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For Nonconformism: Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock. The Other Frankfurt School

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Published Nov 2022

Nicola Emery

Author: Nicola Emery
Subject of numerous interpretations and studies, the vicissitudes of the famous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research nevertheless still reserve some little-known pages, such as the human and scientific relationship that bound philosopher Max Horkheimer and economist Friedrich Pollock for over fifty years. Based on texts and letters translated here into English for the first time as well as some previously unpublished documents, the book reconstructs the crucial moments in the friendship between the two scholars with a narrative style and philological accuracy. Nicola Emery accompanies us through the two friends and intellectuals’ “nonconformism” and search for an alternative life-form that led to the birth of the Frankfurt critical theory.

Biographical Note

Nicola Emery, Ph.D. (1996), Università Cà Foscari Venezia, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Svizzera italiana, and he leads the Max Horkheimer international Meetings. He has published monographs, many articles and also edited many books, the latest of which is Walter Benjamin Unfinished (Mimesis, 2022).

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Translator’s Note

1 For Nonconformism
1.1 Transgression, Autobiography, Philosophy
1.2 Forms of Life
1.3 Psyche and History
1.4 Biopower and the Hidden Faculties of Existence (Eroticism, Friendship, Art)

2 The Era of State Capitalism: Morphology and Genesis Starting from Friedrich Pollock
2.1 Friedrich Pollock’s Ideal Type
2.2 Between Domination and Welfare

3 Expatriation, Disorientation, Islands
3.1 Leaving Germany (Eichmann Trial, Israel and the Atlantic Pact)
3.2 Free from the Coercion of the Reality Principle (Switzerland)
3.3 Beyond Instrumental Architecture (the Houses in Montagnola)

4 Automation and the Eclipse of Democracy
4.1 Era of Automation and Crisis: Pollock’s Prognosis
4.2 Is Critical Theory Antiquated?

5 Critical Theory and Longing for the Other
5.1 The Absent Alterity
5.2 Critique of Instrumental Reason and Religion
5.3 Critical Judaism (beyond Identity, beyond Sovereignty, beyond Zionism)

Appendix: Figures
Bibliography
Index