Curtis Bowman
Logan Hall 464
898-8563 (dept.)
cubowman@nous.phil.upenn.edu

Course Description

The members of the Frankfurt School have long devoted themselves to a critique of the way in which the Enlightenment notion of rationality has been transformed from a logic of human liberation to a politically conservative instrument of domination. This degradation of the Enlightenment has affected, they argue, the most important institutions of Western culture, especially government, education, art, and the mass media.

In this course we shall trace this transformation first by reading various texts in the Enlightenment tradition and then by reading the works of the members of the Frankfurt School critical of modern distortions of this tradition. We shall begin briefly with Kant and Marx, two exemplars of this tradition, and then we shall study in some detail the views of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse.

Required Texts

Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents

Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays  (CT)

Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment  (DoE)

Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization

Karl Marx, Selected Writings

Readings

General Background for the Course

(1) Immanuel Kant: "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" (handout)

(2) Karl Marx

(a) The Concept of Alienation: "On the Jewish Question," "Toward a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," and selections from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (pp. 58-79)

(b) Historical Materialism and Revolution: The German Ideology, Part I; The Communist Manifesto

(c) The Analysis and Critique of Capitalism: selections from Capital (pp. 220-300)

The Frankfurt School

(1) Horkheimer and Critical Theory

(a) The Socratic Task of Critical Theory: "The Social Function of Philosophy" (in CT)

(b) Critical Theory and "Positivism": "Materialism and Metaphysics," "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics," "Traditional and Critical Theory" (in CT)

(2) The Failure of the Project of Enlightenment

(a) Horkheimer and Adorno: Chapters 1-4 of DoE

(b) Adorno's "The Culture Industry Reconsidered" (handout)

(3) Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis

(a) Sigmund Freud

(i) "Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning" (handout)

(ii) Beyond the Pleasure Principle

(iii) Civilization and its Discontents

(b) Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (pp. 3-111, 124-126, 129-158, 172-196, 222-237)

(4) Adorno's Aesthetic Theory  (Readings to be announced)

Course Requirements

Students will write two papers of 5-10 pages. There will also be a comprehensive exam at the end of the semester. Each assignment will count for a third of the course grade.