[FRA:] H-Net Book Review: The Early Frankfurt School and Religion

[Robyn E. Henderson]

Yes, thank you very much for providing this review.  I have posted it on my
site so that the public might be wooed by the FS!

Regards,
Robyn


On 3/22/07, Ralph Dumain <rdumain at igc.org> wrote:
>
> Thank you. I have not read the book under review, but I will review the
> reviewer nevertheless.  See comments interleaved below.
>
> At 06:56 PM 3/21/2007 -0400, James Rovira wrote:
> >H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-German at h-net.msu.edu (January, 2007)
> >Margarete Kohlenbach and Raymond Geuss, eds. _The Early Frankfurt School
> >and Religion_. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. x + 263 pp. Notes,
> >bibliography, index. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-3557-1. Reviewed for
> >H-German by Emily J. Levine, History Department, Stanford University.
> >Dialectics of Enlightenment This volume is the outcome of a growing
> >academic interest in the relationship between religion and Enlightenment
> >broadly conceived. Just as recent works have rewritten religion back into
> >the Enlightenment narrative so, too, this volume reminds us that critical
> >theory was not entirely hostile to religion as was once thought.[1] As
> >Kohlenbach and Geuss explain in their introduction, critical theory was
> >first introduced to the West in the postwar period by the neo-Marxist
> >student movement of the 1960s. Attracted to critical theory because of
> its
> >claim to link social theory and political practice, the student movement
> >nonetheless simply ignored or suppressed any anti-liberal features of the
> >philosophy that did not fit their own philosophy.
>
> The antiliberal features that immediately come to mind would be:
>
> (a) the FS disregard for the positive aspects of liberalism.
>
> (b) FS disregard --esp. on the part of Marcuse--for the connection between
> positivism and liberalism & leftism.
>
> (c) Romantic tendencies in the FS, though they are clearly not part of the
> Counter-Enlightenment of the Right.
>
> >This attitude extended to any affinities between critical theory and
> >religious traditions. If the Left adopted a secularized form of critical
> >theory for its political purposes, then the theological camp, for its
> >part, exaggerated the existential concerns of critical theory as
> >justification for its own arguments against the privatization of religion
> >and failed to "realise that for Critical Theory religion represented
> first
> >and foremost a _problem_, even on those rare occasions when it seemed to
> >be presented as a solution" (emphasis in original, p. 2).
>
> Examples would be helpful.  Late Horkheimer is said to harbor religious
> tendencies.  As for theologians, I know they've been interested in Bloch,
> but I'm not knowledgeable enough about their misdeeds with respect to the
> F.S.
>
>
> >The outcome of a working conference held at the Centre for
> >Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at the University of Bielefeld in
> >September 2003, this volume of 11 essays re-examines the role of religion
> >in critical theory. The volume follows on the tails of recent historical
> >analysis by Thomas Nipperdey, among others, on the "secularisation and
> >re-sacralisation" of German society in the decades leading up to 1933 (p.
> >3). Because of its members' deep animosity towards the Enlightenment
> >project and, at the same time, their insistence on the implication of
> >religion and myth in the alienation of the liberal subject, not to
> mention
> >their own assimilated Jewish backgrounds, the Frankfurt School presents a
> >challenge to attempts to reach a coherent view on this subject.
>
> True.
>
> >As Kohlenbach and Geuss argue, "it is within the framework of such a
> >polarity between the social sciences, on the one hand, and spiritually
> >motivated programmes for social change, on the other, that we think the
> >puzzling tension in early Critical Theory between a Marxist critique of,
> >and positive references to, religion can be fruitfully addressed" (p. 4).
> >The excellent introduction is followed by essays grouped rather loosely
> >according to particular historical contexts, conceptual questions or the
> >analysis of texts from different perspectives. In part 1, "Students,
> >Theologians, Critical Theorists," Pascal Eitler discusses the controversy
> >in Germany in the early 1970s over Max Horkheimer's alleged "conversion,"
> >which was sparked by an interview published in _Der Spiegel_ on January
> 5,
> >1970. Raymond Geuss also contributes an essay to this section about
> >changes in the philosophical discussion of religion in the
> >post-Enlightenment period. Despite Howard Caygill's caveat in the volume
> >that work on the relationship between religion and critical theory has
> >remained limited to the works of Walter Benjamin and Franz Rosenzweig (p.
> >145), part 2, "Constructions of Religious Experience," focuses
> exclusively
> >on Walter Benjamin and "just what Benjamin may have meant by 'religion'"
> >(p. 45). Pierfrancesco Fiorato's essay offers a commentary on Benjamin's
