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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.
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Organizations 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 book

Publication channel information

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