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Max Horkheimer Zitate

Max Horkheimer war ein deutscher Sozialphilosoph und führender Kopf der Frankfurter Schule.



✵ 14. Februar 1895 – 7. Juli 1973
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Max Horkheimer Berühmte Zitate

„Zwischen der Ahnungslosigkeit gegenüber den Schandtaten in totalitären Staaten und der Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber der am Tier begangenen Gemeinheit, die auch in den freien existiert, besteht ein Zusammenhang. Beide leben vom stillen Mittun der Massen bei dem, was ohnehin geschieht.“

—  Max Horkheimer

„Wenn man das Entsetzen der heutigen Welt über die Lustmorde, besonders über Angriffe auf Kinder erfährt, könnte man glauben, dass ihr das Menschenleben und die gesunde Entwicklung des Individuums heilig wäre.“

—  Max Horkheimer

Dämmerung. Notizen in Deutschland. Oprecht & Helbing, Zürich 1934, S. 239.

„Die Entwicklung einer differenzierten autonomen Person wird um so seltener, als sie nicht mehr im selben Maß wirtschaftlich gefordert, ja beim Fortkommen zum Hemmnis wird.“

—  Max Horkheimer

Zum Begriff der Vernunft. Festrede bei der Rektoratsübergabe der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität am 20. November 1951. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1962, S. 10.

„Wer aber vom Kapitalismus nicht reden will, sollte auch vom Faschismus schweigen.“

—  Max Horkheimer

Die Juden und Europa. In: Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, Band 8. The Institute of social research, New York 1939, S. 115.

„Bereits im 18. Jahrhundert, von der Gegenwart zu schweigen, war der Gang der Wissenschaft wie des Glaubens nicht so sehr durch den Willen zum Guten, als durch das Interesse der Macht bedingt.“

—  Max Horkheimer

[Dankesrede]. In: Reden anläßlich der Verleihung des Lessing-Preises 1971 an Max Horkheimer. [o.V.], Hamburg 1971, S. 26.

„Die Mutter, die einen Beruf ausübt, ist etwas völlig anderes als die Mutter, deren Lebensaufgabe die Erziehung der Kinder war. Der Beruf verdinglicht ihre Gedanken. Dazu kommt noch etwas anderes. Sie ist gleichberechtigt. Sie strahlt, von Ausnahmen abgesehen, nicht mehr die Liebe aus wie vorher.“

—  Max Horkheimer

Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen. Hamburg Furche Verlag 1970, S. 80.

Max Horkheimer Zitate und Sprüche

„Es gibt keine Definition der Philosophie. Ihre Definition ist identisch mit der expliziten Darstellung dessen, was sie zu sagen hat.“

—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft. Aus den Vorträgen und Aufzeichnungen seit Kriegsende. Herausgegeben von Alfred Schmidt. >Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft< (Teil I dieses Buches) wurde von Dr. Alfred Schmidt aus dem Englischen übersetzt. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1967, S. 155.

„Zivilisation bestand weitgehend in der Bildung, das heißt Hineinbildung moralischer Gebote in den Menschen. Je tiefer einem durch Herkunft und Erziehung menschliches Verhalten zur Natur geworden war desto mehr Seele wurde ihm zugesprochen. Achtung vor dem Nächsten, Verantwortungsgefühl, Fähigkeit zur Freundschaft und zur Liebe waren in Moral mit eingeschlossen. Indem der Fortschritt Leben straffer ordnet, das Verhalten reguliert, Phantasie durch zweckvolles, systematisches Vorgehen, positive Affekte durch sichere Reaktionen, Gefühle durch Ratio ersetzt, gleichsam in der Rückschau, ist Seele nunmehr zum emphatischen Begriff geworden, zum Gegensatz der Kälte des auf Technik, schließlich zur Gefolgschaft ausgerichteten Subjekts. Die von Emotionen abgelöste Ratio schlägt um und wird zum Gegenteil von Anima.“

—  Max Horkheimer

Zur Idee der Seele. In: Hans Jürgen Schultz (Hrsg.): Was weiss man von der Seele? Erforschung und Erfahrung. Kreuz-Verlag, Stuttgart/Berlin 1967, S. 18.

Über Liebe, Über Leben, Über Freundschaft, Über Menschen

„Philosophie verliert schon deshalb ihren Reiz, weil sie selbst zum Fach geworden ist, nur mit dem Unterschied, daß es niemand so recht brauchen kann.“

—  Max Horkheimer

Um die Freiheit. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1962, S. 27.

„In zahlreichen theoretischen Arbeiten des Instituts [für Sozialforschung] wurde versucht, die Wechselwirkung von Gesellschaft und Psychologie weiter zu verfolgen. Stets freilich haben wir den gesellschaftlichen Druck — das, was [Sigmund] Freud selbst „Lebensnot” nannte — als das Primäre betrachtet.“

—  Max Horkheimer

(Mit Theodor W. Adorno): Vorrede. In: Theodor W. Adorno/Walter Dirks (Hrsg.): Freud in der Gegenwart. Ein Vortragszyklus der Universitäten Frankfurt und Heidelberg zum hundertsten Geburtstag. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1957, S. IX.

Über Hunde, Über Alter, Freude

„Technische Rationalität heute ist die Rationalität der Herrschaft selbst.“

—  Max Horkheimer, buch Dialektik der Aufklärung

Dialektik der Aufklärung, zusammen mit Theodor W. Adorno. Querido Verlag N.V., Amsterdam 1947, S. 145.

Max Horkheimer: Zitate auf Englisch

“When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The End of Reason" (1941), p. 28.
Kontext: When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.

