Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 09:42:45 -0600
From: "Jerry W. Shepperd" <shepperd-AT-austin.cc.tx.us>
Subject: HAB: Intellectual History Newsletter: Frankfurt School



In today's (01/17/01) online Chronicle of Higher Education, there is this 
announcement/summary of an article on the Frankfurt School in "Intellectual 
History Newsletter."

Jerry Shepperd

A glance at Volume 22 of the "Intellectual History Newsletter":

An emerging "third generation" of Frankfurt School theorists
Seventy-five years after Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
founded what came to be called the Frankfurt School, "German
critical social theory is still alive and well, and living in
Frankfurt," writes Joel Anderson, an assistant professor of
philosophy at Washington University, in St. Louis. His article
contrasts today's leading theorists, especially Axel Honneth, a
professor of social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt,
with their predecessors. There never was a building called the
Frankfurt School. Nor do Frankfurt School members adhere to a
single methodology. Instead, the name came to describe a loose
cluster of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Social
Research, in Frankfurt. Sent into exile by the Nazis,
first-generation scholars like Adorno and Horkheimer spent their
careers exploring the roots of totalitarianism in mass culture.
A succeeding generation, including Juergen Habermas, turned to
empirical social science and analytic philosophy of language.
Now a new cohort has arrived on the scene, shaped by a different
constellation of political issues, more willing to think
favorably about social groups and subjective experience. "Born
out of 1968 and the new social movements of the 1970's," writes
Mr. Anderson, this third generation "faced as mature theorists
the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the politics of
ethnicity, and the acceleration of globalization." Mr. Honneth,
who is due to take over the leadership of the institute this
year, is an example of this new breed. "Their interest in issues
of exclusion, marginalization, emotions, and otherness have
drawn them in the direction of French philosophy as well as
Anglo-American cultural studies and political theory," Mr.
Anderson writes. The article is not available online, but
information about the journal may be found at
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~ihn/

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