shaped by Christianity... Under the impact of Critical Theory, many of the sixties generation, the most privileged in history, convinced themselves that they were living in an intolerable hell.[4]

Buchanan goes on to identify the Frankfurt School as the primary catalyst behind the feminist movement ("Female boxing, women in combat, women Rabbis and Bishops, God as She, Demi Moore's G.I. Jane, Rambo-like Sigourney Weaver comforting a terrified and cringing male soldier in Aliens, and all the films and shows that depict women as tough and aggressive and men as sensitive and vulnerable testify to the success of the Frankfurt School and the feminist revolution it helped to midwife")[5] and sex education for children ("The appearance of sex education in elementary schools in America owes a debt to Lukacs, Reich, and the Frankfurt School").[5]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/217277/Frankfurt-School
  2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/
  3. Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West, pp. 88.
  4. Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West, pp. 80-1.
  5. 5.0 5.1 Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West, p. 87.
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