[FRA:] Eclipse of Reason

[Ralph Dumain]

"The Eclipse of Reason and the End of the Frankfurt School in America" by 
James Schmidt
http://people.bu.edu/jschmidt/Eclipse.pdf

THE ECLIPSE OF REASON is often treated as a footnote to DIALECTIC OF 
ENLIGHTENMENT. Itw as initially greeted with enthusiasm by Leo Lowenthal, 
but Horkheimer grew to harbor serious doubts about it. However, it deserves 
a fresh look, and may prove a counterweight to the usual picture of 
Horkheimer and Adorno as hopelessly frustrated in the USA.

Horkheimer's relations with Columbia University were seriously strained 
around the time of the book's publication and had ceased to be by the time 
it was published. The history is given in some detail. Franz Neumann 
developed considerable stature at Columbia while Horkheimer was being 
eclipsed, while Horkheimer was preparing to drop Neumann. Work on Dialectic 
of Enlightenment and its phantom sequel was interrupted by other research 
obligations.

"Eclipse of Reason had its origins in a series of lectures Horkheimer 
delivered at Columbia in February and March of 1944."

>At the end of January, Horkheimer mailed Lowenthal outlines for six 
>possible topics: “Society and Reason,”
>“Philosophy and the Division of Labor,” “Theories of Philosophy and Society,”
>“Philosophy and Politics,” “American and German Philosophy,” and “Basic 
>Concepts of
>Social Philosophy.”52 The choice of which set of lectures Horkheimer would 
>deliver was
>left to Lowenthal, who appears to have discussed the alternatives with 
>Tillich and eventually
>settled on the first of the suggested topics.
>It is worth reflecting for a moment on the topics Lowenthal did not chose.
>“Philosophy and the Division of Labor” recalled some of the themes broached in
>Horkheimer’s first articles in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung and 
>proposed to explore
>the consequences of the “scientification of philosophy under modern 
>industry,” using
>psychology and sociology as examples; the final lecture would discuss 
>attempts to unite
>philosophy and the social sciences. The proposed lectures on “Theories of 
>Philosophy and
>Society” went back even further and, like some of the courses Horkheimer 
>gave at
>Frankfurt at the end of the 1920s, focused on the history of philosophy, 
>beginning with a
>comparison of the “role of the philosopher in ancient and modern 
>philosophy,” continuing
>with an examination of the utopias of More, Campanella, and Bacon, an 
>analysis of the
>“political theories of enlightenment and romanticism,” and a lecture on 
>the “Marxian
>doctrine of ideology,” and concluding with a discussion of “modern 
>sociology of
>knowledge.” The lectures on “Philosophy and Politics” were also framed as a
>straightforward historical account of “the dissolution of feudal society 
>and the rise of
>modern philosophy,” “absolutism and reason,” the “French Enlightenment as 
>a political
>movement,” “philosophies of counterrevolution,” and, finally, the 
>“philosophy of modern
>democracy.” The lectures contrasting American and German philosophy, which 
>were
>judged by Lowenthal as demanding too much from Horkheimer, proposed to 
>begin with the
>different conceptions of philosophy in both countries and then contrast 
>their views of
>history, culture and civilization, and freedom and authority, before 
>speculating on the
>“function of philosophy in world reconstruction.” Finally, the series on 
>“Basic Concepts
>of Social Philosophy” recalled the topics that Horkheimer had initially 
>proposed to
>examine in his work on “Dialectical Logic”: society and the individual, 
>progress and
>retrogression, freedom and necessity, ideas and ideologies, and the idea 
>of justice.

Lowenthal's advice was tailored to Horkheimer's current work. Horkheimer 
was apprehensive, for linguistic and other reasons.  The lectures were 
different from the book, comprising these topics:

1) Reason as the basic theoretical concept of Western civilization.
2) Civilization as an attempt to control human and extra-human nature.
3) The rebellion of oppressed nature and its philosophical manifestations.
4) The rise and the decline of the individual.
5) The present crisis of reason.

The book turned out rather differently.

>As has already been indicated, the most extensively revised parts of the 
>book were
>the first two chapters. The book’s first chapter, entitled “Ends and 
>Means,” drew on the
>distinction between formal and substantive conceptions of reason that had 
>been elaborated
>in Society and Reason but incorporated much new material, including an 
>extended
>discussion of pragmatism.66 The second chapter, “Conflicting Panaceas,” 
>juxtaposed the
>neo-Thomist understanding of reason to naturalist approaches. This chapter 
>originated in
>an essay, written by Horkheimer prior to coming to New York to deliver his 
>lectures, which
>responded to a series of articles by Sidney Hook, John Dewey, and Ernest 
>Nagel that had
>appeared in Partisan Review.67 These two revisions resulted in a work that 
>opened, not with
>a lament for the lost cause of European socialism, but rather with a 
>critique of recent trends
>in American philosophy. While the changes meant that the book would engage 
>American
>philosophy in a way that the lectures had not, they would also result in 
>significant
>difficulties both for Horkheimer and for the reception of the book.

Horkheimer was not versed in pragmatism, however, and not fully prepared 
for it.  From the beginning, he encountered flak from Americans who did not 
really understand his vantage point. Horkheimer, mindful of how the culture 
industry worked, was anxious about arranging for ads and favorable reviews, 
and he found the publisher negligent.

Arthur E. Murphy gave the book an early favorable review.

>Murphy found Horkheimer’s claim that such
>approaches [pragmatism] reduced philosophy to “social engineering” 
>compelling and characterized
>Horkheimer’s description of the “cultural consequences of this 
>self-liquidation of reason”
>as “brilliantly sketched” (191). Murphy was also impressed that, having 
>criticized the
>reduction of reason to technology, Horkheimer did not – as was “the 
>fashion of the times’
>– make “an appeal to the irrational,” but instead recognized that, “The 
>cure for the
>limitations of reason is to be found not in the rejection of reason but in 
>a more just and
>comprehensive understanding of its meaning and use” (192). Indeed, this 
>had been the
>central point of Murphy’s own work. In a contribution to a symposium in The
>Philosophical Review on the last hundred years of American philosophy that 
>appeared at
>about the time of his response to Horkheimer, Murphy offered an 
>interpretation of
>philosophical developments the period from 1927 to 1947 that converged in 
>significant
>ways with Horkheimer’s diagnosis.

Murphy was concerned about the prospects for public reason:

>Murphy faulted Eclipse of Reason on only one point. He remained puzzled about
>the alternative Horkheimer was proposing: “where 
 are we to find a 
>rational basis for the
>objective evaluation of social ends?” Citing a “difficult sentence” from 
>Eclipse of Reason
>– “Philosophy confronts the existent, in its historical context, with the 
>claim of its
>conceptual principles, in order to criticize the two and thus transcend 
>them”103 – Murphy
>confessed, “I wish I could see quite specifically what this means, for I 
>think it means
>something important” (192).

Other reviewers trashed Horkheimer. THE ECLIPSE OF REASON ended up as a 
bargain basement book in the '50s.