The Frankfurt School and its cultural influence

[Revoltingest]

Me?

I confess. I want the State to own banks, industries, power plants, hospitals....

Filthy commie!

 

[Nakosis]

I am afraid that all that the School of Frankfurt advertises aims at creating a society of copycats.
Because all people will ultimately and unanimously become what this cultural revolution wants them to be.

A utopian society of equity. This utopian ideal is part of critical theory.
While there is a call for diversity, diversity is actually the opposite of what is wanted.

 

[Revoltingest]

A utopian society of equity. This utopian ideal is part of critical theory.
While there is a call for diversity, diversity is actually the opposite of what is wanted.

They want uniformity, eh.
To Heck with them!

 

[Kooky]

I admit Shapiro did not express himself clearly.
Of course...he was in a hurry...it was a Q&A.

He basically meant this " since Marxists could not take over in the United States, they pushed a neo- Marxist philosophical stream (School of Frankfurt) to create division among the society.
And to manipulate the masses with leftist ideologies.

What a load of hogwash nonsense. And he can't even get his timeline straight.

Quick trivia question: Why do you think the Frankfurt school is named the way it is?

 

[Kooky]

Consumerism is just the tip of the iceberg of something that has always happened within a society since the Ancient Age: homogenization, or standardization.
That is all men and women think homogeneously, as if they were one thing.
And so the individual loses their own uniqueness and specificity.
Their own identity.
The real revolution would be that each individual stops imitating others and does something unique and new to change history positively.
Not only the great inventors, the great leaders. Each individual should feel called to change history, or at least try to.

I am afraid that all that the School of Frankfurt advertises aims at creating a society of copycats.
Because all people will ultimately and unanimously become what this cultural revolution wants them to be.

Have you ever read a single word written by Theodor Adorno?
Do you think this Mr. Shapiro has?

Based on the claims you make in this post, I'm going to guess that the answer to both questions is "no".

 

[Kooky]

I will surely read more books about this stream.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that it deals with a cultural revolution whose goal is to entirely erase the idealism of the 19th century.

Nope.

By implying that there are no opposites, but everything is interchangeable.

Wrong.

So good and evil are subjective, beauty and ugliness are subjective, etc...

Wrong again.

I am still living in the 19th century when Keats used to say that beauty is truth.

LOL

 

[Kooky]

Socialism values and enables Capitalism.

What a load of nonsense.

 

[Kooky]

And that is why populists and socialists like myself have understood that the wicked economic stream called neo-liberism has been exploiting neo-Marxism to subdue the sovereign people.

More nonsense.

 

[Kooky]

By the way...these are the differences, oversimplified.

View attachment 60855

Wrong, nonsense, hogwash.

 

[Estro Felino]

Quick trivia question: Why do you think the Frankfurt school is named the way it is?

After Frankfurt am Main.

 

[Kooky]

After Frankfurt am Main...where a high skyscraper stands, headquarters of those legalized usurers that print money.

So the University of Frankfurt is the "headquarters" of "legalized usurers". What else has your "research" uncovered there, a secret chapter of the Illuminati? The home base of shapeshifting lizardmen from Alpha Centauri? Atlantis?

 

[Estro Felino]

So the University of Frankfurt is the "headquarters" of "legalized usurers". What else has your "research" uncovered there, a secret chapter of the Illuminati? The home base of shapeshifting lizardmen from Alpha Centauri? Atlantis?

The ECB.

 

[Kooky]

The ECB.

So you think the University of Frankfurt is hosting the ECB?

 

[Kooky]

@Estro Felino
In case you still haven't cottoned to it: The Frankfurt School is named after the Goethe-Universität of Frankfurt am Main, where Adorno and Horkheimer were teaching before they had to flee from Nazi persecution.

Theodor W. Adorno - Wikipedia
Max Horkheimer - Wikipedia

 

[Kooky]

They want uniformity, eh.

Nope, that's just what Fox News comedians who haven't read a single page of their works think of them.

 

[Kooky]

And another thread about some fascist conspiracy from Russia to turn everyone into a Marxist.

Ben Shapiro is not from Russia. He is very much a homegrown American fascist.

 

[Estro Felino]

Nope, that's just what Fox News comedians who haven't read a single page of their works think of them.

Enlighten me, then.
What are the main characteristics of the Frankfurter Schule?
As for politics, society and economics?

 

[Revoltingest]

Nope, that's just what Fox News comedians who haven't read a single page of their works think of them.

Tell that to the other poster.
But you're a fan of uniformity, ie, none of
that economic diversity resulting from
private ownership of property?

 

[Kooky]

Enlighten me, then.
What are the main characteristics of the Frankfurter Schule?
As for politics, society and economics?

The Frankfurt School has gone through several different incarnations, and has changed its tune significantly over the decades of its existence, so this is going to be an extremely broad strokes outline.

It started out as an orthodox Marxist group dedicated to social and socio-economic research that was involved in the creation of the Institut für Sozialforschung (IfS, "Institute for Social Research") a project that was among the first to pioneer empirical social research in Germany. Their implied goal seems to have been to uncover the contradictions inherent to capitalism while further developing and adapting Marxist theory to the modern age.

Nazi persecution, WW2 and exile in America proved to be a significant disruption of this early circle of Marxists, and what emerged after the war shed most of its association with the IfS and become more focused on social theory and philosophy.

This phase is, arguably, the Frankfurt school at its most pessimistic, where the foundations of Western civilization are analyzed and revealed to consist, essentially, of little more than Zweckrationalität powered by capitalism and propaganda. Adorno and Horkheimer wrote their Dialectics of Enlightenment during that phase, in 1947, a rather gloomy revision of the progress narrative from both Marxism and the Enlightenment: Unlike what the Enlightenment promised, humanity has not become more rational with scientific advancement; and unlike what Marx promised, the Industrial Revolution would not ultimately lead to the emancipation of the human race; rather, the opposite happened, and fascism and authoritarianism had plunged humanity into a new age of darkness, ruled by fear and propaganda with little hope of escape.

After exile, the Frankfurt School would eventually return to Germany. The post-war Frankfurt School is largely centered around Adorno and Horkheimer and their new philosophical approach called Critical Theory, a form of social and political philosophy that seeks to challenge existing power and social structures via radical-fundamental critique and the Hegelian method of Dialectics. One could think of it as a three-parts fusion of Marxist social critique with the philosophy of Hegel and Kant and the more pragmatic American approach to philosophy.

It is worth noting here, however, that, even though they are closely associated both materially and philosophically, Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School should not be understood as synonymous, as there are different strands of Critical Theory not developed from Frankfurt School members, and the early Frankfurt School and its associates, while very critical of capitalism and interested in Marxist social theory, were very much not capital-c Critical Theorists.

After Adorno's and Horkheimer's death, Jürgen Habermas became arguably the most prominent proponent of both the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, and steered the School's philosophy more towards the realms of ethics and modern theories of communication and discourse, such as Habermas' theory of communicative rationality.


What this Shapiro fellow is rambling on about has very little to do with either the Frankfurt School's body of work or the ideas advanced by its most prominent members; rather, it is a bogeyman eerily resembling the old Nazi canard of Kulturbolschewismus: The idea that Marxists secretly undermine traditional society with neferious and dangerous acts such as advocating gender equality, enjoying modern art, being gay, or writing books on philosophy.

 

[Kooky]

@Estro Felino a humble request:

Please stop asking me to explain my position when you clearly are not interested in what I have to say.