The facts which our senses present to us are socially performed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
The complexity of the connection between the world of perception and the world of physics does not preclude that such a connection can be shown to exist at any time. — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
Philosophy is overwhelmingly complicated, its procedure depressingly slow. — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality. — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share
Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming candor the spirit of the prevailing business culture, the very same attitude of 'being practical' as counter to… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
At present, when the prevailing forms of society have become hindrances to the free expression of human powers, it is precisely the abstract branches of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, which ... offer a less distorted form of knowledge than other branches of science which are interwoven with the pattern of daily life, and the practicality of which seemingly testifies… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share
The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism, — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
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… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share
In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, ... the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share
Although the formulations of science now offer the most advanced knowledge of nature, men continue to use obsolete forms of thought long discarded by… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its… — Max Horkheimer Copy Share Image