> >early religious thought and his critical engagement with the Marburg
> >School. Also in this section, Margarete Kohlenbach compares Benjamin's
> >religious and political thought with the reconstruction of religious
> >experience in Jewish philosopher Erich Unger's philosophy of religion.
> >Finally, Barnaba Maj interprets Benjamin's idea of allegory as a
> >methodological and rhetorical response to the religious theme in
> >Expressionist art against the backdrop of the destruction of the First
> >World War. The third section, "Legal Philosophy and Jewish Tradition," is
> >the strongest of the book's divisions, adding valuable insights and
> >perspectives to this important topic. Here Chris Thornhill reconstructs
> >common themes in the legal philosophy of the early Frankfurt School and
> >its critique of liberalism in the context of contemporary thinkers such
> as
> >Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. The section also includes essays by
> >both David Groiser and Howard Caygill, who focus in different ways on the
> >relevance of critical theory to the so-called Jewish Renaissance of
> Weimar
> >culture.
>
> Erich Fromm must be somewhere in all this.
>
> >Thornhill argues that critical theory's critique of Enlightenment was
> >necessarily wed to a critique of modern legal theory because of the way
> >that modern rationality supplanted all natural and metaphysical law with
> >its own regulating system. Thornhill does an excellent job of summarizing
> >the paradoxical relationship of religion to critical theory, which is
> >revealed by his critique of the modern legal subject: "[T]he first
> >Enlightenment argued against metaphysics and religion because these
> >defined human authority and validity through reference to an imputed
> >categorical order of creation. The Enlightenment then took for itself the
> >task of cementing its own rational legal fabric at the heart of the
> >humanized universe. The different Enlightenment proposed by thinkers
> >linked to early Critical Theory argues, however, that metaphysical and
> >religious contents, dialectically construed, are now vitally required in
> >order to free human life from the autonomous juridical structures which
> it
> >has entered in its miscarried attempt at secularisation and temporal
> >emancipation" (p. 127). In other words, Enlightenment rid itself of
> >religion in order to be free and critical theory, in turn, must utilize
> >religion once again to rectify the unfreedom of Enlightenment.
>
> This is a dangerous path to tread, esp. since the religious revival is
> intimately linked to fascism and anto-Semitism.  But more generally, I
> think it's bullshit.  This was before the '60s counterculture, which I
> imagine would yield a different spin on the problem.  Oddly, in English,
> there seems to be almost total silence about the counterculture and its
> connection to New Age thought.  What am I missing?
>
> >Because of his success in placing the questions of religion in the
> context
> >of a broader debate on legality in the 1920s, Thornhill's essay also
> >illustrates explicitly what is latent in some of the other essays: the
> >varying political tendencies of the re-sacralization of critique of the
> >Enlightenment and the modern legal subject. That the philosophies of
> >modernity could culminate in politics either of the Right or Left is an
> >argument one finds in many works of European cultural and intellectual
> >history of this period.[2]
>
> Something I/we need to know more about.
>
> >  Thornhill's summary of the legal critiques of thinkers as politically
> > diverse as Georg Lukács and Heidegger make this point clear. "Underlying
> > all these perspectives is the claim that modern liberal law has
> abandoned
> > all living content, and merely stratifies itself antinomically--as a
> > formal system of regulation--against the temporal, vital and
> > associational aspects of human existence and experience" (p. 112).
>
> Which of course could be a fascist, anarchist, New Left or countercultural
> critique.
>
> >David Grosier's essay in the same section dovetails nicely with
> >Thornhill's, illustrating that this paradox of Enlightenment plays itself
> >out in the parallel development of religion itself, insofar as religion
> >becomes wedded to the ideology of Enlightenment and emancipation in the
> >modern period. Just as Kant seemed to offer freedom from any naturally or
> >metaphysically revealed order by turning modern rationality into its own
> >law, so, too, Moses Mendelssohn and William von Humboldt had freedom of
> >religion in mind when they resisted the right of the state to dictate
> >belief. The irony is that both developments produced a "mixture of formal
> >liberalism and substantial dogmatism" that left the individual anything
> >but free in the eyes of critical theorists (p. 131).
>
> What exactly does this last sentence mean? What is the postulated linkage
> between formal liberalism and substantial dogmatism?  Was the former the
> cover for the latter? Is there a causal linkage between the two?  An
> unintended consequence? The latter in spite of the former?
>
> >That critical theory was slightly more susceptible to religious
