The vicissitudes of the politics of “life:” Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse’s reception of phenomenology and vitalism in Weimar Germany

Abstract

The following article attempts to clarify the ambivalent relationship that Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse developed with the vitalist and phenomenological tendencies that permeated philosophy and the social sciences during the Weimar Republic. More precisely, it traces how both thinkers, in spite of acknowledging the “truth moment” contained in the criticism that the philosophical exponents of both movements (Husserl, Bergson, Dilthey) developed of 19th century positivism, also recognized in its shallow popularization the advancement of a dangerous philosophical irrationalism, suspicious of science and Enlightenment values, that would soon become an accomplice to the rise of fascism.

Keywords

• Frankfurt school
• critical theory
• irrationalism
• conservative revolution