LECTURE SERIES

CRITICAL THEORY: The Legacy of the Frankfurt School

TUE 5, 12, 19 AND 26 NOV, AND 3 DEC – 19:30 TO 21:30
Karl Dittrich Hall, Student Services Centre, Bonnefantenstraat 2

Rene Gabriëls, PhD
Assistant professor of philosophy, UM
 

The Institute for Social Research was opened at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, in Frankfurt, on June 22 1924, and later gained fame for the works of Adorno, Benjamin, Fromm, Marcuse and Habermas as the ‘Frankfurt School’. This series addresses the question of what the Frankfurt School stands for, as well as the topicality of the critical theory it developed. Why is critical theory important with regard to the decline of democracy, unjust socio-economic inequality and ecological catastrophe? The complexity of these three related issues calls for an interdisciplinary approach that is advocated at universities today, but often comes to nothing. In contrast, the Frankfurt School succeeded in looking at the problems of their time through the lenses of economics, social psychology, cultural theory, law, aesthetics, historical science, cultural anthropology and philosophy. Amid an ‘age of extremes’ (Eric Hobsbawn), the Frankfurt School developed a social psychology whose heuristic value can also be made fruitful in the 21st century to connect the psyche of the individual with the development of society.

The individual lectures
1. The Topicality of an Interdisciplinary Research Programme (5 Nov)
2. Capitalism without Democracy: Old and New Fascism (12 Nov)
3. Social Psychology amid an Age of Extremes (19 Nov)
4. Art and Alienation (26 Nov)
5. Theory and Practice (3 Dec)

Cost of the whole series
UM students €10 / UM employees and students from other schools €25 / Others €50