Free PDF Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School, by Stuart Jeffries
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Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School, by Stuart Jeffries
Free PDF Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School, by Stuart Jeffries
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Review
“Marvellously entertaining, exciting and informative.” —John Banville, Guardian (“Best Books of 2016”)“An engaging and accessible history of the lives and main ideas of the leading thinkers of the Frankfurt School.”—New York Review of Books “This seemingly daunting book turned out to be an exhilarating page-turner … Grand Hotel Abyss is an outstanding critical introduction to some of the most fertile, and still relevant, thinkers of the 20th century.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post“Stuart Jeffries has produced a compelling and politically pressing group portrait of the philosophers associated with the Frankfurt School. Their thinking has never seemed less forbidding and more inspiring.”—Matthew Beaumont, author of Nightwalking “Stuart Jeffries’s intelligent, accessible new book reminds us of the value of critical thinking.” —Globe and Mail “A fractious Europe, a failing currency, a challenged economy, populist parties on the rise, a divided left, migration from the east, an atmosphere of fear combined with social and sexual liberalism. The parallels between Britain today and Germany in the 1920s may well make this a compelling moment to revisit those postwar German thinkers who gathered in what was known as the Frankfurt school for social research—something akin to a Marxist thinktank, though one whose policy papers and brilliant books fed future generations as much or more than their own … Little wonder, given the history of the 20th century, that the Frankfurt school gave us intellectual pessimism and negative dialectics. Jeffries’s biography is proof that such a legacy can be invigorating.” —Lisa Appignanesi, Observer “There is much to provoke interest and thought, even entertain, in Jeffries’ informative account of a group of highly intelligent observers and analysts of the imprisonment of humanity, both socially and individually by the corrosive system under which it suffers.” —Morning Star “Attempts something rather daring … An easily accessible, funny history of one of the more formidable intellectual movements of the twentieth century … an easy, witty, pacy read.” —Owen Hatherley, Guardian“Jeffries moves swiftly across the decades, retracing the jagged paths from the official founding of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt in June 1924, through its years in exile in New York in the ’30s and Los Angeles in the ’40s and its hasty return to Frankfurt in the early postwar years, up to the work of Horkheimer and Adorno’s prized protégé Jürgen Habermas and the Institute’s legacy today.” −Noah Isenberg, Bookforum “Throughout the book, Jeffries demonstrates that he is comfortable and conversant with the often thorny philosophical ideas of his subjects. A rich, intellectually meaty history.”—Kirkus “An impressive work of popular intellectual history.” —Open Letters Monthly “Intriguing and provocative … Jeffries has done a great service in producing such a readable, wry and detailed introduction.” —Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman “[Gives] a step by step insight into what they thought … A lot of that stuff they wrote about still applies.” —Jason Williamson (Sleaford Mods), Guardian “Equally sympathetic and critical, this book is sure to gain an enthusiastic reception from academics, armchair philosophers, and fellow travelers.” —Library Journal “A towering work of staggering scholarship.”—Irish Times “A valuable introduction to the lives and ideas of an influential group of twentieth century philosophers. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand why much of what passed for radical thought in academia in the late twentieth century was so obscure and depressing.” —Ian Angus, Climate & Capitalism“Humanises some of the most austere, (philosophically) negative, and intellectually intimidating thinkers of the past century … Jeffries draws out the intense and evolving relationship between these idiosyncratic theorists and their work, and eloquently illuminates the extent to which crude contingency shaped their philosophies and output. Jeffries succeeds in making this a truly personal, truly human illumination, be it presenting Marcuse’s letters addressing Adorno ‘dear Teddy,’ or Adorno signing off his missives to his parents affectionately, with ‘heartiest kisses from your Hippo King.’”—Neal Harris,Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
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About the Author
Stuart Jeffries worked for the Guardian for twenty years and has written for many media outlets including the Financial Times and Psychologies. He is based in London.
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Product details
Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Verso (September 20, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781784785680
ISBN-13: 978-1784785680
ASIN: 1784785687
Product Dimensions:
6.5 x 1.6 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
30 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#428,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Frankfurt School of Philosophy started out during the early days of the Weimar Republic as a Marxist research institute, initially established to answer the question why the German proletariat failed to effect a successful Marxist revolution after World War I. This weighty question seemed an unexplainable enigma to the founding luminaries of what had been nicknamed Café Marx, mainly Benjamin, Adorna, and Horkheimer, joined later by Erich Fromm and Marcuse. In order to grapple with this extremely difficult problem, the Frankfurt School developed the Critical Method, which used multidisciplinary approach (philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, art) trying to look into phenomena that had not been considered "proper" by previous and contemporary other philosophers. This enigma was later replaced by even a larger enigma. Namely, why capitalism failed to self-destruct, as had been postulated by Marx. That second enigma has hardly been settled when another philosophical critical question arose – How civilized nation like Germany slid into the unprecedented nightmare of Holocaust, while nominally socialist/communist regimes of USSR and China, devolved into mass terror against their own populations. Little wonder that Adorna and Horkheimer had no truck with the students' revolt of the sixties, where only Marcuse managed to proudly float on the revolutionary coattails of the New Left. The Frankfurt School consensus (albeit softened by Fromm and the later director, Habermas) seemed to be that all evil proceeds from capitalism, which uses similar though subtler methods than totalitarian communism and Nazism. The worst sin of capitalism (as seen by the Frankfurt School) was material advancement of the capitalist world that gave people the soporific outlet of continuous pursuit of material unnecessary goods and immaterial mass culture cheapened to a popular but worthless product.At this point one has to make two decisions about this book: How well is it written, and how important is Mr. Jeffries book for understanding the Frankfurt School, the Critical Method, and their importance to our current and (possibly) future problems. It is also difficult to disconnect the two questions, as the importance of the Frankfurt School prejudges the importance of the book about its evolution.Generally, Mr. Jeffries does quite well – his writing is fluid, coherent, interesting, and learned, yet he mostly (but not quite) manages to impart his knowledge to a layman like me. Unfortunately, the objective value of this book seems to me rather low. To the innocent bystander the Frankfurt School seems to have been run by a bunch of spoiled kids that refused to consider any alternative interpretation of history. Their disenchantment with the vanishing proletariat appears to be at least paternalistic, as the statement that people have been fooled by capitalism to feel themselves free while in reality they are slaves of the system. ONLY the Frankfurt School luminaries have been intelligent, perceptive, and clairvoyant enough to see through this subterfuge. The second objection pertains to the method itself. They were trying to established something equivalent to the unified field theory in physics, i.e. a set of precepts that will explain EVERYTHING (in Marxist terms, obviously). No wonder they have failed. Their current position in the academic world owes more to the beliefs of the post-modern faculty than to their intrinsic contribution as philosophers.
