Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School is a group of German philosophers and social theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research. Its work developed critical theory to examine society, culture, and power.

Critical theory: An approach to social inquiry that examines power and seeks to expose and challenge domination. The school developed this approach as its defining intellectual project.
Max Horkheimer: A German philosopher and social theorist who directed the Institute for Social Research from 1930 to 1958. His leadership and writings helped define the school’s interdisciplinary critical theory.
Dialectic of Enlightenment: A book by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno arguing that Enlightenment reason can turn into domination. It gives the school’s starkest account of reason reversing into myth and control.
Nazi rise to power: The political process by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party established dictatorship in Germany in 1933. Nazi rule forced the Institute into exile and redirected its research toward fascism.
Logical positivism: A philosophical movement that treats empirical verification and logical analysis as central standards for meaningful knowledge. Frankfurt School theorists opposed its separation of facts from social and historical critique.
Institute for Social Research: A research institute founded in Frankfurt in 1923 that became the Frankfurt School’s institutional home. Its scholars and research program gave the school its name and organizational base.
Theodor W. Adorno: A German philosopher, sociologist, and music theorist known for critiques of mass culture and instrumental reason. His work became central to the school’s analysis of culture and modernity.
Instrumental reason: A form of rationality that evaluates choices chiefly by their efficiency as means to given ends. Frankfurt School critiques trace how this narrow rationality supports administration and domination.
Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in exile: The Institute’s relocation and operations outside Germany after the Nazi regime took power. Exile reshaped the school’s personnel, research conditions, and engagement with American society.
Traditional theory: A model of inquiry that treats theory as detached explanation of an object of study. Horkheimer contrasted it with critical theory’s explicit concern with social transformation.

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