Theodor Adorno Jürgen Habermas critical theory religion Friedrich Nietzsche Karl Marx Sigmund Freud
Abstract:
The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory is one of the most influential schools of thought developed in the twentieth century but nonetheless widely misunderstood. In particular, a notion persists that the Frankfurt School is hostile to religion. Yet, the writings of two of its most important iconoclasts, Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, reveal a more nuanced approach. Adorno and Habermas, in a fascinating dialogue with religion from which they develop a critical-normative perspective of religion, contrast against the views on religion developed by the “masters of suspicion” of the nineteenth century—Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. The Frankfurt School eventually built upon these social-functional and genealogical perspectives. For Adorno, religion is in conversation with his notion of an “ethics of suffering,” whereas Habermas believes it speaks to an essential dimension of humanity through its process of “communicative reason.” Religion for both Adorno and Habermas occupies a critical form of social critique and articulates an aspect of the human experience.
