The direct and indirect influences of the Critical Theory on current philosophy of education are immense. The manifestations of these influences go far beyond the horizons of Critical Pedagogy as the concrete realization of Critical Theory in the schooling process. Even within the limited concept of education as schooling, feminist pedagogies, multicultural and post-colonial theories of education, cultural studies, as well as critical literacy or aesthetic education are all seen to be influenced by the ideas of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and the other members of the Frankfurt School. Some of the influences of Critical Theory are more obvious and explicitly acknowledged by central educational thinkers such as Paulo Freire, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, and Kathleen Weiler, and some are less explicit and are subterranean or are realized indirectly.
It is not uncommon that some of these influences are dressed in postmodern garb and are offered – how ironic - as an alternative to the modernity of Critical Theory and the Enlightenment’s arrogance and self-defeating educational project. The main argument below is that the foremost philosophers of education who were explicitly and even enthusiastically influenced by Critical Theory were influenced by the work of Herbert Marcuse and by the first stage in the development of Adorno and Horkheimer’s thought. According to this argument, the second stage in the development of Adorno and Horkheimer’s thought was disregarded by most philosophers of education and did not illumine the paths chosen by the various versions of Critical Pedagogy.
When the main version of Critical Pedagogy became defensive and apologetic in face of the critique of the academic left it turned to the postmodern alternatives for help.1 This unfortunate situation was instrumental in allowing the development of original, influential, and progressive educational theories such as those of Giroux, McLaren, Weiler, Aronowitz, and Ellsworth. It was most unhelpful, however, for the task of establishing a reflective counter-education. For all its importance, it also contributed to the establishment of repressive properties and uncritical trends within Critical Pedagogy itself. The thoughts of Adorno and Horkheimer in the second stage of the development of their Critical Theory, I argue, could have been and still are potentially open to the creation of a genuine counter-educational struggle – of the kind that went beyond the prospects of hegemonic Critical Pedagogy.
The part in Critical Theory that was not ignored and was even praised by most educational theoreticians was fundamentally optimistic, revolutionary, and positive, at least on first sight. Its Marxist birthmarks where still very present at this stage. In the tradition of Critical Pedagogy this part of the work of Horkheimer and Adorno was conceived in a manner that deprived Critical Theory of its self-reflection and its dialectical dimension. The thinkers of Critical Pedagogy normally underestimate Adorno and Horkheimer’s anti-utopianism and self reflection. On the one hand, they over-emphasize their optimism about the possibility of the constitution of a theoretical and educational framework that will enhance a praxis which, on the other hand, will overcome the logic of capitalism and other forms of oppression.
The third issue of the sixth volume of Zeitschrift fuer Sozialen Forschung, the official journal of the Frankfurt School, which was published in 1937, can serve as a vivid manifestation of the complexity of the smilingly explicit anti-utopian commitment of Horkheimer of that time. In “a contribution” to Marcuse’s main article in that issue he goes out of his way to criticize “those who call themselves critical theoreticians” - namely, Marcuse - whose utopianism “contradicts genuine Critical Theory” (Horkheimer 1985, V., 224). He criticizes Marcuse’s “philosophical utopianism”, likening it to other dangerous versions of utopianism. He especially targets the liberal version - for manifesting “saintly egoism”, which ultimately opens the way to nihilism and National Socialism, and the orthodox Marxist version, which is “mechanistic and non-dialectical” (Ibid., 223). Already in 1931 when the theologian Paul Tillich described capitalism as “the devil” both Adorno and Horkheimer were quick to criticize him for the kind of utopianism that constituted this unworthy critique (Horkheimer 1985, XI., 410).
The two colleagues attacked those intellectuals who attempted to find a philosophical ground for the revolution. They criticized those who saw capitalism as “the ultimate kingdom of evil, the bad form of human togetherness” and who “expect the ultimate truth on earth” (Horkheimer 1985, XI., 264) to be realized in actual history. Their evaluation and critique of the ideological dimensions of hegemonic knowledge, in that period, was still guided by the Marxist claim of anti-idealism and anti-transcendentalism, founded on materialist reality, class interests, and economic developments. At the same time Adorno and Horkheimer of that period favored the possibilities of a proletarian revolution and more than once even found themselves siding with the kind of utopianism they so strongly opposed. It was Horkheimer himself ho wrote then, “maybe they are right. Maybe socialism does bring with it the kingdom of the millennium and the prophecies of the old testaments prophets will be realized after all” (Horkheimer 1985 XI., 226).
The standard position of the Critical Theory thinkers of this period is, however, that theory is never neutral – and this is valid in respect of Critical Theory itself. The very foundation of Critical Theory is not justified merely on theoretical grounds: “a vision of a worthier human reality guides it” (Horkheimer 1985, III., 105). And yet, with all its explicit anti-utopian commitment, already in his 1935 “Notes for philosophical anthropology” one encounters other trends, whereby Critical Theory commits itself to the mission of “a happier humanity” (Horkheimer 1985, III., 266). In 1936 Horkheimer explicitly speaks of the possibility of “future circumstances [in which] efficiency and consciousness will constitute a common interest for human beings; ‘the destruction drive’ will no longer disturb them…” (Horkheimer 1985, III., 86). This trend is visible even in “Traditional Theory and Critical Theory”, probably the most important publication of Critical Theory in its first stage of development (1937). Critical Theory is here explicitly presented as “a moment” of revolutionary praxis towards “new social forms”.
While still founding his perspectives for future society on materialist grounds and not on philosophical speculations Horkheimer explicitly speaks here of the importance of the idea of a future free human community (“as much as it is allowed by the technical conditions”). At the same time, however, he develops a vision of the realization of reason and overcoming of alienation between thinking and reality, rationality and sensuality; in an almost Marcusian spirit he speaks even of “future freedom and spontaneity”. This positive utopian trend is manifested also in “Montaigne and the function of skepticism” (1938). Here Critical Theory is presented as directed to nothing less than “the establishment of a brand new world” (Horkheimer 1985, IV., 289). At this period both Horkheimer and Adorno offer a promising, progressive, revolutionary theory of knowledge and of overcomeing oppressive social realities and ideological manipulations. While doing very little in the field of explicit educational theory, their Critical Theory is of much relevance for criticizing established leftist and rightist pedagogical theories and they draw the Framework for a possible revolutionary pedagogy.
