This post provides link resources for the blog post available here.
A PDF of Horkheimer’s full essay “Traditionelle und kritische Theorie” in English translation is available here. If you’re up for the German original, try here.
The major translation into English of Adorno’s Minima Moralia is by E.F.N. Jephcott, published by Verso Press, that limey nest of leftist sympathizers. The paperback is still in print and available through Amazon. The German original is available through Bibliothek Suhrkamp on amazon.de — but of course if you happen upon some PDF somewhere, then off you go. I can’t stop you 🙂
In 2012 Judith Butler won the Adorno Prize and gave as her acceptance speech the lecture entitled, “Can One Live a Good Life In A Bad Life?” Good question. Touches directly on No. 6 in Minima Moralia, although I don’t think she mentions that text specifically. If you’re interested in reading her speech you can find it here.
Peter Thompson, Director of the Center for Ernst Bloch Studies at the University of Sheffield, has written an eight-part piece on the Frankfurt School published in 2013 in The Guardian. It’s fab. If you’d like to have a look, you can find Part 1 here, and from there find links to the other parts. I applaud the publication of such articles in the British press. Fat chance you’ll find the equivalent of it in USA Today. Or even in The New York Times, for that matter. But hey, we Americans have the Kardashians, so it’s all good.
The complete run of Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung (Journal for Social Research), published between 1932-1941 by the Institut fur Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) that Horkheimer led as Director, is online at this site. These are PDF files of the original German texts available for viewing online or for download. It’s the Institute’s original treasure trove with material from all the major names associated with the Frankfurt School.
The workshop in Berlin I mention is put on by the Humboldt University’s Institute for Philosophy and will take place this summer, July 2018. A link to information on the conference, in English, is here. Here’s the first paragraph:
Why do people often accept, and even embrace, social and political conditions that seem to run counter to their own interests? How is it possible that we sometimes support forms of domination with our ways of behaving and thinking without intending or even realizing it? One answer to these questions refers to the notion of ideology. Ideologies are more or less coherent systems of practices and beliefs that shape how individuals relate to their social reality in ways that distort their understanding of what is wrong with that reality and thereby contribute to its reproduction.
Sounds to me like they’re on about hegemony and should be spouting Gramsci all over the place, not just serving up bits and bobs of Frankfurt School stuff like tea sandwiches. And hey, it’s free! You just have to pony up for travel, hotel and food. But there’s a catch — surprise, surprise. NO RIFF-RAFF, thank you very much:
To apply for participation, graduate students and junior scholars are invited to submit a precis of their take on core concerns of ideology critique and a CV (each document 1 page). The precis should show which particular background knowledge and systematic positions the applicants would bring to our joint discussions.
Damn. Something similar popped up when I tried to apply for membership to the Daughters of the American Revolution … What’s a girl to do?? That ole BAU gets you every time 🙁
Finally, in 1969 Hellmuth Karasek and Kurt Zimmermann did a documentary film about Horkheimer, while Horkheimer was living in Montagnola, Switzerland in the last part of his life. The title is Max Horkheimer: Porträt eines Aufklärers, available on YouTube here. It’s in German, obviously. Even if you don’t speak German but you’d like to get a sense of the person Horkheimer was, have a look. He was one of the intellectual powerhouses of his day but he was also a dear. We could use more like him in this world.