Adorno and Horkheimer: Diasporic Philosophy, Negative Theology, and Counter-Education
From today’s perspective, the work of the Frankfurt School thinkers can be considered the last grand modern attempt to offer transcendence, meaning, and religiosity, rather than “emancipation” and “truth”. In the very first stage of their work, up to World War II and the Holocaust, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer interlaced the goals of Critical Theory with the Marxian revolutionary project. The development of their thought led them to criticize orthodox Marxism and it ended with a complete break with that tradition (Gur-Ze’ev, 1996, p. 115), as they developed a quest for a religiosity of a unique kind, connected with the Gnostic tradition and emanating, to a certain extent, from Judaism. This religiosity offers a reformulated negative theology within the framework of what I call “Diasporic philosophy” (Gur-Ze’ev, 2003; Gur-Ze’ev 2004, p. 3).