In this respect Paulo Freire, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, Patti Lather, Ira Shor, Kathleen Weiler and other teachers of Critical Pedagogy are not totally mistaken in their implementation of Critical Theory as Critical Pedagogy. Still, as I will show by referring to Giroux as a representative of this attempt, this project is far from being unproblematic. The pedagogical project of the early Giroux serves as a model for an educational project that almost disregards Adorno and Horkheimer’s later work. At the same time it makes productive use of the other, less optimistic and less foundationalist dimensions, even in the first stage of the development of Critical Theory (Gur-Ze’ev 1998, 463-486). Giroux expressly notes that his educational project is founded on the Critical Theory. The revolutionary potential of Critical Theory is explicitly of special importance in the early stage of the development of his thought (Giroux 1983, 19). In another place he says that a precondition for a worthy pedagogical work is a worthy reading of the work of the Critical Theory thinkers (Giroux 1981, 81). Here Giroux draws on the positive utopianism of early Critical Theory, and following Freire he develops his project in accordance with the requirements of an optimistic revolutionary pedagogy.
According to Giroux, in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School every thought and theory is bound to a specific interest in the development of an unjust society (Giroux 1983, 19). Of special importance for Giroux, as for other thinkers in Critical Pedagogy, is to present Ideology Critique - which challenges hegemonic knowledge and its claims – as a fundamentally unproblematic tool, a tool for emancipatory education. As a prima facie Critical-Theory-in-action, Critical Pedagogy, in this sense, becomes a transformative process, controlled in a more humane future (Giroux & Aronowitz 1981, 103). Giroux speaks here explicitly of Critical Theory as a transcendental power within which critical thinking becomes a precondition for human freedom (Giroux 1983, 19).
The central trend in Critical Pedagogy as here represented by Giroux not only contradicts the central massage of late Critical Theory as manifested by later Adorno and Horkheimer, but even the central commitments of its first stage, as laid down in the works of Benjamin, early Adorno, and early Horkheimer. Actually Giroux follows Herbert Marcuse and ignores the reservations of Adorno and Horkheimer concerning Marcuse’s easy-going revolutionary project (Gur-Ze’ev 1996, 160). In the following I will show that in the second stage of the development of Critical Theory Adorno and Horkheimer not only abandoned their positive utopianism, they forcefully cast aside its philosophical foundations and historical justifications. They rejected the entire tradition, which supported and manifested optimism about the possibility of a nonrepressive revolution and about an unproblematic emancipatory critique.
This is the theoretical arena out of which they developed their later negative Utopia and of “Diasporic philosophy” (Gur-Ze’ev forthcoming A, Gur-Ze’ev forthcoming B. Gur-Ze’ev forthcomimng C.). It was based on the tradition of philosophical pessimism, which they elaborated into a transcendental dimension within their negative utopianism. Since they refused to give up the utopian axis they founded it in a most original way on philosophical pessimism (Gur-Ze’ev 1996). This later work, as will be argued, is of vital importance in any attempt to develop current possibilities for counter-education in a postmodern era; Critical Pedagogy was deprived of such possibilities since it ignored the mature part of Critical Theory. Nevertheless, when developing his Critical Pedagogy on Critical Theory’s foundations, following Marcuse and avoiding the work of later Adorno and Horkheimer, Giroux offered an important contribution to the development of a progressive Critical Pedagogy that emphasized “possibilities” without neglecting “critique”.
According to Giroux’s Critical Pedagogy, when evaluating the schooling process it is wrong to disconnect the school curriculum and its other texts from its cultural and social contexts. In this sense school is a prima facie political arena, which plays an indispensable part in the production of discourses, meanings, identities, and subjects, and allows efficient control of their manipulated representation, distribution, and consumption. Following Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy reveals the powers, interests, and ideologies beyond the Maya curtain of the school’s declared commitment to the distribution of true/relevant knowledge/information. It critically reconstructs the abundant ways by which schools reflect and serve central social interests. This structural role of the school determines its function as a space dedicated to the organization of canonic knowledge, control of time, body, consciousness and conscious, and even constituting “valid” evaluation apparatuses, validating “the relevant” interpretive strategies. In this sense school functions as one of the cultural, social, and economic reproduction apparatuses in service of the dominant group and/or the hegemonic master signifiers and their realm of self-evidence.
In contrast to the hegemonic pedagogical rhetoric, which is committed to depoliticizing the predicates and the sources of the representations of schooling, Giroux - following Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse - acknowledges that at the present stage of capitalistic development there is no level or terra in society that is free of the presence of the hegemonic ideology. Giroux presents ideology in two very different contexts: of distortion and perversion on the one hand, and as elaboration and enlightening power on the other. On the one level, ideology becomes hegemonic as the distortion of true deciphering of reality and as a prevention of true dialogue. On the second level, ideology contains a reflective moment and becomes a precondition for a dialogical process that leaves room for conscious and social emancipation. Giroux notes that given its enslavement to a conservative socio-cultural context, which does not search for contradictions and the invisible powers and interests, the reflective potential of ideology is very limited and it prevents it from being a foundation for emancipation (ibid. 67). In light of this reconstruction, following Critical Theory in its first stage of development, Ideology Critique becomes for Giroux a central emancipatory educational apparatus (ibid. 159).
This is because he conceives the human subject as autonomous and open to critical overcoming of the social and ideological manipulations that limit his or her horizons. This is where his educational language of “possibilities” and "transformation" is situated.
Giroux explicitly identifies his Critical Pedagogy with the work of Marcuse, and commits himself to realizing this work in the field of education in order to develop a radical new pedagogical theory (ibid. 2). Within this project, the Marcusian work is interpreted as a call for intellectual activism for teachers and students in the school arena. Teachers are called upon to become “transformative intellectuals” in schools and in society in general. As deeply committed intellectuals, they are obliged to develop every aspect of the formal educational process into an active and “popular” clash with the hegemonic order of society (Giroux 1988, 37). In the middle of the 1980s Giroux made a turn, and postmodern influences became central to his Critical Pedagogy. This has not only conceptual manifestations, it becomes clear even in other respects.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in his 1981 Ideology, Culture and the Educational Process Marcuse is explicitly referred to in 22 pages, Adorno is mentioned in ten, and Horkheimer in four. In his Border Crossings (1992), however, Adorno is mentioned only four times, and so is Horkheimer. Marcuse, from then on is not mentioned at all. Michel Foucault, who was mentioned only once in the text of 1981, has now become the hero of the reformulated Critical Pedagogy and is cited more than any other philosopher. It is not only that Giroux, like McLaren, Weiler, Lather, Shor, and other prominent American thinkers in the tradition of Critical Pedagogy, and to a certain degree also Paulo Freire, disregarded the mature work of Adorno and Horkheimer. Even within the part of Critical Theory that they did relate to they selected the more optimistic and foundationalist parts, especially in the work of Marcuse. They disregarded the complementary, skepticpessimistic- anti-foundationalist aspects of Critical Theory, which is of vital importance even for the understanding of the immanent dialectic of Critical Theory in its first stage of development. The inner dialectics between these two dimensions is the gateway to understanding Critical Theory and its educational implications (Gur- Ze’ev 1996).
