Adorno and the Frankfurt School

Abstract

Abstract The ‘Frankfurt School’ is the name used to refer to the philosophers, social theorists, literary scholars, economists, and psychoanalysts who developed the ideas of the ‘Institute for Social Research’, which was founded in Frankfurt in 1923. The members of the group sought to establish what they termed ‘Critical Theory’. Their theories were therefore not intended just as objective descriptions of social phenomena, but were also meant to contribute to changing those phenomena. This is the central idea which informs Critical Theory’s approaches to modern culture. Critical Theory analyses why that culture develops in the ways it does, tries to show how it can negatively affect people’s ability to think critically about their actions and evaluations, and suggests ways of thinking about positive alternatives to the existing state of society. In the 1930s the Institute was forced by the Nazis into exile in Switzerland, and then in the USA; it returned to Frankfurt in 1949.