[lbo-talk] Habermas on the Frankfurt School

[Dennis Redmond]

> http://www.logosjournal.com/habermas.htm
>
> Dual Layered Time: Reflections on T. W. Adorno
> In the 1950s
> by Juergen Habermas
>
> The first time I struggled to follow the talk; blinded by the brilliance
> of expression and the way he presented it, I was lagging behind
> the diction of the thought. I only noticed later that this
> dialectics often fossilized into mere manner/affectation. The main
> impression was the sparkling pretense of enlightenment that was still
> in the darkness of the not understood, the promise to make concealed
> connections transparent.

Still juridically exorcising the Americanized father-figure, at this late
date -- how very Wessi ("Federal-Republic-of-Germany-ish" is the closest
translation... don't ask me to explain... it's one of those Willy
Brandt-Erhard things). In fairness to Habermas, I don't think the
Frankfurt School elders quite understood what he himself was doing with
his dissertation (communication theory was relatively new at the time), so
there was mutual misunderstanding on both sides of the fence.

It's striking how few accounts of Adorno point out that he was a Marxist,
though. Adorno wasn't quite the first theorist of Eurocapitalism
(Bourdieu's role), but he is one of the truly indispensable theorists of
multinational capital (or, if you prefer, theorist of multinational
Marxism).

-- DRR