The Disenchanted Promise of the Enlightenment
The Frankfurt School's critical project cannot be understood without grappling with its complex relationship to the Enlightenment. Born out of the eighteenth century’s dream of reason and human autonomy, the Enlightenment promised liberation through knowledge, progress through science, and freedom through the dismantling of myth. Yet, for the first generation of Frankfurt thinkers, the Enlightenment’s legacy was not merely one of fulfillment but also of profound betrayal.
In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer argued that the very tools that were meant to liberate humanity—reason, science, technology—had been turned into instruments of domination. Instrumental rationality, detached from ends and obsessed with control, now served the maintenance of oppressive social systems rather than their transformation. Enlightenment, in its historical unfolding, had not eradicated myth but had rather become entangled with it, producing new forms of superstition, alienation, and barbarism under modern conditions.
Thus, the Frankfurt School approached the Enlightenment neither as something to be simply celebrated nor as something to be simply rejected. It was, instead, an unfinished project—one that demanded a critical self-reflection if its emancipatory potential was ever to be realized.
Revisiting Marxism: Beyond Dogma
In their encounter with Marxism, the Frankfurt School demonstrated a similarly nuanced stance. Marx’s critique of political economy, his concept of historical materialism, and his vision of human emancipation remained vital sources of inspiration. Yet, by the 1920s and 30s, orthodox Marxism—particularly in its Soviet incarnation—had ossified into a deterministic doctrine. Economic forces were assumed to march inevitably toward socialism; revolution was treated as an inevitable outcome rather than a fragile historical possibility.
The Frankfurt School rejected this mechanical materialism. Influenced by thinkers such as Georg Lukács, they insisted that the superstructures of society—culture, psychology, ideology—were not mere reflections of economic base but active arenas of struggle. Consciousness itself had to be analyzed, not presumed. The forms of domination embedded in culture, law, family life, and even dreams needed to be unraveled if any genuine emancipation was to occur.
Marxism, for the Frankfurt thinkers, could not survive without becoming more philosophical, more self-critical, and more attuned to the subtle mechanisms through which oppression persisted even in formally democratic or technologically advanced societies.
The Question of Praxis
At the heart of this entire rethinking lay the urgent question of praxis. In classical Marxist theory, praxis referred to the unity of theory and revolutionary action: thought realized in transformative practice. But after the failed revolutions of the early twentieth century, and in the shadow of fascism, the idea of straightforward revolutionary praxis seemed increasingly untenable.
The Frankfurt School wrestled with this impasse. If mass movements could so easily turn authoritarian, if culture itself had become a vehicle of conformity, where could transformative agency still be found? Could theory, stripped of immediate political action, still contribute to change—or was it condemned to a contemplative, impotent distance?
Their response was paradoxical but profound. Critical Theory would abandon the illusion of an immediate pathway from thought to revolution, but it would not abandon the demand for emancipation. Instead, it would keep alive the negative, utopian impulse—the refusal to accept the existing order as inevitable. Praxis, under these conditions, became an act of intellectual resistance: the preservation of critical consciousness against the pressures of normalization, commodification, and despair.
In this way, the Frankfurt School reconceived praxis as something broader and deeper than direct action. It became the patient work of critique, the nurturing of historical memory, the refusal to let suffering be forgotten or rationalized. Praxis, in this sense, was itself a form of fidelity: fidelity to the promise of a world that might still be otherwise.
The Enduring Tension
Enlightenment, Marxism, and praxis—three great inheritances of modern thought—were never simply accepted by the Frankfurt School. They were interrogated, unraveled, and mourned even as they were defended. In doing so, these thinkers created a form of critical theory uniquely suited to a world where hope must coexist with skepticism, and where the path to liberation is neither linear nor guaranteed.
To study the Frankfurt School, then, is not merely to study a tradition of critique. It is to enter into a continuing dialogue with the paradoxes of modernity itself—a dialogue that demands from us, still today, the courage to think without guarantees, and the patience to resist without illusions.
Next article: Western Marxism, the Failure of Revolution, and the Critique of Ideology