This dialectic is present not only in the work of Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin (Gur-Ze’ev 1998, 119-155). It is there even in Benjamin's utopianism, which was challenged along with that of Marcuse, even if for contrasting reasons (ibid.).
The dialectical dimension between optimism and pessimism and between positive and negative utopianism is essential also for the work of Marcuse, whose supposed optimistic revolutionary project has been celebrated for more than thirty years now among leftist intellectuals and many of the 1968 generation. This misunderstanding of Marcuse, and certainly of the work of the other members of the Frankfurt School and their Critical Theory, is of special importance. It becomes a constitutive element in establishing Critical Pedagogy’s educational optimism in respect of developing its central concepts such as “empowerment”, “dialogue”, “Ideology Critique”, “transformative education”, “agency”, “possibilities”, and “praxis education”. The limits of Critical Pedagogy were challenged both within the tradition of Critical Pedagogy and “outside”, by critics such as Elizabeth Ellsworth (Ellsworth 1989). It is also in the center of a currently published book which addresses critical pedagogy and the possibility of a new critical language in education (Gur-Ze’ev, forthcoming). Until now, however, these difficulties were hardly met by an attempt to rearticulate Critical Pedagogy in light of a new reading of Critical Theory as a first step in countering new critical theories and trends within postmodern, post-colonialist, feminist, multiculturalist and queer theories and discourses. The effort to rearticulate Critical Pedagogy was made in an explicit attempt to be in line with the last fashions in current critical rhetoric (Giroux 1996, 51). Among the very few prominent Critical Pedagogy thinkers who were not swallowed up by this trend one should mention
McLaren. But he too did not respond to the limits of Critical Pedagogy by rethinking his conceptions of Critical Theory. He preferred to rearticulate orthodox Marxism in light of the current capitalistic globalization processes and in face of the dehumanization and the suffering it brings along with the “prosperity” it offers its elected ones (McLaren 2000, 25-33). To show how avoiding the essentials of Critical Theory, even in the first phase of its development, became a constitutive element for Critical Pedagogy is not difficult. It is easily demonstrated by reference to the silence of the critical thinkers in the field of education in face of the challenges of philosophical pessimism and of the implications of skepticism in the works of Benjamin, Adorno, and Horkheimer. Far harder, however, is to show these elements in Marcuse’s work, which was the most influential thinker of the Frankfurt School among the 1968 generation’s revolutionary students. This is the best reason for responding first to the Marcusian challenge, before proceeding to the later philosophy of Adorno and Horkheimer.2 For the Marcusian project the utopian dimension was of vital importance.
In his thought there is no potential for the critique of culture and society that is disconnected from the utopian axis as a sources of hope and as a total moral responsibility to resist injustice. This claim is valid in respect of immanent critique and as well as critique as the heart of transcendence. Art and art criticism were essential for Marcuse’s utopian project. This is because only in art did bourgeois society tolerate its own ideals and present them as a general demand. What is conceived as utopian, fantasy, or an unforgivable revolt against the world of facts, in art is conceived as legitimate (Marcuse 1968, 114). Concept such as "otherness" or "the totally other”, which challenge the current world of "facts" and the "not-yet" - concepts that are so vital for the project of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory - are realized in the work of Marcuse in respect of the category of beauty. “Beauty", says Marcuse, "is nothing less than the sudden appearance of another truth to the heart of the established reality” (Marcuse Archive 406.00). Marcuse is very clear about his understanding of “otherness”. In a still unpublished fragment in the Marcuse Archive he refers to nothing other than the urge towards or the manifestations of the trinity of “the beautiful, the good and the just” (Marcuse 1936). Here Marcu e and Adorno are very close. Adorno too understood that it is art that is to approach “the very target of rationality” by its very structure or aim. Marcuse and Adorno are closer on this point to Heidegger (Heidegger 1996, 340-341) than to Horkheimer (Gur-Ze’ev, forthcoming A).
In his One Dimensional Man and in many other texts Marcuse manifests historical pessimism, which is very different from Benjamin’s, Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s philosophical pessimism. It is, however, of vital importance for the educational implications of his work. Central to the Marcusian constitution of an emancipatory epistemology and to the critique of culture and society are a practice and theory of art within which “the aesthetic form of beauty” is manifested in sublimation (Marcuse 1971, 78).
Marcuse, however, came to the conclusion that as part of the historical success of the repressive de-sublimation of the capitalist Culture Industry, this potentially transcending dimension of Western culture was being demolished by the omnipotence of the realization of the logic of capitalism. The traditional gap between art (and that which it points to) and the “factual” order of things that artistic alienation traditionally contained was vital for the emancipatory potential of art and for Critical Theory. However, Marcuse came to the conclusion that alienation itself was being impaired in the current technological society as an element of the total irrational rationalization of human space.
As part of this process, according to Marcuse, there was diminishing room for “the grand refusal” or indeed for any moral resistance and for meaningful critique. Not less devastating for the critical mind, according to Marcuse, was that the otherness, or “the other dimension”, was being swallowed, and - after being castrated of its antagonistic potential – reproduced, as part and parcel of the present order (Marcuse 1971, 68). The cultural reality of late capitalism, according to Marcuse, presents an ever more efficient attack on the very possibility of transcendence and of the very possibility of an immanent critique. After neutralizing the antagonistic dimensions in the culture and after deconstructing the possibilities for transcendence, this society targets human inwardness as a potential source for immanent autonomy and courageous critique. It transforms the human psyche and its strivings. It domesticates it until it becomes an unproblematic dweller of current hegemonic one-dimensionality (Marcuse 1971, 80). While suggesting the possibility of the continuation of art as the only possible source of hope (Marcuse 1976, 18) he himself is very clear about the implications of his work: the words and the concepts which until recently allowed the presentation of a possible free society have lost their meaning today. They can no longer serve for introducing the human condition into a worthier society (ibid.)
