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A Social Science of Logic: The Dialectic of Truth in Horkheimers Philosophy of Social Science
The reification or discursive naturalization of the historically contingent circumstances and products of
human action, is one of the main dimensions of ideology in social life Anthony Giddens, The Constitution
of Society
Introduction:
Dialectical thought has traps and pitfalls, but also contains a delayed promise of truth in a
complete view of its subject matter. Critical Theorists at the Frankfurt Institute for Social
Research not only examined the conditions of modern society, but evaluated the state of
knowledge about society. Both the conditions for that given society and the state of knowledge
about it were dynamic; their progress could only be completely understood in dialectical thought.
During the first generation of Critical Theorists, the two main competitors were the social
philosophers and the positive social scientists. Both disciplinary proponents presented an
incomplete view of knowledge about modern society. Members of the Frankfurt Institute
addressed this antagonism by uniting the two sets of disciplines under a single research program,
with the awareness that the practice of theorizing was a concrete historically embedded practice.
Focusing on the works of the philosopher and social scientist Max Horkheimer, I will
argue that in Critical Social Theory the relationship between social philosophy and empirical
social science is dialectical, but its aim is ultimately practical and liberatory. In Sections I-II, I
examine social philosophy and Horkheimers critique of it. In Sections III-IV, I examine positive
social science and Horkheimers critique of it. In Section V, I offer the Horkeimers positive
view in his attempt to synthesize philosophy and social science through the methods of dialectics
and historical materialism. In Section VI, I respond to an objection that critics brought against
the Frankfurt Institute, chiefly, that the first generations of Critical Theorists, including
Horkheimer, devolve into pessimism and forgo the possibility of liberation. This criticism fails, I
1
Ibid, p. 29.
Ibid, p. 30.
7
Ibid, p. 27.
6
Ibid, p. 30.
Mannheim, p. 45.
Neurath, p. 33.
Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory, p. 188.
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24
25
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This view, according to which the empirical scientist has to regard philosophy as
a beautiful yet scientifically fruitless enterprise, and the philosopher in contrast
emancipates himself from the empirical scientist because the former assumes that
he cannot wait for the latter in his far reaching quest is presently being superseded
by the thought of an ongoing dialectical permeation and evolution of
philosophical theory and empirical scientific praxis.29
The efforts of traditional theory were merely to explain the social world either through
transfiguration or deductive-nomological formalization; both presumed that truth lay merely in
27
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[his] profession is the struggle of which his own thinking is a part and not
something self-sufficient and separable from the struggle. Of course, many
elements of theory in the usual sense enter into his work: the knowledge and
prognosis of relatively isolated facts, scientific judgments, the elaboration of
problems which differ from those of other theoreticians because of his specific
interests but nonetheless manifest the same logical form.31
30
31
12
32
13
The authors applied the tool of instrumental rationality against itself, only to show its inadequacy
and incompleteness. The limited scope of Horkheimer and Adornos criticism did not capture the
propounded aims of the Frankfurt Institute. This work constituted not a summation of their
35
36
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Bibliography :
Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. The Concept of Enlightenment. Dialectic of
Enlightnement. Trans. John Cumming. Herder and Herder, 1972. p. 3-42.
Horkheimer, Max. Materialism and Morality. Between Philosophy and Social Science. Eds. G.
Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey. MIT Press, 1993.
--. A New Concept of Ideology? Between Philosophy and Social Science. Eds. G. Frederick
Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey. MIT Press, 1993.
--. On the Problem of Truth. Between Philosophy and Social Science. Eds. G. Frederick
Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey. MIT Press, 1993.
--. The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social
Research. Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Eds. Bronner, Stephen Eric, and Douglas
Kellner. New York: Routledge, 1989. P. 25-36.
--. Notes on Science and the Crisis. Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Eds. Bronner,
Stephen Eric, and Douglas Kellner. New York: Routledge, 1989. p. 52-57.
--.The Social Function of Philosophy. Critical Theory: Selected Essays.Trans. Matthew J.
OConnell and others. New York: Seabury Press, 1972, p. 188-243.
--.Traditional and Critical Theory. Critical Theory: Selected Essays.Trans. Matthew J.
OConnell and others. New York: Seabury Press, 1972, p. 253-272.
Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia.Trans. Louis Wirth and E. Shils. New York: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1936.
Neurath, Otto. The scientific world conception. Philosophies of Social Science: The Classic
and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Gerard Delanty and Piet Strydom. Philedephia: Open
University Press, 2003, p. 31-35.
Postone, Moishe and Barbara Brick. Critical Pessimism and the Limits of Traditional
Marxism. Theory and Society 11, no. 5 (1982): p. 617-658.
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