I have been interested in the Frankfurt School for a long time. Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse are thinkers not just important to the left, but to anyone interested in the history of twentieth century thought. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism) has long been the best overview of the scholarship produced by these remarkable intellectuals. Jeffries has written an essential new overview of the Frankfurt School. First off the writing is excellent, and I don't believe the sophistication of the ideas is dumbed down at all through Jeffries' accessible and entertaining presentation. (However, I would have to defer to people smarter than me on that score). What I can definitely say is that if you have any interest the Frankfurt School thinkers I can't imagine you won't find this book incredibly stimulating and enlightening. Jeffries' presentation brought a great deal of clarity to issues that previously confused me, such as Adorno's conception of the "negative dialectic." This book has already helped me to better understand references to Frankfurt School debates in other books and articles. It is a first class synthesis of the work of some very provocative thinkers.
For Rulers: Priming Political Leaders for Saving Humanity from ItselfThis is an outstanding presentation of the Frankfurt School and the evolution of the thinking of its main heroes, including Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann, and – one generation later -- Jürger Habermas. Shorter comments on intellectual partners, such as Bertolt Brecht, complete the emerging picture.With minor exceptions, theses thinkers avoided personal activism, provoking György Lukács to charge the members of the Frankfurt School with “taking up residence in what he called ‘the Grand Hotel Abyss.’ This beautiful hotel was, he wrote, equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity… musing on the suffering of the world from a safe distance. ‘The daily contemplation of the abyss between excellent meals or artistic entertainments’, Lukács wrote sarcastically, can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered.… For Lukács, the Frankfurt School had abandoned the necessary connection between theory and praxis, where the latter means the realisation in action of the former†(p. 2).But Lukács was wrong. Taking some distance from “praxis†was, I think, essential for the high-quality thinking of the Frankfurt School. As Adorno put it “now was not the time for the easy posturing of action, but for the hard work of thinking… theory was not reactionary retreat into a Grand Hotel Abyss, but principled withdrawal into a fortress of thought, a citadel from which, periodically, radical jeremiads were issued†(p. 4). The Frankfurt School thinkers have a paradoxical and then harsh personal history, starting with dependence on money which their parents made as capitalist and continuing with escaping from Nazi Germany as refugees. This background is interestingly explored in the book, as is its impact on their reasoning.But, much more significantly, the thinking by the founding generation of the Frankfurt School, in Germany and in US exile, was shaped by five shocks, which demolished classical Marxism and much more:(1) The ease with which the proletarian supported World War One and much of German society supported Nazism. (2) Successes of Capitalism in eroding the proletariat and, in effect, made it disappear in Western countries as a potentially revolutionary class. (3) Total failure of the enlightenment in preventing the horrors of genocide and in making “reason,†in the double meanings of Vernunft (critical reason) and Verstand (instrumental reason) into a reliable grounding of compelling norms (as attempted paradigmatically by Kant).(4) The Capitalist “commodification†of humans reinforced by the “culture industry.(5) Difficulties to overcome the pessimisms of Freud in his “Civilizations and Its Discontents†essay, including misgivings about the effects of “sexual liberation.†To these must be added the growing doubts of the second generation Frankfurt School superstar Habermas on the validity of his “public sphere†paradigm, based on his belief “that through rational communication we can overcome our biases, our egocentric and ethnocentric perspectives, come to a consensus or community of reason, and develop thereby what the American philosopher George Herbert Mead… called the ‘larger self’†(p. 358). But “(towards the end of his life) “what Habermas wanted to tell us about secular reason, which he had spent most of his career extolling, and indeed about the modern secular state, was that both lack what religious authority offers the faithful – not just salvation but, he argued, virtuous livesâ€) p. 379).I agree that “the Frankfurt School still have much to teach us – not least about the impossibility and the necessity of thinking differently†(p. 392). This is all the more a fateful necessity taking into account emerging science and technology, which are sure to make it quite easy to end the existence of Homo sapiens as a species.Till then we should take to heart the observation that “Anybody in this culture who watches the news and can be happy – there’s something wrong with them (p. 387). To learn to share this conclusion and struggle with its implications – pondering this book is strongly recommended.Professor Yehezkel Dror
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