A critical reconstruction of Marcuses' One Dimensional Man reveals two conceptions of progress in his work: one of which is conceived as “genuine” or “good”, while the other is nothing less than the sophistication and progress of evil. And it is the latter, according to Marcuse, which is being realized unhampered in present post-industrial society (Marcuse 1971, 20, 32). In an unpublished text Marcuse presents this kind of progress, within which the productive powers are to be understood as representing "productive destruction" within a process which is “irreversible” (Marcuse 1979). Summarizing this point in another unpublished text Marcuse concludes: “Western industrial society has no future” (Marcuse Archive 569.00). And still in another unpublished text he says in this light, “being today a realist is to become a pessimist” (Marcuse Archive 406.00, 36). This neglected side In Marcuse's thought conceives pessimistically the presence of the idea of reason in its present historical setting. Today, the idea of reason, which was central to the concepts of progress in humanistic projects of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, says Marcuse, “became itself an illusion, like the prejudices that it was aimed to replace” (Marcuse 1964, 12).
“Rationality itself" he concludes, "became a repressive apparatus” (ibid., 11), cultural progress becomes less and less rational (ibid., p. 13) or, in other words, the irrational reality becomes rational and the resistance to it becomes irrational. This is the triumph of what he calls “irrational rationality” (ibid., p. 14). The resistance, as well as the critique of this historical progress becomes, accordingly “unrealistic” and the identification with the alternatives to the present order becomes a matter of mere “personal preferences”. How then are we to understand Marcuse’s identification with the student’s revolt, with guerrilla warfare, and with the radical re-education of the people within the framework of Critical Theory and its Ideology Critique? And how are we to Understand in this light the founding of optimistic Critical Pedagogy on his thought while ignoring these essential parts of his philosophy? Any reply to this challenge should, to my mind, address the dialectical tension between the positive-utopian and the pessimist dimensions in Marcuse’s work. Such an attempt was not made by his disciples, such as the early Giroux, or by his numerous opponents. Entering this gate will afford us the possibility of seeing Marcuse as a sophisticated educator, of the kind of Marx and Lenin. Both Marx and Lenin were not content with reliance on a genuine understanding of the explicit educational role of their texts by the oppressed. They allowed themselves to be manipulative and consciously to deceive their disciples. This was within the Jesuit pedagogical framework of the goals justifying the means. So they “only” tried to use the didactics that would make the oppressed think what they ought to think and want what they ought to want, if only for them to become free to recognize their own interests or meet their authentic/true self, identity, or consciousness.
In acting as arch-educators whose “lessons” endure not hours or days but generations, Marx and Lenin behaved like servants or media for the human historical process as educators, as presented by Lessing3 and the other heroes of the Enlightenment. In this they followed the deepest eschatological trends in the Jewish and Christian traditions which the Enlightenment secularized under the flag of the emancipatory project (Funkenstein 20001, 4-9). So in the name of the eschatological logic of historical progress as the genuine educator and as the realization of the humanist Messianic commitment to future human lasting happiness Marx, Lenin, and Marcuse trusted that they were allowed, even obliged, to conceal from the yetunredeemed their real conclusions, ideas, and erotic imperatives. They did so with no qualms of conscience, like so many caring parents do with their beloved young children. As a self-appointed arch-educator, Marcuse understood, like Marx at the time of the Paris Commune, that in the concrete historical conditions the students’ revolt could not gain the upper hand. Yet he did not challenge the students' optimism and openly supported and encouraged them. How may we understand this in terms of realizing his responsibility as an arch-educator?
Within the framework of a one-dimensional society, what remained to Marcuse as an educator was to do everything to keep alive the very idea of resistance as a master signifier for a totally different reality and for a totally different relations between humans, symbolic intersubjectivity, and history. He reflects how a the mystic can become an effective magic and really change reality if not presently than in future generations. As such, his historical role, as a devotee of the concealed and defeated master signifier of emancipation was of outmost importance. Especially in the days when “the grand refusal” or the very idea of transcending the affluent society had become irrelevant, naive, or even ridiculous. As a master of magic in the field of normalizing education within the framework of radical social philosophy, and as a person responsible to the future stages of the struggle for human emancipation, he understood that the students’ failure, if grandiose and tragic enough, would become an important educational lesson for future generations of revolutionaries. For an essentialist such as Marcuse this historically educational lesson was actually an ontological sign, a sign of the presence of a positive Utopia that one day might be realized. Keeping alive the very possibility of negation and the dream of a more humane reality became part of the awakening process of the defeated idea of the redemptive process itself. What could be more important than fulfilling this
educational responsibility to the historical teleological imperative itself?
Marcuse’s positive utopianism was articulated within a linear, progressive, concept of history. His non-optimistic conclusions were not founded, as were those of Adorno and Horkheimer, on philosophical pessimism. This is very relevant to his understanding of historical impasses and their educational implications. He understood the historical barriers to human progress as fundamentally historical, temporary in nature. They were therefore also historically to be overcome – when conditions changed and if humanistic-oriented intellectuals like him responded to the call of history and realized their educational duty. As will be shown in the following, Critical Pedagogy, as formulated by Giroux - which was explicitly founded on Critical Theory - disregarded the most important educational aspects of Adorno and Horkheimer. It even misunderstood the central elements of Marcuse’s educational implications. In this respect it could not justify its claim to being the pedagogical realization of Critical Theory. Maybe these, and not
The reasons presented by Ellsworth (1989) are the main reasons for the shortcomings of Critical Pedagogy. In the following I try to show that the most important implications of Critical Theory are beyond the scope of the inner dialectics in the work of Marcuse. They are to be found in the work of Benjamin or in the second phase if the work of Adorno and Horkheimer.
In the first stage of Critical Theory both Adorno and Horkheimer interlaced the goal of Critical Theory with the Marxian revolutionary project. In the second stage the turn away from Marx’s main theses is evident. Marx’s project was regarded as an element in the positive utopian position, which by then they both rejected.
Horkheimer expressly declares that it is a trend from the Marxian thought to that of Schopenhauer and the tradition of philosophical pessimism (Horkheimer 1985, VII., 339- 340).
