Are religions tissues of superstition and repression, or repositories of the highest hopes and aspirations of humanity, or perhaps both at the same time? For many of those thinkers who lived through the horrors and upheavals of the first half of the twentieth-century, this old question acquired a new urgency. This volume examines the ways in which the authors of the early Frankfurt School criticized, adopted and modified traditional forms of religious thought and practice. Focusing on the works of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Otto Kirchheimer and Franz Neumann, it analyzes the relevance of religious traditions and of the Enlightenment critique of religion for modern conceptions of emancipatory thought, art, law, and politics.

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About the authors

RUDIGER BITTNER Professor of Philosophy, University of Bielefeld, Germany HOWARD CAYGILL Professor of Cultural History, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK PASCAL EITLER Historian, University of Bielefeld, Germany PIERFRANCESCO FIORATO Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Sassari, Italy DAVID GROISER Lecturer in German, University of Oxford, UK BARNABA MAJ Professor of Philosophy of History, University of Bologna, Italy GERARD RAULET Professor of German Intellectual History, University of Paris-Sorbonne, France CHRIS THORNHILL Reader in German, King's College, London, UK

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: The Early Frankfurt School and Religion
Authors: Margarete Kohlenbach, Raymond Geuss
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523593
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy Collection, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2005
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-3557-1Published: 10 December 2004
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-51798-5Published: 10 December 2004
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-52359-3Published: 14 December 2004
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 263
Topics: Classical Philosophy, Religious Studies, general, History of Philosophy

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

Front Matter

Introduction: The Frankfurt School and the Problem of Religion

Introduction: The Frankfurt School and the Problem of Religion

Students, Theologians, Critical Theorists

Front Matter

Max Horkheimer’s Supposed ‘Religious Conversion’: A Semantic Analysis

On the Usefulness and Uselessness of Religious Illusions

Constructions of Religious Experience

Front Matter

Emerging ‘Orders’: The Contemporary Relevance of Religion and Teaching in Walter Benjamin’s Early Thought

Religion, Experience, Politics: On Erich Unger and Walter Benjamin

Allegory, Metonymy and Creatureliness: Walter Benjamin and the Religious Roots of Modern Art

Legal Philosophy and Jewish Tradition

Front Matter

Law and Religion in Early Critical Theory

Jewish Law and Tradition in the Early Work of Erich Fromm

Critical Theory and the New Thinking: A Preliminary Approach

Dialectic of Enlightenment Reconsidered

Front Matter

Does Dialectic of Enlightenment Rest on Religious Foundations?

Secularisation, Myth, Anti-Semitism: Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

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About the authors

Bibliographic Information

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Other ways to access

Table of contents (11 chapters)

Front Matter

Introduction: The Frankfurt School and the Problem of Religion

Students, Theologians, Critical Theorists

Front Matter

Constructions of Religious Experience

Front Matter

Legal Philosophy and Jewish Tradition

Front Matter

Dialectic of Enlightenment Reconsidered

Front Matter

Back Matter

About this book

Keywords

About the authors

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Buy it now

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