[logos]

The third founder of the New Left, Professor Max Horkheimer, a particularly close friend of Theodor Adorno, has since been moving in another direction. In an interview [14] he declared that man can properly be understood only by taking his transcendent character into account, and that we have to return to theology, a declaration which caused shrieks of indignation from pious agnostics and atheists.

Old Horkheimer, one of the very few leftists who began to catch a glimmer of the truth, understood that it is only through the transcendent that man is even able to perceive the material. The Left, whether "Old" or "New" will not accept his insight, however, because to admit not only the existence of the transcendent but it's paramount importance to human life requires them to tacitly admit the possibility of God. And with God, there can be no "Left".

[William McKinley]

As a result the American imported New Left could quickly strike roots, and this all the more so as the three most important New Left ideologues had lived as German refugees in America: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse who alone stayed on in the New World, whereas Adorno and Horkheimer returned to their native country.

I thought I would enhance this discussion by bringing in some context about each of these men.

• Theodor W. Adorno - (taedôr ve´zengroond ädôr´no) , 1903-69, German philosopher, born as Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund. Forced into exile by the Nazis (1933), he spent 16 years in England and the United States before returning to Germany to take up a chair in philosophy at Frankfurt. A leading member of the Frankfurt School , Adorno launched critiques of the Enlightenment conception of reason (see Dialectic of Enlightenment, written with Max Horkheimer, 1947, tr. 1972), of Hegelian idealism (see Negative Dialectics 1966, tr. 1973), and of existentialism (see The Jargon of Authenticity 1964, tr. 1973). He also led an influential attack on the “culture industry” prevalent in contemporary capitalist society. Influenced by Schoenberg, Adorno wrote extensively on music theory and developed an account of modernism in art. Adorno's works include Minima Moralia (1951, tr. 1974), Philosophy of Modern Music (1958, tr. 1985), and Aesthetic Theory (1970, tr. 1984).

• Max Horkheimer - 1895-1973, German philosopher and sociologist. As director (1930-58) of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, he played an important role in the development of critical theory and Western Marxism. In Eclipse of Reason (1947) and Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947, written with Theodor Adorno ), he developed a critique of scientific positivism, whose “instrumental rationality” had become a form of domination in both capitalist and socialist countries. Against an older, deterministic Marxism, he argued that culture and consciousness are partly independent of economics, and his ideas about liberation and consumer society continue to influence contemporary empirical sociologists.

• Herbert Marcuse - U.S. political philosopher, b. Berlin. He was educated at the Univ. of Freiburg and with Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer founded the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. A special target of the Nazis because of his Jewish origins and Marxist politics, he emigrated (1934) to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. Marcuse served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Brandeis before becoming (1965) professor of philosophy at the Univ. of California at San Diego. He is best known for his attempt to synthesize Marxian and Freudian theories into a comprehensive critique of modern industrial society. In One Dimensional Man (1964), his most popular book, he argued for a sexual basis to the social and political repression in contemporary America; the book made him a hero of New Left radicals and provided a rationale for the student revolts of the 1960s in the United States and Europe. His other works include Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1955), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972).

Also of interest is Horowitz' repudiation of the New Left, Destructive Generation.