In the second stage of the development of Horkheimer’s thought he is explicitly anti-revolutionary. It is the nature of the revolutionary, every revolutionary, according to later Horkheimer, to become an oppressor (Horkheimer 1985, VII., 418). Every revolution, especially a “successful” one, is a manifestation of power. And justice, when it becomes powerful, is realized only at the cost of its transformation into oppression (ibid., 341). In contrast to the Marxian tradition, it is now conceived that as long as even some remnants of freedom survive violence will flourish (Horkheimer 1989, XIII., 247). “In the end, whatever hopes Marx did hold on behalf of true society, apparently they seem to be the wrong ones, if – and this issue is important to Critical Theory – freedom and justice are interrelated in mutual opposition. The more justice there is, freedom will diminish accordingly” (Horkheimer 1989, XIII, 340).
The historical reconstruction of the Culture Industry with its limitations, about which Giroux was aware and articulated important implications in his Critical Pedagogy, is conceived here within the framework of philosophical pessimism. For Adorno, “space is nothing but absolute alienation (Adorno 1970, X., 205). For him this is the framework for viewing the whole historical reality of advanced technological society, in which everything has become “consumption”, and life, with all its layers and dimensions, is nothing but “a fetish of consumption” (Adorno 1970, III., 243).
In their Dialectics of Enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer do not target the capitalistic logic and its realization in itself, or the other representations of totalitarianism such as the National-Socialist or the Stalinist. Ultimately they target culture itself: “Culture has developed with the protection of the executioner…All work and pleasure are protected by the hangman. To contradict this fact is to deny all science and logic. It is impossible to abolish…terror and retain civilization. Even the lessening of terror implies a beginning of the process of dissolution” (Adorno & Horkheimer 1988, 255). The conception of revolution and Critical Theory within the framework of historically progressing human emancipation is conceived within a double-layered philosophy of history, one linear, the other circular. From the viewpoint of circular conception of time there is no room for progress in the Kantian, Hegelian, or Marxian sense, which made possible the optimism of Critical Pedagogy.
According to Benjamin, there is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of a barbarity (Benjamin 1972, 696). For Adorno and Horkheimer all substantive levels of “progress” manifest an oppressive regression. In this sense, “adaptation to the power of progress involves the regression of power. Each time a new ‘progress’ brings about those degenerations. They manifest not the unsuccessful but successful progress to be its contrary” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1988, 42). On the other level of “progress”, the explicitly historical one, unless an unpredictable interference occurs the good intentions and progressive talents of educators devoted to revolutionary education are of little use in halting the enhancement and sophistication of barbarism. The instrumentalization of rationality is reconstructed as representing and serving the growing needs of technological progress and economic development. Instrumental Rationality becomes “a magic essence”.
Instrumental Rationality is conceived here as a metaphoric revolt of instrumentalized nature, as a return of mythos, whose overthrow was the essential mission of Enlightenment. Mythical thought gave birth to Enlightenment as overcoming Bildung and human emancipation. This is the reason that today, for its part, in its most “progressive” form Enlightenment returns to a more dangerous type of mythical thought (Horkheimer 1974, 22) within what Horkheimer calls “the full-administered world” (Horkheimer, 1985, VIII., 328).
In such a reality there is no room for non-repressive “progressive”, positive, utopianism, or for an objective, justifiable, education and praxis for resistance and overcoming the present reality (Horkheimer 1974, 26). Does this mean that Adorno and Horkheimer abandoned Utopia altogether, that they gave up the essential commitment of Critical Theory, or ended their transformative-educational imperative?
Not at all. On the contrary, they became devoted more than ever to the Utopian call. Adorno and Horkheimer gave up the Marxist conception of progress, and in this sense their optimism as to a social revolutionary change, and even the goal, and to a certain degree also the means of critique. But they did not abandon the utopian project and the essential imperatives of Critical Theory as an emancipatory dimension and political praxis. However, their definition of emancipation and the stance of realization of intellectual autonomy as praxis changed dramatically to become more in line with its early Jewish eschatological sources in the Qumran sect and other Jewish and Christian members of the Messianic tradition. In Horkheimer’s work, the change from a Marxian Critical Theory to a pessimistic philosophy is paralleled by an articulation of Critical Theory as a new, Jewish, Negative Theology. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics follows the same path, attempting to present counter-education, attempting to face the present absence of the quest for and the awaiting for the human stance of readiness to be called-upon, a seriousness towards that which is being called “redemption” in Christian theology. This is where the Diasporic dimension is so central to the mature thinking of
Adorno and Horkheimer, following the lead of Walter Benjamin on this path. The refusal to dwell in peace in the present order of things, the negation of the “facts” of the actuality, is but a manifestation of refusal to metaphysical violence and to all kinds of “homes”, dogmas, and self-sutisfuction in a world of pain, injustice, ugliness, and betrayal of love. Since the refused a positive Utopia, in their mature thinking they could not promise a better world as a justification for resistence to normalizing education and the quest for pleasure, “success”, and hegemony. Homelessness and worthy suffering are ontologically here grounded and become a religious way of life. It is a kind of religiosity which is Messianic without a Messiah (Benjamin 1972, 203). It has no promise of salvation or of redemption. But it might offer a Messianic moment, which will overcome the violence of the governing “now-time” (Benjamin, 1971, 701) and open the gate for an alternative way of life, an alternative thinking in which Spirit is reclaimed and the de-humanization of human by the manipulations of the system is being resisted. Here, and only here Love becomes possible again as different from the codes, passions, and ideals, which are set by the omnipotence of the ruling culture industry. Here, where the otherness in the self is reclaimed, the otherness of the Other becomes not only legitimate – it becomes an indispensable element in a new kind of Life, in a new kind of dwelling to which nomadism is realized in intellectual and social levels, paralleled by infinite responsibility – with no God, dogma, or central committee of the party to guide the individual towards “the good”. “The totally other” bursts in and disconceals the consensus, unveils the accepted truths, values, passions, and the other manifestations of the self-evidence. It is a dangerous way of life in which new possibilities are open but no guarantees, no optimism, no room for self-forgetfulness of the human.