> >alternatives because of its deep animosity for the so-called first
> >Enlightenment is a subtle irony mentioned by Geuss but surprisingly not
> >commented upon by other contributors.
>
> What religious alternatives? Why is this alleged irony overlooked by
> others?  Same animosity?
>
> >In fact, Geuss argues that if the three main features of critical theory
> >are that it "(1) maintains a firm grip on liberal taboos about the human
> >subject, (2) it is committed to the continued cultivation of the
> >metaphysical need, and (3) it exhibits a paralysing fear of instrumental
> >reason," then, "in all three of these respects it shows itself to be very
> >similar to well-known properties of archaic religions" (p. 40).
>
> However, the critical theorists were not Rightists or mystics.
>
> >In the final section, "Dialectic of Enlightenment Reconsidered," the
> >dialectics of Enlightenment and religion are addressed in the texts that
> >deal explicitly with the topic. Rüdiger Bittner argues that while Theodor
> >Adorno and Horkheimer lay claim to a dialectically structured argument,
> >they in fact present not the dialectics of Enlightenment, but rather the
> >failure of a historical development. Moreover, Bittner contends that
> their
> >critique of instrumental rationality rests on religious assumptions. For
> >Bittner, the irony of the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ (1947) is that
> >their critique of Western civilization is in fact a religious critique
> and
> >the dialectic is that "without [religion's] support the book will go
> >nowhere" (p. 170).
>
> Religious assumptions?  Which? D of E goes nowhere because it is a purely
> ideological critique of ideology, with or without religion.  I don't
> believe Bittner.
>
> >Gérard Raulet's essay on Ernst Cassirer and Adorno is equally commendable
> >for the way that it reveals a different aspect of the argument on
> >religion. First, Roulet argues that Horkheimer's second thesis that myth
> >is already Enlightenment falls within the Enlightenment tradition. This
> >point is made clearer by Roulet's clever comparison of _Dialectic of
> >Enlightenment_ with expressions of the Enlightenment motif in Cassirer's
> >_Philosophy of Symbolic Forms_ (Vol. I, 1923; Vol. II, 1925; Vol. III,
> >1929). Horkheimer and Adorno's radical use of Cassirer's philosophy of
> >symbolic forms highlights the "dual conception of the remembrance of
> >nature within the subject" leading to the subjection of women and Jews
> for
> >they remind the subject of the uncontrollable aspects of nature.
> According
> >to Kohlenbach and Geuss, Roulet reveals that "[I]n other words,
> _Dialectic
> >of Enlightenment_ is still--to some extent, and dialectically--an
> >Enlightenment project" (pp. 11-12).
>
> I thought everyone agreed on this last point.
>
> >  The dilemma of whether the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ is a diatribe
> > against the Enlightenment, an Enlightenment critique of myth or a
> > religious critique of technical rationality is not resolved in these
> > pages. Rather, as in many conference proceedings, the contributors raise
> > interesting questions that leave room for future research.
>
> I would say that all of these assertions are wrongly formulated.
>
> >That there is little to no positive mention of the theme of religion in
> >the works of members of the Frankfurt School presented an additional
> >challenge to this volume and is reflected in its creative and myriad
> >hermeneutical approaches to the topic.
>
> I wonder how much BS there is in this book.  Perhaps the F.S. is being
> used
> improperly for the cause of religious restoration?
>
> >The result is a thought-provoking volume. Notes [1]. For recent works on
> >religion and Enlightenment see, for example, S.J. Barnett, _Enlightenment
> >and Religion: The Myths of Modernity (Manchester: Manchester University
> >Press, 2003); Robert Devigne, _J.S. Mill's use of Ancient, Religious,
> >Liberal and Romantic Moralities_ (New Haven: Yale University Press,
> 2006);
> >David L. Holmes, _The Faiths of the Founding Fathers_ (Oxford: Oxford
> >University Press, 2006); and Ole P. Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds.,
> >_Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment Europe_ (Aldershot: Ashgate,
> >2007). [2]. In addition to Carl Schorske's classic _Fin de Siècle Vienna:
> >Politics and Culture_ (New York: Random House, 1980), see, for example,
> >Kevin Repp, _Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity:
> >Anti-politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890-1914_ (Cambridge:
> >Harvard University Press, 2000).
>
> Interesting references.
>
>
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-- 
Robyn E. Henderson-Espinoza
Chicago, IL
The Blog:  www.baptistnomad.com | The Research:  www.iRobyn.com

"When I do not see plurality stressed
in the very structure of a theory,
I know that I will have to do lots of
acrobatics-of the contortionist and the
walk-on-the-tightrope kind-to have this
theory speak to me without allowing
the theory to distort me in my complexity."
Maria Lugones