Contemporary Necessary : Frankfurt School

Frankfurt school had been established to create a new resist about old traditional sociological theories and its main minds base on Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas. We define foundation of Frankfurt school in near historical perspective. At this time European destruction on I.World War, different dimensions of Russian revaluation, fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini in socialist regions of Europea influenced ideas of this school.

Frankfurt school had been established to create a new resist about old traditional sociological theories and its main minds base on Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas. We define foundation of Frankfurt school in near historical perspective. At this time European destruction on I.

World War, different dimensions of Russian revaluation, fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini in socialist regions of Europea influenced ideas of this school. In general founders had been affected by ideas of Marx. So we say that this school created a general table as Marxist methods to criticism. The project of the Frankfurt School was to develop a critical theory of contemporary society that would combine philosophy, social theory, economics and cultural criticism in a new type of interdisciplinary theory. Also there is a variety between main ideas and methods of Marx[1]. Frankfurt school adopted contributions of Marx to economical developments and his research and critique methods. So there is a new Critique Method of school.

 

Frankfurt school believed that old principles should be transformed into new tools. On this way self image is important than common criticism. All theoretical points can be improve by firstly auto-criticism, hereby thinkers refused social and economical determinism which are existed on old Marxist theories, also disclaimed comdemnation individuals on common social body in Marx and Engel’s idea. Society needs to secret potentials of individuals according to school.

 

Criticism will destroy all oppressive systems and people will be conscious against to ideologies. Capitalism is progressing quickly, so we don’t need old methods to understand contemporary circumstances. Modern capitalism is controlling people who are working in heavy conditions and it manipulating information and populer cultur to prevent disobediences. Frankfurt school is defining this as culture industry. Its first duty is to adapt people to capitalism. Culture industry creates some small daily relaxation materials in heavy working life. Industry abuses mass media organs to create artificial system and people know them as relaxation mechanisms. Theodor Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. School refuses its functions because these mechanisms are working to create again people’s work desires to capitalist system. Thus capitalism need to establish secret masks to legitimate its artificial system, contemporary sociologies are these masks. Theories of sociology and functionalism transformed to serve this idea.[2] Common target should be defined by thinkers as to create new solutions, share paradoxes in society and how they are produced by dominant system. Works of Adorno and Horkheimer heavily influenced intellectual discourse on populer culture.

 

It is possible to create rational society with using Hegel’s ideas. Hegel says that reality is rational and humanity has an intelligence potential. So school is criticising modern society which is controlled by the cruel world system. Rational society is a common body which we are joining this with transforming environmental conditions. It gives standart opportunities to criticise available societies but Habermas creates a different model about it. He refuses rationality, humanity uses a concrete way. His utopic idea is that everybody should join to public discussions. Ideas of Habermas don’t base on rational society term, it is an ideal society which shares potential abilities of people.

He determined three common points of human in Knowledge and Human Interests[3];

 

– The technical human interest, which entails empirical and analytical ways of knowing and represents the world in terms of objects, processes and laws which describe the transformation of objects and processes

 

– The practical human interest, which entails historical and hermeneutic ways of knowing that represent the physical, social, and cultural worlds as “texts” which have to be interpreted in order for meaning to emerge

 

– The emancipatory human interest, which entails a critical way of knowing where critical theorems are gleaned through collective reflection on social and cultural practices and then used to restructure future actions.

 

Thinkers of Frankfurt school focused on cultural and modernism problems. Related to this, they resisted to concrete rationalities of capitalist society. On this way they defenced importancy of cultural reality as against to economical functions. First resist to positivism had been created by Horkheimer. He aimed at dialectic positivists because of they shared a seperatist movement between phenomenons and values.[4] According to Horkheimer, positivism is a poor philosophical branch because it can not modernize itself and as epistemologically it can not understand real results. Horkheimer criticised positivism systematically in his articles and created common outlook to positivism of school.

 

Criticism of Horkheimer improved by Habermas. In his “Knowledge and Human Interests” he define positivism as a monopolistic system which keeps information. If positivism recognises its target, it can be itself an information. It is possible to create this with using cathegories and notions which are refused by itself. Positivism had been established to give directions to people, it worked and today it has no important function. Also thinkers followed a way to criticise positivist approach of Marx. It shares a criticism to Soviets. Decisions can not depend on worker class, it should be established by theorists. So today’s authoritarianism of Soviet Marxism is a result of positivism, not Marxism.[5]

Frankfurt school is a revisionist movement because criticism action of classic Marxist ideas and economical determinism.