Workshop: The reality of the completely different. Max Horkheimer today

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Max Horkheimer's death. Although his philosophy is still the subject of many contributions to critical theory, attention is primarily focused on his programmatic essays from the 1930s and the Dialectic of Enlightenment, which he wrote together with Theodor W. Adorno. His later thought, on the other hand, is often regarded as conservative, but to this day it has rarely been thoroughly examined and appropriated. On the occasion of two recently published monographs, "Zum Bilderverbot. Studien zum Judentum im späten Werk Max Horkheimers" (Göttingen 2022) by Yael Kupferberg and "Zur Aktualität von Max Horkheimer" (Wiesbaden 2023) by Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, this workshop will discuss the untapped potential that Horkheimer's later work offers for a critical theory of the present.

Program and schedule:

10 h Welcome and introduction, Philip Hogh (Kassel)
10.30 h Reason "as a sidestep of natural history"? Herrschaftskritik und Geschichte in Horkheimer's writings from the 1940s to the 1960s, Gerhard Schweppenhäuser (Würzburg)
11.10 h Commentary, Alexandra Colligs (Kassel)
11.30 h Discussion
12.30 h Break
14 h Potential and Critique - On the Prohibition of Images in Max Horkheimer, Yael Kupferberg (Berlin)
14.40 h Commentary, Niklas Lämmel (Berlin)
15 h Discussion
16 h Break
16.15 h Closing session

Registration at: sekretariat-philosophie@uni-kassel.de

Organization: Prof. Dr. Philip Hogh, Institute of Philosophy, University of Kassel.