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Described, analyzed, & evaluated is the critical theory of religion of M. Horkheimer, the founder of the Frankfurt school of philosophy & sociology. Horkheimer's dialectical sociology of religion is traced throughout his whole critical theory of society as it developed from his early poetical writings, eg, Aus der Pubertat: Novellen und Tagebuchblatter ([From Puberty: Short Stories and Journal Entries] Munich, 1974) through his articles written in American exile from Nazi Germany & the post-WWII era, to his last talks on the work & effectiveness of his friend P. Tillich, his interviews with H. Gumnior on Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen ([The Longing for the Wholly Other] Hamburg, 1970) & his encounter with H. C. Mansilla in Switzerland shortly before his death in 1973. Horkheimer is one of the great Jewish intellectuals, who in twentieth century Europe lost the faith of their fathers & therefore thought to reexamine anew the meaning of human existence. For Horkheimer, as one of the survivors of the Holocaust in Europe, neither the reassurance of liberal democracy nor the exhortations of Zionism could inspire confidence in the future. The barbarity of European fascism had almost fully obliterated Western Christianity, bourgeois, Marxist & Freudian enlightenment & German idealism. Thus, Horkheimer undertook to carefully reexamine all of these traditions, especially Hegel's objective & absolute idealism in formulating a critical sociology of religion that did not require a commitment to any positive religious belief. Horkheimer thought to extend Feuerbach's & Marx's critiques of religion, the correct understanding of which necessitates an analysis of Hegel's account. This led Horkheimer to explore the Hegelian philosophy of religion as well as the critical theories of religion on the Hegelian left & the positive sociologies of religion on the Hegelian & positivist right, while at the same time remaining critical of all of these theories. Horkheimer's analysis of religion will become most relevant if & when the totally administered society becomes a reality. At present Horkheimer provides people with a way to at least modify & mitigate the iron trend toward alternative Future I -- the totally administered society, to resist with all their energies alternative Future II -- ABC wars, & to prepare theoretically & practically the arrival of alternative Future III -- the truly human, reconciled society. Modified AA

Preliminary Material_Vol1 -- Chapter One. The Critical Theory of Society -- Chapter Two. The Neo-Conservative Trend Turn -- Chapter Three. The Three-fold Critical Theory of Religion -- Chapter Four. From Quantitative to Qualitative Infinity -- Chapter Five. Theory Formation -- Chapter Six. From Traditional to Critical Theory -- Chapter Seven. Universal Pragmatic -- Chapter Eight. Truth and Justification -- Chapter Nine. Toward a New Model -- Appendices -- Preliminary Material_Vol2 -- Chapter Ten. External and Internal Perspective -- Chapter Eleven. Conscious-making and Rescuing Critique -- Chapter Twelve. Necrophilous and Biophilous Elements -- Chapter Thirteen. From the Jus Talionis to the Golden Rule -- Chapter Fourteen. Religion and Revolution -- Chapter Fifteen. Concrete Utopia -- Chapter Sixteen. Religion in Socialist Society -- Chapter Seventeen. From Magic to the Dialectical Notion -- Chapter Eighteen. Truth as Meaning of Language and Work -- Chapter Nineteen. Religion in Liberal Society -- Chapter Twenty. New York: The Capital of Liberalism -- Chapter Twenty-One. Religion in Fascist Society -- Chapter Twenty-Two. The Owl of Minerva -- Chapter Twenty-Three. Critical Religion: Against Aggression, Force, Violence, and Terror -- Preliminary Material_Vol3 -- Chapter Twenty-Four. The Jewish-German Tragedy -- Chapter Twenty-Five. From the Westphalian Peace to the Bourgeois and Socialist Revolutions -- Chapter Twenty-Six. The Expansion and Contraction of God -- Chapter Twenty-Seven. The Desperate Hope and the Rescue of the Hopeless -- Chapter Twenty-Eight. Trust in the Eternal One -- Epilogue: God, Freedom, and Immortality -- References -- Name Index -- Subject Index -- Studies in Critical Social Sciences.

This essay is concerned with the religious and theological dimension of Max Horkheimer's, Theodor W. Adorno's, and Walter Benjamin's and other theorists' critical theory of society. It aims at a new critical theory of religion, which would go beyond the religious and theological concerns of the critical theory of society. The essay concentrates on the way, in which the critical theorists of the first and second generation dealt with the modern dichotomy between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane, revelation and enlightenment, religious faith and autonomous reason, church and state. The critical theorists have left behind the idealistic attempt to reconcile the modern dichotomy of the religious and the secular: e.g., that of Leibnitz, Hegel, Goethe, or Beethoven. The essay focuses on the critical theorists' materialistic attempt — not to reconcile faith and knowledge, that is not possible at this point in history — but at least to prevent the modern contradiction between monotheism and enlightenment to be closed prematurely either fundamentalistically or scientistically and positivistically. Adorno and Benjamin have initiated an inverse theology, which presupposes a. that religion has indeed contributed to the humanization of mankind, and b.that the secularization process cannot be stopped. The inverse theology allows semantic and semiotic materials and potentials to migrate from the depth of the mythos into the secular discourse among the expert cultures — sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy — and through it into communicative and political action, in order thus to prevent the further rebarbarization of the Western civilization. The inverse theology is a test in so far as that semantic or semiotic material, which cannot be translated into the profane discourse of expert cultures, cannot be rescued and will be lost. One central semantic element, which Adorno and Horkheimer intended to rescue, was the longing for the totally Other than the slaughterbench, holocaust — altar and Golgatha of history. In this longing for the entirely Other is concretely superseded, i.e., criticized, but also preserved and elevated and fulfilled, what once in the world — religions and — philosophies had been called: Eternity, Beauty, Heaven, God, Infinite, Transcendence, Being, Idea, Absolute, Unconditional. The critical theorists transform once certain religious dogmas into longings. The longing for the totally Other has been the fundamental motive and motivation of the critical theorists, which gave them manifestly or latently energy for almost a whole century, and which allowed them to survive two world wars, and fascism, and emigration, and to make it possible for them on one hand not to regress into mythology, and on the other hand not to fall victim to positivism as the metaphysics of what is the case.

E. Fromm's religious ideas are traced from the late 1920s through his involvement with the Frankfurt School, up to the present. Fromm's critical theory of religion is seen to be mainly a critique of ideology. It is a negative theology insofar as it is a negation of idols, whether they be of clay & wood, or the more modern state idols of leader, production & consumption, sex, car, & career. Fromm rediscovered this negative theology in the polemical & revolutionary form of perfect social justice in a rational & free society. Modified HA.