“Calvin’s theocentric irrationalism eventually revealed itself as the cunning to technocratic reason which had to shape its human material. Misery and the poor laws did not suffice to drive men into the workshops of the early capitalistic era. The new spirit helped to supplement external pressures with a concern for wife and child to which the moral autonomy of the introverted subject in reality was tantamount.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The End of Reason" (1941), p. 34.

“Pragmatism, in trying to turn experimental physics into a prototype of all science and to model all spheres of intellectual life after the techniques of the laboratory, is the counterpart of modern industrialism, for which the factory is the prototype of human existence, and which models all branches of culture after production on the conveyor belt.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 50.

“Long after Plato’s time the concept of the Ideas still represented the sphere of aloofness, independence, and in a certain sense even freedom, an objectivity that did not submit to ‘our’ interests.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 46.

“When an active individual of sound common sense perceives the sordid state of the world, desire to change it becomes the guiding principle by which he organizes given facts and shapes them into a theory. The methods and categories as well as the transformation of the theory can be understood only in connection with his taking of sides. This, in turn, discloses both his sound common sense and the character of the world. Right thinking depends as much on right willing as right willing on right thinking.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 162.

“Plato and his objectivistic successors … preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny—the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 53.

“The idea that an aim can be reasonable for its own sake—on the basis of virtues that insight reveals it to have in itself—without reference to some kind of subjective gain or advantage, is utterly alien to subjective reason, even where it rises above the consideration of immediate utilitarian values and devotes itself to reflection about the social order as a whole.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 4.

“In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 10.

“Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

John Cumming trans., p. 7.
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

“It is as if thinking itself had been reduced to the level of industrial processes, subjected to a close schedule—in short, made part and parcel of production.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 21.

“The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science … results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a “crucial experiment” rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 148.

“The new order contradicts reason so fundamentally that reason does not dare to doubt it. Even the consciousness of oppression fades. The more incommensurate become the concentration of power and the helplessness of the individual, the more difficult for him to penetrate the human origin of his misery.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The End of Reason" (1941), p. 44.

“The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17.
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

“Pragmatism … reflects with almost disarming candor the spirit of the prevailing business culture, the very same attitude of ‘being practical’ as counter to which philosophical meditation as such was conceived.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 52.

“The more the concept of reason becomes emasculated, the more easily it lends itself to ideological manipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies. … Subjective reason conforms to anything.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 24-25.

“Subjective reason … is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalized mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 12.

“Every philosophical, ethical, and political idea—its lifeline connecting it with its historical origins having been severed—has a tendency to become the nucleus of a new mythology, and this is one of the reasons why the advance of enlightenment tends at certain points to revert to superstition and paranoia. The majority principle … has become the sovereign force to which thought must cater. It is a new god, not in the sense in which the heralds of the great revolutions conceived it, namely, as a power of resistance to existing injustice, but as a power of resistance to anything that does not conform.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 30.

“We cannot credit our enjoyment of a flower or of the atmosphere of a room to an autonomous esthetic instinct. Man’s esthetic responsiveness relates in its prehistory to various forms of idolatry; his belief in the goodness or sacredness of a thing precedes his enjoyment of its beauty. The applies no less to such concepts as freedom and humanity.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 36.

“Leibniz’s theory on the subject as substantia ideans in the sense of a causative agent of decision and acts stands much closer to a materialist interpretation of history than does a philosophy which reduces the thinking subject to the role of subsuming protocol sentences under general propositions and deducing other sentences from them.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 149.

“A man discovers what he is actually worth in this world when he faces society as a man, without money, name, or powerful connections, stripped of all but his native potentialities. He soon finds that nothing has less weight than his human qualities. They are prized so low that the market does not even list them. Strict science, which acknowledges man only as a biological concept, reflects man’s lot in the actual world; in himself, man is nothing more than a member of a species. In the eyes of the world, the quality of humanity confers no title to existence, nay, not even a right of sojourn. Such title must be certified by special social circumstances stipulated in documents to be presented on demand.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 137.

“The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflict between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 138.

“Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man’s actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 9.

“If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate—in short, emancipation of fear—then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Eclipse of Reason (1947)

“When scientists take part in activity they transform themselves from scientists into acting beings, that is, they become elements, data, facts; as soon as they reflect on their activity, however, they are re-transformed into scientists. The trained specialist qua scientist looks upon himself as a chain of judgments and inferences; qua member of society, he regard himself as a mere object. The same holds for everyone. The individual is divided into innumerable functions, the interconnection of which are unknown. In society a man is pater familias under one aspect, business man under another, thinker under a third; to be more precise, he is not a human being at all, but all these aspects and many more in an inevitable succession.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 155.

“The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

E. Jephcott, trans., p. 9.
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

“Men have been released from [concentration] camps who have taken over the jargon of their jailers and with cold reason and mad consent (the price, as it were, of their survival) tell their story as if it could not have been otherwise than it was, contending that they have not been treated so badly after all.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The End of Reason" (1941), p. 45.

“Answers determined by the social division of labor become truth as such.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 50: Describing the pragmatist view

“Having given up autonomy, reason has become an instrument.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 21.

“Although the formulations of science now offer the most advanced knowledge of nature, men continue to use obsolete forms of thought long discarded by scientific theory. In so far as these obsolete forms are superfluous for science, the fact that they persist violated the principle of the economy of thought, that characteristic trait of the bourgeois temper.”

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—  Max Horkheimer

Quelle: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 133.

“Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded as obsolete.”

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—  Max Horkheimer, buch Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft

Quelle: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 18.

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