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University of California Press

The Dialectical Imagination

A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950
by Martin Jay (Author)
Paperback eBook
Price: $31.95 / £27.00
Publication Date: Mar 1996
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 382
ISBN: 9780520204232
Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.25
Series:
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About the Book

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.

About the Author

Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought and, as co-editor, The Weimar Sourcebook, both published by the University of California Press.

Table of Contents

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 

Reviews

"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