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The Frankfurt School is a school of neo- Marxist social theory, social research, and philosophy.The grouping emerged at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) of the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany when Max Horkheimer became the Institute's director in 1930.
The Frankfurt School gathered together dissident Marxists, severe critics of capitalism who believed that some of Marx's alleged followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist Parties. Influenced especially by the failure of working-class revolutions in Western Europe after World War I and by the rise of Nazismswastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). Black, white, and red were in fact the colors of the old North German Confederation flag (invented by Otto von Bismarck, based on the Prussian co in an economically, technologically, and culturally advanced nation (Germany), they took up the task of choosing what parts of Marx's thought might serve to clarify social conditions which Marx himself had never seen. They drew on other schools of thought to fill in Marx's perceived omissions. Max WeberThis article is about the economist and sociologist. For the Swiss Federal Councilor, see Max Weber (politician); for the American cubist painter, see Max Weber (artist). Maximilian Weber ( April 21, 1864 June 14, 1920) was a German economist and sociolog exerted a major influence, as did Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud ( May 6, 1856 September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. He became interested in hypnotis (as in Herbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse ( July 19, 1898 to July 29, 1979) was a prominent German- American philosopher and sociologist of the Frankfurt School. Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin, served as a soldier in the First World War and then participated in the aborted soc's synthesis of Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis in the 1954 work 'Eros and civilization'). Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivismPositivism is the name for (at least) two philosophical directions. They have in common the idea of a science without theology or metaphysics, based only on facts about the physical / material world. The older positivism is based on the philosophical thin, crude materialismThis article primarily focuses on the general concepts of matter and existence. For usage related to the prioritization of spending resources, see economic materialism. In one view, materialism expresses the view that the only thing that exists is matter;, and phenomenologyPhenomenology is a current in philosophy that takes intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as its starting point and tries to extract the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experien by returning to KantImmanuel Kant ( April 22, 1724 February 12, 1804) was a Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment, having a major impact on the Romantic and Idealist philosophies of the 19th century, and as one of history's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on negation and contradiction as inherent properties of reality. A key influence also came from the publication in the 1930s of Marx's Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology, which showed the continuity with Hegelianism that underlay Marx's thought.
