Max horkheimer

Max Horkheimer (Stuttgart, German Empire, February 14, 1895 – Nuremberg, West Germany, July 7, 1973) was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, known for his work on the so-called critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Major works by him include: Critique of Instrumental Reason (1947) and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer collaborated with and carried out other significant work.

Early Years

Horkheimer was born on February 14, 1895 in Stuttgart to a wealthy Jewish family. Due to pressure from his father, Max dropped out of school at sixteen to start working in his father's factory. In 1916, his career as a manufacturer ended and he was conscripted to participate in World War I. After the war ended, he enrolled at the University of Munich, where he studied Philosophy and Psychology. After university, Max moved to Frankfurt, where he studied under Hans Cornelius. There, he met Theodor Adorno, several years his junior, with whom he would develop a lasting friendship and fruitful collaborative relationship.

Academic career

In 1925, Horkheimer was empowered with a thesis entitled The Critique of Kant's Judgment as a Mediation Between Practical and Theoretical Philosophy, which was advised by Hans Cornelius. The following year, he was named privatdozent. In 1930, he was chosen as director of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), when that post was vacant. The same year, Horkheimer took up the chair of social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. In 1931, the publication of the Institute's Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which was edited by Horkheimer, began.

Horkheimer's venia legendi was revoked by the new Nazi government and the Institute closed in 1933. Horkheimer emigrated to Switzerland and, the following year, to the United States, where Columbia University housed the Institute in exile.

In 1940, Horkheimer received US citizenship and moved to Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, California, where his collaboration with Adorno produced Dialectic of Enlightenment. In the years that followed, Horkheimer published little, although he continued to edit Studies in Philosophy and Social Science as a continuation of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung .

Return to Germany

In 1949, he returned to Frankfurt and the Institute was reopened there in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, Horkheimer was Chancellor of the University of Frankfurt. He continued to teach at the University until his retirement in the mid-1960s.

Between 1954 and 1959, he returned to the United States to teach at the University of Chicago. He remained an important figure until his death in Nuremberg in 1973. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Bern, Switzerland.

Works in Spanish

• I long for justice. Critical theory and religion. Trotta, 2000. ISBN 978-84-8164-400-5
• Criticism of instrumental reason. Trotta, 2002 (2nd 2010). ISBN 978-84-8164-568-2
• Society, reason and freedom. Trotta, 2005. ISBN 978-84-8164-789-1
• Illustration Dialectic. Philosophical fragments. (In conjunction with Theodor Adorno) Trotta, 2009 9th edition. ISBN 978-84-87699-97-9
• On the concept of man and other essaysEd. South/Alfa
• Traditional Theory and Critical Theory