Toward a Concrete Philosophy : Heidegger and the Emergence of the Frankfurt School
Year of publication
2020
Authors
Immanen, Mikko
Abstract
Toward a Concrete Philosophy explores the reactions of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse to Martin Heidegger prior to their dismissal of him once he turned to the Nazi party in 1933. Mikko Immanen provides a fascinating glimpse of the three future giants of twentieth-century social criticism when they were still looking for their philosophical voices. By reconstructing their overlooked debates with Heidegger and Heideggerians, Immanen argues that Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse saw Heidegger's 1927 magnum opus, Being and Time, as a serious effort to make philosophy relevant for life again and as the most provocative challenge to their nascent materialist diagnoses of the discontents of European modernity. Adorno's meeting with Heidegger in 1929 is often mentioned. Yet our knowledge of his subsequent "Frankfurt discussion" with "Frankfurt Heideggerians" remains anecdotal, even though the most remarkable aspect of this discussion was Adorno's articulation, through an immanent critique of Being and Time, of a proto-version of Dialectic of Enlightenment's idea of the entwinement of myth and reason. Similarly, Horkheimer's enthusiasm over Heidegger's legendary post-World War I lectures and his later criticism of Being and Time have escaped attention almost entirely. And while Marcuse's "Heideggerian Marxism" is well known, his intriguing debate with Heidegger over Hegel and the origin of the problematic of "being and time" has remained uncharted until now. Reading these debates as fruitful intellectual encounters rather than hostile confrontations, Toward a Concrete Philosophy offers scholars of Critical Theory a new, thought-provoking perspective on the emergence of Frankfurt School as a rejoinder to Heidegger's philosophical revolution.
Show moreOrganizations and authors
University of Helsinki
Immanen Mikko
Publication type
Publication format
Monograph
Audience
Scientific
Peer-reviewed
Peer-Reviewed
MINEDU's publication type classification code
C1 Scientific bookPublication channel information
Parent publication name
Publisher
ISBN
Publication forum
Publication forum level
2
Open access
Open access in the publisher’s service
No
Self-archived
No
Other information
Fields of science
Philosophy
Keywords
[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]
Publication country
United States
Internationality of the publisher
International
Language
English
International co-publication
No
Co-publication with a company
No
DOI
10.1515/9781501752391
The publication is included in the Ministry of Education and Culture’s Publication data collection
Yes