In the second stage of the development of their work, both thinkers offer a countereducational praxis whose religiosity is fertilized by the alarming recognition of the impossible realization of the imperative of human advance towards God, absolute Spirit, or Reason; towards the progressing true knowledge of genuine human interests and realization of their potentials. The current work of Slavoj Zizek who writes that "the paradox of self-consciousness is that it is possible only against the background of its own impossibility" (Zizek 1993, 15) is very close to this later work of Horkheimer and Adorno. In this sense the later work of Critical Theory becomes prima facie counter-educational, even if the word “education” is rarely mentioned and schooling is hardly tackled at all. At the same time, both Adorno (1971) and Horkheimer (VIII., 361-456) referred explicitly to education and to schooling and academic education quite specifically and explicitly, in more popular texts and radio interviews. On these occasions another aspect of their work is expressed, which is less sophisticated, less negativistic and less utopian-pessimist. There is a permanent gap, sometimes an unbridgeable abyss, between these popular references to education in its narrower sense and the deeper aspects of their formulated Negative Dialectics and Negative Theology as a path to counter-education. Here I concentrate on their more refined and deeper elaborations and on their educational implications. Adorno and Horkheimer’s treatment of the challenge of modern historical progress, especially in the 20th century, assigns a special place to technological progress and its implication for human life. They contend in a profound and
courageous manner the challenge of current dwindling possibilities for human autonomy, solidarity, and elevation. On this level they are surprisingly close to Heidegger – much closer than to Marcuse (Gur-Ze’ev 1996, 83). The elaboration of the present state of technology and its implications is realized here within a critical reconstruction of Western metaphysics since technology is understood by them as the zenith and the essence of Western metaphysics. According to later Horkheimer, in the modern world everything is enslaved for the ennoblement and advancement of technological progress under the control of Instrumental Rationality. Within this process nature has lost its own meaning and humans have lost their transcendental mission. Only one aim is still valid, namely self-preservation: egoism, which ultimately is revealed as serving omnipotent mythical powers within and as part and parcel of the totally administered world (Horkheimer1974, 101-102). Within this process of post-industrial society and its Culture Industry there is no room for the autonomy of the individual. This conception is vital for the understanding of Horkheimer’s perspective on education in its narrower and its wider manifestations.
The big challenge for the critical mind and for humanistic education is not the fruit of alienation but the disappearance of (the consciousness of) alienation within the totality, which is governed by Instrumental Rationality. This quest for alienation and the challenges of the exile of Spirit make the difference between orthodox Marxist Ideology Critique and Horkheimer and Adorno’s conceptions. Governing Instrumental Rationality leaves no room for non-efficient and non-pragmatic considerations, and drives out the concepts, ideals, and traditions that allowed speculation and critique of the self-evident, and offered transcendence from the oppressive practices of all master signifiers. Instrumental Rationality is responsible for the current reality in which the more progressive the processes of de-humanization become the more efficient becomes the concealment of the oppression of present Culture Industry (Adorno 2000, 233). The exile of Spirit and the overcoming of the abyss between substance and subject are trivialized, and Spirit is again presented after equalized with the governing representations as “reality”, “normality”, and (given or promises) pleasure machine to which normalizing education is quick to introduce to. The seeming political freedom, free opinion, and tolerance within this society conceals and actually serves the process of totalistic de-humanization. “Not only does the mind mould itself for the sake of its marketability, and thus reproduce the socially prevalent categories. Rather, it grows to resemble ever more closely the status quo even where it subjectively refrains from making a commodity of itself. The network of the whole is drawn ever tighter”. “It leaves the individual consciousness less and less room for evasion, performs it more and more thoroughly, cuts it off as it were from the possibility of differentiating itself as all difference degenerates to a nuance in the monotony of supply” (Adorno 2000, 198).
Within this process traditional Marxist Ideology Critique cannot be of much use since culture itself “has become ideological” (Adorno 2000, 206). “Today”, he says, “ideology means society as appearance…ideology is not simply reducible to partial interest” (Adorno 2000, 207). However, since ideology is no longer conceived as a socially necessary appearance which veil the “facts”, Ideology Critique can no longer offer an emancipatory deciphering of “reality” and cannot claim to empower humanistic-oriented resistance to social oppression and to manipulative representations of histories, identities and realities, as Critical Pedagogy claims to offer in the name of Critical Theory. Adorno offers a view that does not allow this kind of optimism, since “ideology today is society itself in so far as its integral power and inevitability, its overwhelming existence-in-itself, surrogates the meaning which that existence has exterminated” (Adorno 2000, p. 207).
Horkheimer is on the verge of acknowledging that there is no more justification for a Critical Theory. In a personal letter to Adorno he says that nowadays “reflection [has become] senseless. Actually the world to which we saw ourselves as belonging to is destroyed” (Horkheimer Archive VI, 13, 511). Elsewhere he writes that serious talk itself has become senseless and that those who refuse to listen – to the attempts to save meaning – are not totally wrong (Horkheimer 1978, 129). Truth in this context is not absent, it is rather reviled in and swallowed by the present reality. It can, however, offer only technological and scientific advance – not meaning, direction, or responsibility to resist injustice. The issue at stake here is not solely truth or justice but the very quest for truth and the commitment to justice, or, in other words, the possibility of transcending from meaninglessness and the Same - from the mere thingness of being.
In the work of later Adorno and Horkheimer, two very different conceptions of truth emerge. One is of the kind of the existing world of facts, which ultimately represents “power” (Adorno & Horkheimer 1988, 236). Here human existence in its essence is revealed at its full price: practical involvement, within which ideals transform into oppression (Adorno & Horkheimer 1988, 224). The implicit negation of any optimistic positive emancipatory educational project is mercilessly manifested here.
In an imaginary conversation between the philosopher – an implicit reference to the masters of Critical Theory themselves – and the practical man, the philosopher is the one on the defensive, and not his practical interlocutor. The genuine philosopher is introduced by Adorno and Horkheimer not as a promising educator, but as a neurotic, who manifests his refusal to be cured when insisting on continuing his project of curing normal, realistic-oriented, sane, people (Adorno & Horkheimer 1988, 255).
Facing these conclusions one should ask: what, if any, is the justification for Critical Theory and for Critical Pedagogy as emancipatory education in action, under conditions in which “serious philosophy has come to its end” (Horkheimer 1985, VII., 404)?
