“Whoever desires to live among men has to obey their laws this is what the secular morality of Western civilization comes down to. ... Rationality in the form of such obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think.” ThinkingMenFormLawDesireMoralityCivilizationWesternObedienceSecularRationalityWestern CivilizationDesire To Live Book:Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung Source: Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung
“With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. ... Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.” ThinkingLeftImpossibleEgoUnderstoodPhilosophicalAbolitionAloof Book:Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung Source: Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung
“If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.” IfsThinkingMadeMatterReasonHelpingActionChoicesBeliefSpeakGoalDecisionViewsMoralPrinciplesDependsEthicsIdealsUltimatePracticalsFactorsSupposed To BeMeaninglessOur ActionsCriteriaDesirability Author:Max Horkheimer
“As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually 'thinking' it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics - the model of all neo-positivistic thinking - lies in just this 'intellectual economy.' Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based. ... Reason ... becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced.” ThinkingHas BeensReasonLyingEconomyMagicInvolvedIntellectualModelsAdvantageToolsPerformancesMathematicsComplicatedAcceptedSymbolsMathematicalOperationsLogicalEntityFetish Author:Max Horkheimer
“When the great religious and philosophical conceptions were alive, thinking people did not extol humility and brotherly love, justice and humanity because it was realistic to maintain such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate from them, or because these maxims were more in harmony with their supposedly free tastes than others. They held to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle.” PeopleThinkingMindIdeasFormHumanityReligiousJusticePrinciplesSawsAliveDangerousHumilityTasteTruth IsElementsEternalHarmonyPhilosophicalConnectedOddConceptionRealisticMaximsTranscendentalLogosBrotherlyBrotherly LoveDeviateGreat Religious Author:Max Horkheimer
“Plato and his objectivistic successors ... preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course.” ThinkingHas BeensPhilosophyCoursesDifferencesMankindAwarenessDenyDestinationPlatoLaboratorySuccessorsPragmatism Book:Eclipse of Reason Source: Eclipse of Reason
“The significance of God, cause, number, substance or soul consists, as James asserts, in nothing but the tendency of the given concept to make us act or think. If the world should reach a point at which it ceases to care not only about such metaphysical entities but also about murders perpetrated behind closed frontiers or simply in the dark, one would have to conclude that the concepts of such murders have no meaning, that they represent no 'distinct ideas' or truths, since they do not make any 'sensible difference to anybody.” IfsThinkingWorldShouldIdeasSoulCareGivenCausesDifferencesDarkNumbersBehindsConceptsMurderCeaseTendenciesSubstanceSignificanceSensibleEntityMetaphysicalFrontiers Book:Eclipse of Reason Source: Eclipse of Reason
