Max Horkheimer’s Critical Theory’s Emancipatory Claim in relation to Karl Marx’s Claim of Emancipation

Abstract

The Frankfurt School of Social Research was an offshoot of the orthodox Marxist intellectual movement. Historically, the main force that gave life to Critical Theory is undeniably Karl Marx’s impetus for emancipation, however, in its course of development Critical Theory has abandoned its initial method and the roots of its life force. Nonetheless, there remained that authentic Marxist desire to not only look at the world with philosophical criticism but to change the world in praxis. Thus, the impetus of social transformation through emancipation remained to be alive in the Critical Theory which has fully distanced itself from its foundation. The question runs in line with the historical link between the umbilical tie of Critical Theory with its mother, that is, Scientific Marxism. This question at hand is the problem of the promise of emancipation, since, historically it has been a fact that the claim for economic emancipation did not come about as predicted by Marx, thus, the critical theorists’ claim for socio-cultural emancipation must also be subjected to criticism. Hence, the big question is, “can there be any materialist ground for the viability of the emancipatory claim of critical theory?” With the long history of development of critical theory as a mode of social evaluation from the time of Horkheimer’s radical shift away from the Marxist body to the present era of new social intersubjectivity, can it provide any specific, instance, of emancipation from socio-cultural oppression in a specific society at any given time in history where any form of critical theory has been applied and have proved itself successful. If the answer is to the negative, then, it must be asked why and to what reason/s does it fall short of its promises, without prejudice to the validity of critical theory itself. If, however, this present quest is an invalid question so much that it does not apply in the manner that the first question presupposed the dilemma of emancipation, then the new question would be “how does Critical Theory wish to achieve its promise of emancipation?”