The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Volume 10) (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)

Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Franz Neumann, Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal―the impact of the Frankfurt School on the sociological, political, and cultural thought of the twentieth century has been profound. The Dialectical Imagination is a major history of this monumental cultural and intellectual enterprise during its early years in Germany and in the United States. Martin Jay has provided a substantial new preface for this edition, in which he reflects on the continuing relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School.

"An important book, full of new material and measured in its judgments, which will do a great deal, not only to make possible the assimilation of the work of the Frankfurt School by the intellectual public but also to clarify the issues to which their work gives rise."—Fredric Jameson, author of Marxism and Form

"I read your book again, and I was even more impressed than the first time. An amazing example of scholarship without dullness, of objectivity and love for the subject matter!"—Herbert Marcuse

Publishers Weekly

Berkeley Professor Jay's intellectual history covers the influential Frankfurt School, a group of German philosophers whose radical cultural criticism laid much of the groundwork for contemporary critical theory. (Mar.)

Preface to the 1996 Edition Foreword by Max Horkheimer Introduction Acknowledgments I. The Creation of the Institut fUr Sozialforschung and Its First Frankfurt Years 2. The Genesis of Critical Theory 3* The Integration of Psychoanalysis 4. The Institut's First Studies of Authority 5. The Institut's Analysis of Nazism 6. Aesthetic Theory and the Critique of Mass Culture 7* The Empirical Work of the Institut in the 1940's 8. Toward a Philosophy of History: The Critique of the Enlightenment Epilogue Chapter References Bibliography Index A history of the Frankfurt School and its impact during its early years in Germany and the United States. This edition includes a new preface which reflects on the continuing relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School.