What I'm Reading: Max Horkheimer, "The Eclipse of Reason"

Horkheimer was part of the Frankfurt School, who you may have heard alluded to in dark tones by raving swivel-eyed racists, because the School features at the centre of the legendarily batshit ‘Cultural Marxism’ conspiracy. According to this conspiracy theory, which originated with the Nazis, Horkheimer and pals were secretly trying to undermine Western civilisation (whatever that means) by covertly spreading Marxist thought through universities, and also by daring to be Jewish. Well if this is the book that’s meant to bring down America then I think that says more about America than Horkheimer, to be honest.

In this relatively short volume Horkheimer discusses reason and rationality in fairly broad focus. In the opening section he makes a distinction between Formalised or Subjective Reason, which is about reasoning from ends to means, and Objective Reason, which is about determining ends. (Those who’ve read their Bernard Williams may recognise precursive shades of the internalism/externalism debate here.) So far so good, but Horkheimer goes on to argue that Subjective Reason has these days taken over, and what is ‘Rational’ is now just whatever the powerful say it is whilst Objective Reason has fallen by the wayside. Moreover, he says that this is the primary cause of the rise of fascism (he was writing in 1947). This last bit is supported with some pretty weaksauce pop-psychology that badly needs citations, ignores a whole bunch of stuff, and features some bizarre racism and sexism in places, not hidden or alluded to but in places full on and overt in a way that just makes the construction of his points seem lazy. For such a legendary ‘SJW’ it’s weird that sometimes he writes like a contemporary right-wing reactionary, fuming about the threat to Western Civilisation from subjective reason! He also can’t help tying rationality to masculinity. It’s also very odd that he deliberately ignores the economic contributors to fascism’s rise, but on that point hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

It’s when Horkheimer is diagnosing the state of reason today that he’s at his strongest: there are some absolutely amazing bits about the way that rationality is subsumed under capitalism. The final few pages about what critical theory is and what it’s for are very strong. It’s when he starts trying to reconstitute the past that things go awry: there are some way-too idealistic reconstructions of the Enlightenment, and he seems to have all but ignored the possibility that reason has always been constructed in the service of the powerful, it’s just that he’s we’re only noticing it now.

Some of these ideas will be forming part of an upcoming series I’m writing called Are You Rational? If you’re particularly interested you could pick this book up here; I’ve harped on the negatives, some bits really are excellent, but I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely essential.