PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought and, as co-editor, The Weimar Sourcebook, both published by the University of California Press.
This long study of a group of the 20th century's most fecund thinkers often fails to convey the intellectual excitement and originality of much of their work. But the book represents the first major attempt to consider as a whole the contributions of the Frankfurt School, which included Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, Wittfogel, Borkenau, Fromm, Habermas, Well, Pollock, and Grossman. The development of the School is described from its origins in 1922: its foundational Critical Theory, its subsequent attempts to integrate psychoanalysis with political thought, its studies of Nazism, the authoritarian personality, anti-Semitism, mass culture, and philosophy of history. Jay probably places too much emphasis on the Jewish background of most Frankfurt Schoolers, rather than fully exploring the impact of Weimar politics on their thinking. After the Nazi takeover, the School moved to the U.S.; however its gradual abandonment of Marxism and its accommodation to American sociological empiricism (which Jay recognizes but minimizes) would be better attributed to the state of the left and left theory at the time rather than merely chalking it up, as Jay does, to the pressures of exile. After World War II the School was reestablished in Frankfurt under indirect U.S. government sponsorship. Despite Jay's claim that the School then became a major force in the revitalization of Western European Marxism, it seems to represent an only nominally Marxist force on the postwar scene. As for his exposition of Frankfurt ideas, he terms the Critical Theory a negation of naive positivism and a search - especially by Horkheimer - for non-closed philosophical systems. Unfortunately Jay relies on internal comparisons among members' views without sufficiently broad and rigorous conceptualization of what the School stood for and against. The strongest chapter is on the School's aesthetic theory and its critique of mass culture. Despite its shortcomings, among them turgidity of style, this is a pioneering work in intellectual history and will be indispensable to students of the period and the School. (Kirkus Reviews)
