834707412

an exhaustive analysis of the numerous weaknesses in Marcuse’s theory in which the contradictions in socio-economic relationships and class contradictions in the industrially developed capitalist societies are substituted by the thesis about an immanently oppressive character of scientific thought and technology.²⁰ We shall see later what conse-quences on the understanding of the relationship between theory and practice result from the idea of the external negation of this system.

Another attempt in the critical theory to neutralize Marx’s concept of fundamental contradictions of capitalism consists in viewing the latter within the framework of relationships between society and the individual which are not mediated by class structure. This standpoint is shared by Horkheimer and Adorno, although the latter developed it farther and madę it a central theme of his most important system-atic work, Negative Dialecłics. In order to avoid a wrong impression about the theoretical views of these thinkers, it must be remembered that they resolutely resist all forms of the highly fashionable and un-historical philosophical anthropologism,²¹ as well as sociological no-minalism connected with traditions of liberał bourgeois thought. Their main idea is that the relationship between society and the individual is always historically determined. »The relationship between the indivi-dual and society is subject to social dynamics. It changes historically, and freąuently in the same epoch we find in juxtaposition structures which are not simultaneous as to their meaning«.²² The interaction and tension between society and the individual greatly influence the generał dynamics of the whole of society.²³ The most important infer-ence drawn from interdependence between the individual and society is that »man as an individual can assert himself only in a just, humane society.«²⁴ A number of passages from various writings by Horkheimer and Adorno could be quoted to demonstrate that they do not vacillate on these basie theoretical assumDtions. They are also single-minded in their views on the society-versus-the-individual relationship in contemporary indusrtially developed societies. The spirit of their critique of the ideological character of the contemporary philosophical anthropologism and sociological nominalism is perhaps best put into relief by the thesis: the fewer individuals the morę indivi-dualism, sińce the contemporary society is moving towards totalitaria-

²⁰    This fundamental thesis of Marcuse has been the subject of numerom criti-ques. See in the compendium J. Habermas (Hrsg.), Antworten an Herbert Marcuse, in addition to C. Offe's article mentioned under footnote 18) and contributions by W. F. Haug, »Das Ganze und das ganz Andere«, and J. Bergmann, »Technologische Rationalitat und spatkapitalistische Dkonomie«, and the article by L. Tadić, »H. Marcuse - Izmedu naukę i utopije« (H. Marcuse - Between Science and Utopia), Filozofija, XIII (1969), no. 1.

²¹    Horkheimer criticized this as early as 1935 in his article, »Bemerkungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie*, Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung, Jhrg. IV (1935). As a critique of Heidegger's and Jasper's existentialism, particularly interesting is Adomo’s study, Jargon der Eigentlichkeit, as well as the first part of his book, Negatiue Dialektik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1966, pp. 65-134.

²²    Institut fur Sozialforschung, Soziologische Exkurse, p. 64.

*» Ibid., p. 47.

^u Ibid., p. 48.

632