The texts of later Adorno and Horkheimer reconstruct a cultural moment, which resembles an Arab story about vicious magician who poisoned the water of the well whence all the tribe drew its water. Everyone drank from the well - and went mad. Only the king did not drink. It took no time before the rumor spread all over: “How sad, our beloved king went crazy….” The king, according to this story, who was a wise man, asked his servants to hurry as fast as they could and bring him water from the poisoned well, and when left alone he drank from it. In no time a new rumor spread all over: “How wonderful, our beloved king came back to his senses….”
And so, according to the story, the tribe was saved. Adorno and Horkheimer present us with a diametrically opposite vision. It is a vision of a philosopher who refuses at all cost to integrate, to be normalized, and as a neurotic, within impossible conditions, keeps his commitment to his countereducational mission which nothing in reality can justify. The later Horkheimer presents mature Critical Theory as a Jewish Negative Theology. This change carries major educational implications. Following Benjamin, it was for him of vital importance that Judaism did not present God as a positive absolute. Following Benjamin, and in contrast to Marcuse, the negativity of this utopianism is constituted from two elements. The first is rejection in principle of the possibility of a positive realization of any Utopia. He refuses to imagine a positive picture of future society prior to its realization (Horkheimer 1985, VII., 382). The second is his commitment to confront Critical Theory with its own negativity. He refuses any philosophy that leads to consensus, synthesis, and the end of dialectics and worthy suffering. And at the same time he refuses to abandon the quest for the Messiah or human emancipation. The quest as a Messianic tension is central here, not its “successful” fulfillment. That is why Judaism was so important for him. He saw in Judaism “a non-positive religion”, it was “a hope for the coming of the Messiah” (Horkheimer 1988, 331). Judaism, within this framework, is a symbol, not a reality, a symbol for solidarity, a non-violent solidarity of the powerless (ibid., p. 140). As a Jewish Negative Theology, Critical Theory expresses, in his view “a refusal to recognize power as an argument for truth” (Horkheimer VIII., 158).
The conception of being in the continuum of ontological Diaspora was vital for presenting late Critical Theory as a Jewish Negative Theology. The uniqueness of Judaism lies in its permanent demand for justice, emerging out of a hope with no real historical anchor: “Jewry was not a powerful state, but the hope for justice at the end of the world” (Horkheimer 1978, 206). The idea that the demand for justice essentially cannot obtain power, and that justice can be realized only at the cost of its transformation into its opposite – injustice, is central to the educational implications of this version of Critical Theory.
It implies that genuine education must not attempt to transcend negativism; it is committed to anti-dogmatism and it must resist any manifestation of the self-evident, even that of the oppressed and the persecuted. It must resist popularization and political victories, while at the same time its Messianism is directed to resisting actual injustices in the present reality as the only manifestation of the quest for truth and justice. This version of Negative Theology as a mature Critical Theory in Horkheimer’s thought complies with Adorno’s concept of Negative Dialectics.
It was not in opposition to the view of the philosopher as a neurotic who refuses to be cured, but in compliance with this vision that Adorno articulated the “categorical imperative of philosophy” (Adorno 2000, 53). There he concludes: “it does not hold the key to salvation, but allows some hope only to the moment of concept followed by the intellect wherever the path may lead” (Adorno, ibid.). Actually, he presents Critical Theory as a path to salvation after all. This, however, is within a negative framework that leaves no room for any positive Utopia or actual salvation in the sense that traditional positive utopias or optimistic-oriented Critical Pedagogy can promise its disciples. Regardless of its situation, according to Adorno, philosophy has not concluded its mission. However, it does not have any foundation, self-evidence, social strata, or pain on which to establish its critical education: “Philosophy offers no place from which theory as such might be concretely convicted of the anachronisms it is suspected of, now, as before” (Adorno 2000, 55).
Adorno, in accordance with Benjamin and Horkheimer, and contrary to Marcuse, presents another kind of dialectics, a Negative Dialectics. Note, however, that his position stands in contrast to the orthodox Marxist concept of dialectics and its version of Ideology Critique4 (as an emancipatory overcoming of alienation and false consciousness, and as a precondition for a revolutionary praxis). As a genuine counter-educator he refuses any concept of dialectics, which promises victory, emancipation, or peace. According to Adorno, “contradiction is not what Hegel’s absolute idealism was bound to transfigure it into”. “It indicates the untruth of identity, the fact that the concept does not exhaust the thing conceived” (Adorno 2000, 57). Adorno and Horkheimer are united here in refusing any manifestations of the absolute, the totality, the truth, or a positive justice on earth. Adorno grounds his concept of negativity in what in another philosophical tradition is called “the essence of being”. This is why even dialectics itself is not in peace with itself, nor bring appeasement or truth. “The name of dialectics”, he says in his Negative Dialectics, “says no more, to begin with, than that objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a reminder, that they come to contradict the traditional norm of adequacy” (Adorno 2000, 57). The gap will never be bridged, no theory will fully and adequately represent its object.
The very presence of the object separated from its representation apparatuses is problematized here in a manner that leaves no room for easy-going promises of “understanding”, “empowerment”, or “emancipation”. Surely not of collectives, as Critical Pedagogy never tires of promising the oppressed and the marginalized in the name of Critical Theory.
Adorno is very much aware of the contradictions in the heart of his project. The important philosophical and educational view of his rests here, on these contradictions precisely, as a way of overcoming meaninglessness and self-evidence of various kinds, including the revolutionary kind. “The work of philosophical self-reflection consists in unraveling that paradox. Everything else is signification, secondhand construction, pre-philosophical activity” (Adorno 2000, 60). What then remains for philosophy to do, if there is still a mission it can devote itself to? Adorno, like Horkheimer, constituted his utopian thought on his philosophical pessimism, so Negative Dialectics becomes the last way to save the struggle to challenge the self-evident and to transcend meaninglessness. “To change this direction of conceptuality, to give it a turn toward nonidentity, is the hinge of Negative Dialectics. Insight into the constitutive character of the nonconceptual in the concept would end the compulsive identification, which the concept brings unless halted by such reflection. Reflection upon its own meaning is the way out of the concept’s seeming being-in-itself as a unit of meaning” (Adorno 2000, 63). In this sense, and solely in this sense, “philosophy can make it after all” (Adorno 2000, 60).
