MAX HORKHEIMER

For Horkheimer, concepts and theories provided representations of the socio-material world. He also criticizes theories that operate with a model which rigidly distinguishes between subject and object, stating "the subject-object relation is not accurately described by the picture of two fixed realities which are conceptually fully transparent and move towards each other. Rather, in what we call objective, subjective factors are at work; and in what we call subjective, objective factors are at work" Horkheimer’s materialism is thus dialectical, utilizing a subject/object dialectic in which objective conditions help constitute the subject, while the subject in turn helps constitute objective (material, historical) conditions. The Institute version of "dialectical materialism" is thoroughly historical, because it stresses that our experience, views of the world and concepts change in relation to historical development, and that therefore both our theories and perceptual apparatuses, as well as the objects of knowledge, are historical. "Materialism, unlike idealism, always understands thinking to be the thinking of particular men within a particular period of time. It challenged every claim to the autonomy of thought

Horkheimer’s materialist social theory thus focused on human needs and suffering, the ways in which economic conditions produced suffering and the changes necessary to eliminate human suffering and increase human well-being. Such a project requires a critical social theory which focuses on the social problems of the present age: "If materialist theory is an aspect of efforts to improve the human situations, it inevitably opposes every attempt to reduce social problems to second place". The social theory in turn is produced by a synthesis of philosophy and the sciences.

Dominant positivist conceptions of science, according to Horkheimer, are unhistorical; and science is not to be privileged above philosophy and social theory, although "materialism has in common with positivism that it acknowledges as real only what is given in sense experience, and it has done so since its beginnings". Sense experience is mediated through concepts, however, and both sense perception and cognition are subject to social conditions and historical change; thus notions of absolute intuition, whether through the senses or cognition, are to be rejected. Horkheimer and his colleagues therefore subscribe to a nontranscendental materialist theory of knowledge which acknowledges, with Kant and the idealists, that forms of cognition and theories determine our experience of the external world, and also that objective material conditions in turn condition forms of thought and knowledge. The results of materialist social theory are thus always provisional, contextual and subject to revision.

For Horkheimer, the striving for happiness involves attempts to eliminate unhappiness and the conditions which produce human suffering. Suffering itself is conceived as a product of both natural conditions - scarcity, sickness, natural catastrophe and so on - and historical conditions - poverty, exploitation, war and so forth. The task for social theory (and society) is therefore to conceptualize and struggle to eliminate social and historical causes of suffering. Horkheimer believed at present

humanity has become so rich, and has at its disposal such great natural and human auxiliary powers, that it could exist united by worthy objectives. The need to veil this state of affairs, which is transparent in every respect, gives rise to a sphere of hypocrisy which extends not only to international relations, but which penetrates into even the most private relations; it results in a diminution of cultural endeavors (including science) and a brutalization of personal and public life, such that spiritual and material misery are compounded. At no time has the poverty of humanity stood in such crying contradiction to its potential wealth, at no time have all powers been so horribly fettered as in this generation where children go hungry and the hands of the fathers are busy turning out bombs . . . We view human beings not as subject of their fate, but rather as objects of a blind occurrence of nature, to which the response of a moral sentiment is compassion.(pp. 106-7 )

For Horkheimer, moral sentiment is rooted not only in compassion for suffering human beings and solidarity with their predicament, but also in indignation and outrage over suffering, combined with a desire to eliminate its causes