THE HISTORY OF THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL FROM CRITICISM TO EMANCIPATION MOVEMENT

Abstract

This paper describes the modern society’s major basic idea which has been uphold by Frankfurt School, that is, the crisis of enlightenment, of art and culture, and of history. The school is trying to reunite concretely branches of knowledge in social sciences which have been broken down into pieces without sacrificing their good points. The school also intellectually and socially redefines Marxism in its period. The Frankfurt School of the first period was claimed to have been deadlock in taking part in solving the problem of modern world. The works of Karl Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, as well as Herbert Marcuse are the severe criticisms on scientism and positivism. According to them, both have interfered modern society as uncovered in the instrumental and technological rationality. The critical tradition previously developed by Marx tried to uproot the hidden system in a certain ideology that had made the society’s creative thinking less interisting. It means that the system which developed at that time was in fact the place where ideological interests of certain parties hid. Marx intended to uproot these interests which was the continued by the Frankfurt School community which was known for their ideological criticism.