On Frankfurt School or Critical Theory

A group of intellectuals gathered together in Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt in 1923 and founded a school which will be called Frankfurt School later. The school formed a philosophical tradition that made a critical analysis of Enlightenment thought and structures of modernity. Making a reason-based critique of the Enlightenment, the thinkers of the school seriously criticized the Enlightenment stating in The Dialectics of Enlightenment that “The cul-de-sac we encountered in our studies was to remain as the first issue that we would study: self-destruction of the Enlightenment”. Positivism has a primary place among the issues they questioned. The members of the school rejected a definition of knowledge based on subject-object distinction unlike the positivists. They also criticised positivist separation between knowledge and human will by distinguishing between fact and value. Critical theorists carry out their critique of modernity with the very rationalisation that is believed to lie in the base of modernity. Since Weber’s analysis of modernity through the category of rationalisation, defining the irrationality of this rationalisation has become the main point of interest of critical theory. The critique of Marxism by the members of the school is directed against Orthodox Marxism. These critiques have eventually resulted in the birth of Western Marxism. The name Frankfurt School was not given by the members of the mentioned school; it was named like that by later critics. The members of the school preferred their attempt to be called “Critical Theory”. It can be argued that Frankfurt School or Critical Theory is a critical tradition that criticized almost all fields. This study is intended to give information about the history and thought of Frankfurt School and some of its fields of criticism