Philosophizing, in this respect, becomes the only way to resist the process of destruction of the autonomy of the human subject (Adorno 1999, 5). It becomes the only manner of resistance to being overwhelmed by the one-dimensional functionality and thingness of the system (Adorno 2000, 234) and its deceiving massage of freedom in accordance with the laws of the market and the current world of facts (Adorno 2000, 198). As such, within its negativity, it incubates an alternative to the hegemonic educational massage propagated by the Culture Industry. In so doing, it offers the possibility of refusal of the present process of subjectification or resistance to the reality of constructing the de-humanized agent. As such philosophy offers a kind of thinking which allows hope of overcoming the current educational reality (Adorno 2000, 238) of which Critical Pedagogy is an important part. The later work of Adorno and Horkheimer is indispensable in the present historical moment of Western culture. In face of the exile of Spirit it represents an uncompromising quest for Utopia. Western Eros is not being destroyed but consumed and reproduced as part of the one-dimensional reified diversity of the preset cultural moment, which in some respects is already beyond the horizons of the Culture Industry that was challenged by Critical Theory.
In face of the current post-modern conditions, which are accompanied by modernist and even pre-modernist ones, the later work of Adorno and Horkheimer are of special value, and not solely as a theoretical and educational challenge to postmodern ideologies and educational alternatives. It is also important as an alternative to normalizing education and for the creation of a new kind of a Diasporic philosophy of the kind traditionally Judaism offered to the world – under the evil conditions set by postmodern global capitalism which develops along new destructions and distorted creative Eros – which is governed by the logic of Thanatus – also new possibilities for cosmopolitanism. This new cosmopolitanism transforms the Messianic tradition and further develops it. This Messianic moment, even as a potential, is normally being distorted, misused, or forgotten. But it face of cultural, economic, political, and, ultimately, existential crisis become awaken/ It might become an impetus for counter-education exactly against the exile of Spirit, the instrumentalization of reason, and the reification of the human relations. In opposition to the optimists who establish great hopes for all humanity on the foundations of globalizing capitalism we are offering a dialectical reconstruction of our historical moment: It is the same globalizing capitalism which rationally send entire populations for starvation, poor health and lost of self-respect in the margins of world affluent economy which also opens the door for the visibility of suffering, for universal needs and values, and for new possibilities for counter-education and Diasporic way of life which transcends ethnocentric solidarity, political borders, and contextual pragmatism and cynicism (Gur-Ze’ev forthcoming D).
Later Critical Theory struggled for the very possibility of sensitivity to alienation, for worthy suffering, and for containing the pursuit for "the totally other". Within this attempt, and only within it, are we to understand its refusal to abandon the imperative of responsibility to the yet unrealized human potentials. To this imperative, as to the presence of hope out of worthy suffering, they offered only one possible way: that of religious negation.
The message here is the messianic impulse, or the commitment for transcendence from any consensus, or the self-evident, into a struggle to overcome meaninglessness in a Godless world. In this sense any possible educational “implication” should be negative, if true to itself. And in this sense later Adorno and Horkheimer are so important in the attempt to keep alive the quest and the actual appearance of countereducation as a concrete Utopia in a postmodern condition.
Counter-education, if true to itself, cannot be, like Critical Pedagogy wants us to belive, an attempt to implement any “theory”, as sophisticated or good-intentioned as it may be. If true to itself, counter-education must challenge any theoretical, ideological, or political "home", any master signifier, dogma, or ethnocentrism as manifestations of the Same, of the thingness in Being, which human beings are called to guard and transcend (Heidegger196, 234). Counter-education, in this sense, must be at once Messianic and negative at any cost. This means that it cannot satisfy itself even with identification with the negation of self-evident, with the resistance to the ethnocentrism of the oppressed and cannot identify itself with the “worthier” violences they actualize against their own "internal" and "external" Others.
If faithful to itself, counter-education must concentrate on overcoming itself; negating its own theoretical assumptions, procedures, and conclusions. A special role is reserved here for a critical reintegration of ethics, aesthetics, and interdisciplinary critical scientific work in its cultural and social context. Its negativity must avoid being abstract and one-dimensional, and love is essential to its realization.
It must turn to realize solidarity in actual dialogical situations and make room for love and generosity in actual life situations. As a concrete Utopia, counter-education must acknowledge this world and the presence of politics and power relations. And in this sense there is some affinity between it and Critical Pedagogy. However, it should not see itself as of this world, and it should refuse reduction to power relations, group interests and implications of politically-correct vocabuleries.
It acknowledges itself as a religious work (avodat kodesh), and only as such also as an involvement in the political space.
Counter-education speaks only from the perspective of the Exile, as a homeless one who challenges the meaninglessness of the celebrated truths, values, and pleasures. It is enabled by the possible appearance of grace in a Godless world. For such a project the later work of Adorno and Horkheimer is certainly not the sole source but it is a worthy point of reference, and a relevant erotic experience. As an alternative to normalizing education, of which Critical Pedagogy is part and parcel, mature Critical Theory has “educational relevance”: as a manifestation of countereducation and as a link in a worthy tradition that has not yet said its last word. Only after developing these aspects is it worth reconstructing the later texts of Adorno on education after Auschwitz (Adorno 1971, 88-104) and Horkheimer’s conceptions of higher education as the last barrier against the new barbarism enhanced by the culture industry (Horkheimer VIII., 1985, 409-419). Such work has not yet been done. That is why its initiation must pay special attention to the overcoming of the worthier parts of Adorno's Negative Dialectics and Horkheimer’s Negative Theology.
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1 In this article I do not prove this claim. I try to show its validity only by referring to
Henry Giroux, who is undoubtedly one of the central figures in this field.
2 This is still a much missing element in the critique of Marcuse’s work. Here I offer
only the main argument with brief references to its textual justifications. The dialectic
between his philosophical pessimism and positive utopianism is extensively analyzed
in: Ilan Gur-Ze’ev, The Frankfurt School and the History of Pessimism, Jerusalem
1996 (in Hebrew).
3 Ephraim Gothold Lessing, On the Education of the Human Kind.
Lessing’s small book is only an example. Schiller’s On the Education of Man in a
Series of Letters belongs to the same tradition. My argument that even works that did
not present themselves explicitly as representatives of this tradition, such as those of
Karl Marx, should be considered, at least partially, as members of this tradition, to
which Marcuse also belongs. The parallels between the historical process as the
educator of humanity and the personal approach to maturity within the tradition of the
Bildungroman are of a real significance here.
4 This is the kind of Ideology Critique which is fundamental to hegemonic Critical
Pedagogy.
