PARTISAN REVIEW
465
Horkheimer's views which, given the "dictatorship of the director", tended to
set the thematic altitudes of the Institut. This is followed by a synthetic
knilling together of the various member's contributions to: "The Integration
of Psychoanalysis, " the " First Studies in Authority," "The Institut's Analysis
of Nazism," "Aesthetic Theory and the Critique of Mass Culture," "The Em–
pirical Work of the Institut in the 1940's," and a tentative "Philosophy of
History: The Critique of the Enlightenment." Jay's "Epilogue" discusses
briefly the return to Germany, and touches lightly on some of the.problems of
Critical Theory as they materialized in its practice after the return .
The financial independence. interdisci plinary.and problem-oriented ap–
proach of the InstilUt made the·pages of its publications rich reading in their
time. The critica l ana lysis and re-membering of such theoretica l vogues as
Lebensphilosophie, Bergson and Dilthy, Existentialism and Vienna School
positivism is often brilliant. Horkheimer and Marcuse particularly excelled at
sClling the Hi story of Ideas into its socio-politica l content in order to detect the
cha ng ing functions of a school of thought. The early recognition of the role of
thc family as a mediation between individual psychology and socio-political
phrnomrna which led to the a llempt to study it empirica lly, from the stand–
point o f the hi sto ry o f ideas, and within the context of a-for the time, shock–
ingly original-combination1of Marx andlFreud, standslas a monument to the
Schoo l's perceptiveness. Sensitivity to the changing function of the economic
in th c cstabli shment of socially accepted forms of domina tion provided new
insights into mass culture and democratic diffusion in the technologica l civi–
lizat ion of modern bureaucra ti c capita lism. The empirica l studies of authority
and prejudice, and the a llempt to take seriously the method910gy of the ob–
jcnivating (i.e., " ha rd ") sciences within the context of a theory which a lso
allcmp ted to expla in the theoretica l a nd human implica tion s of such a
scientific approach serves as a caution aga inst a certa in romanticism as well
as an emotionless emp iricism . And the generally preferred aphoristi c style is a
continua l temptation to reflec t, and thus to act; the rejection of a didactic ex–
pos ition permits the angularity of the theory 's openness to live on where, in
the last analysis, its content and insights la id out in linear-biographical form
appear dated.
The first myth tha t J ay unintentionall y debunks is that of a "School. "
When they arc grouped under genera l rubrics, the contributions of the In–
stiLUt's members sing out their vast differences. At best, there was unity among
onl y Horkheimer and Adorno (who joined the Institut on ly in 1938, though he
wrote for its publications earlier), Po llock and Lowentha l; and the laller two
wrote very lillie, dealing mainly with the management of the Institut and its
publications. Though Erich Fromm's early contribution to the study of the
family and the integra tion of Freud was in many ways the most original of its
contributions, he had left the In stitut by 1939. Walter Benjamin 's theoretical
