The following notes are meant to clue you in on what has been discussed before you entered the "conversation." The Frankfurt school based it theories on the work of Karl Marx, who in turn relied heavily on Hegel’s dialectic. Hegel was responding to Immanuel Kant;who was trying to straighten out those darn Metaphysicians; who thought they were Neo-Platonist, but that’s going back too far, so we’ll just start with Hegel.
Hegel was an idealist, which means the only thing that’s real in existence is "the ideal." Roughly put, for Hegel "the ideal" is the end all be all process of an immaterial motivating stuff called "Absolute Mind." The process Absolute mind goes through is becomming self-conscious. Everything in existence, (human beings and institutions), is a way that Mind shows itself. Mind (and thus human community), according to Hegel reaches its highest potential, that is, becomes self-conscious by going through developmental changes within human history. The development stages that manifest in history are called epochs. The force that moves human beings, and thus mind through this evolution in history is the dialectic. The dialectic presented by Hegel is different from the general philosophical idea of dialectic. Hegel’s dialectic is the introduction, of " a way things are" to "a rising conflict." This introduction results in "resolution" which changes both elements, and thus moves history. Absolute Spirit, (which is what Hegel calls Absolute Mind after it grows up), culminates within history.
Marx adopted Hegel’s notions of evolution through history, and the idea of the dialectic. Marx saw himself as furthering these notions, by separating them from Hegel’s idealism. In an effort to be more empirically based, Marx replaced Absolute spirit with human material desire, and reinterpreted Hegel’s dialectic. "The way things are" became a given thesis, "the conflict," became it’s antithesis, and "resolution," became a synthesis of both. The epochs which Hegel supposed to be stages of consciousness in Absolute mind become for Marx economically based stages of evolution in human society. Marx named five different epochs, (see the chart below) each of which is characterized by it economic structure.
Communism is the final epoch, where human beings reach their highest potential. Capitalism, is the last step before Communism, and the epoch that we are currently in, according to Marx. Justifying, and demonstrating how the move from Capitalism to Communism will occur is at the heart of Marxism. In the simplest of terms, Marx used his interpretation of Hegel’s dialectic to explain how this will happen. Capitalism, and its injustices are the thesis; the class struggle, which is characterized by an unhappy working class is the antithesis, and revolution which leads to communism provides the synthesis. This reworking of Hegel’s notions of man in history is called Historical Materialism.
All the analysis presented by the Frankfurt school assumes Historical Materialism is a valid process. Each author give different explanations of the movement of humanity through history; the elements of the dialectic; and the notions of class struggle, and revolution. As we mentioned in the introduction, the political occurences of the day also influenced each thinkers critique. The following time-line will give you and idea of the political events each thinker was observing when composing a given work.
Communism - A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life; specifically, a scheme which contemplates the abolition of inequalities in the possession of property, as by distributing all wealth equally to all, or by holding all wealth in common for the equal use and advantage of all.
Capitalism n : an economic system based on private ownership of capital
Reason- The faculty of capacity of the human mind by which it is distinguished from the intelligence of the inferior animals; the higher as distinguished from the lower cognitive faculties, sense, imagination, and memory, and in contrast to the feelings and desires. Reason comprises conception, judgment, reasoning, and the intuitional faculty. Specifically, it is the intuitional faculty, or the faculty of first truths, as distinguished from the understanding, which is called the discursive or ratiocinative faculty.
Rationality - the quality of being consistent with or based on logic [syn: {rationalness}]
Marxism - a form of communism based on the writings of Marx and Lenin [syn: {bolshevism}, {collectivism}, {Marxism-Leninism}, {Leninism}, {Marxism}, {Sovietism}, {sovietism}]
Subjective - Especially, pertaining to, or derived from, one's own consciousness, in distinction from external observation; ralating to the mind, or intellectual world, in distinction from the outward or material excessively occupied with, or brooding over, one's own internal states.
Objective - Of or pertaining to an object; contained in, or having the nature or position of, an object; outward; external; extrinsic; -- an epithet applied to whatever ir exterior to the mind, or which is simply an object of thought or feeling, and opposed to subjective. Objective means that which belongs to, or proceeds from, the object known, and not from the subject knowing, and thus denotes what is real, in opposition to that which is ideal -- what exists in nature, in contrast to what exists merely in the thought of the individual. --Sir. W. Hamilton.
Hermeneutics - The science of interpretation and explanation.
Alienation - The act of alienating, or the state of being alienated.
Epoch - A fixed point of time, established in history by the occurrence of some grand or remarkable event; a point of time marked by an event of great subsequent influence; as, the epoch of the creation; the birth of Christ was the epoch which gave rise to the Christian era.
Technology -the practical application of science to commerce or industry
Idealism -The system or theory that denies the existence of material bodies, and teaches that we have no rational grounds to believe in the reality of anything but ideas and their relations.
Dialectic - of or relating to or employing dialectic; "the dialectical method" any formal system of reasoning that arrives at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments
Autonomy - immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence [syn: {liberty}] 2: personal independence [syn:{self-direction}, {self-reliance}, {self-sufficiency}]
Dualism - State of being dual or twofold; a twofold division; any system which is founded on a double principle, or a twofold distinction; A view of man as constituted of two original and independent elements, as matter and spirit.
Definitions that you can understand
