Horkheimer’s essay on the bourgeois ascent and its lessons
An Essay in Between Philosophy and Social Science
The work is an essay by Max Horkheimer, the German philosopher and sociologist associated with the Frankfurt School and critical theory. It belongs to the essays collected in Between Philosophy and Social Science, where it appears under the title Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History. It is one of the longest essays in that volume.
The Bourgeois Rise to Power and What Was Worth Preserving
The essay’s subject is the bourgeois rise to power and the philosophy of history that accompanied it. Horkheimer examines bourgeois control, and he sets out what he learned from the bourgeoisie’s historical ascent and what in the bourgeois tradition he judged worth preserving. The work is therefore not merely a chronology of ideas; it is an assessment of the bourgeois past, asking which parts of it Horkheimer thought should be carried forward.
Between Philosophy and Social Science appeared between 1930 and 1938, during the time the Frankfurt School moved from Frankfurt to Geneva to Columbia University. Its essays were Horkheimer’s attempts to “remove the individual from mass culture, a function for philosophy from the commodification of everything.” Horkheimer was extremely invested in the individual. In one of his writings, he states, “When we speak of an individual as a historical entity, we mean not merely the space-time and the sense existence of a particular member of the human race, but in addition, his awareness of his own individuality as a conscious human being, including recognition of his own identity.”
The Individual and Case Studies
The volume also looks at the individual as the “troubled center of philosophy.” Horkheimer expressed that “there is no formula that defines the relationship among individuals, society and nature for all time.” To understand the problem of the individual further, Horkheimer included two case studies on the individual: one on Montaigne and one on himself. The volume’s other longest essay, “Egoism and Freedom Movements,” is an evaluation of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Vico.
The Inaugural Speech in the Volume
The volume also included “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks for an Institute of Social Research,” which was used as Horkheimer’s inaugural speech as director of the Frankfurt School. In this speech he related economic groups to the struggles and challenges of real life. Horkheimer often referenced human struggle and used this example in his speech because it was a topic he understood well.
