Університети і лідерство (Jun 2024)
Max Horkheimer. Sociology at University
Abstract
A short article by Max Horkheimer, a well-known German neo-Marxist social philosopher and one of the founders of critical social theory, was published in the eighth issue of the Frankfurter Studentenzeitung, the student newspaper of the University of Frankfurt, which was published in December 1951. This text is another work of the Frankfurt thinker from his cycle of philosophical and educational works devoted to the philosophical consideration of such a spiritually influential phenomenon of German culture as the German university. Horkheimer continued his line of ideological orientation towards the concept of das Studium in German educational philosophy when he was rector of the University of Frankfurt in the early fifties of the last century. The German philosopher defined the theoretical connection that should bind together philosophy as theoretical knowledge that emancipates human consciousness from the pressure of totalitarian, ruling ideology, and sociology as a science that is able to provide society, which has embarked on the path of humanistic transformations in its environment, with relevant positive scientific and objective knowledge. The theoretical basis of Horkheimer's next philosophical and educational work, his speech "Academic Studies at University" (1952), was outlined in general terms here. The Frankfurt philosopher, ideologically relying on the tradition of German university education to cherish an educated person’s freedom from excessive social and political power, set out the German intellectual's fundamental demand to separate the socio-cultural (spiritual) space of university education from the influence of the unity of ideological components of post-totalitarian society. According to Horkheimer, this ideological unity should be overcome by a new theoretical unity - a combination of philosophy, which is characterised by the use of free subjective thinking of an individual, and sociology, which as a science cognises in an objective way. It will result in such social upbringing of young people that will lead to the beginning of humanistic socio-cultural changes in a post-totalitarian society
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