horkheimer schopenhauer and society

SCHOPENHAUER AND SOCIETY (1955)Author(s): Max Horkheimer and Todd CronanSource: Qui Parle, Vol. 15, No. 1 (FALL / WINTER 2004), pp. 85-96Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686192 .

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SCHOPENHAUER AND SOCIETY (1955)1

Max Horkheimer

The concept of middle class society first settled into the sci

ences in Schopenhauer's time. It has a long prehistory. With the

decline of the hierarchical order in the Renaissance, the certainty of a natural arrangement of humanity faded as well, and the form

of social relations required justification. But the interest that was

philosophically registered in the course of the rising nation-states

denied at the same time the specific sphere we call society. In con

trast to the great Scholastics, modern philosophy positioned the state directly against the individual. Although Machiavelli present ed the social struggles in Florence with admirable vividness, in his

theoretical remarks it seems that the republican order or the

monarch only bears upon a crowd of individuals; history is not

determined so much through the dynamic structure of economi

cally and socially conditioned groupings, than directly through the

drives and passions of individuals, both on the part of the govern ment as well as the people. Hobbes thinks similarly to Schopen hauer, who is so clearly related to him. With all his insight into social phenomena and epiphenomena, such as that of ideology, and despite his comparison of the state with an organism, Hobbes

understands by all of this primarily individuals who are equipped with power and whose task consists in domination over other indi

viduals. It is not the case that the state is at the same time "in" indi

Qui Parle, Vol. 15, No. 1 Fall/Winter 2004



86 MAX HORKHEIMER

viduals, who, according to social-contract theory, have joined

together for the purpose of security and subjected themselves to a

ruler; the state is merely outside and above them. If the state is

republican, then it is ruled by the many, if it is monarchic - in

Hobbes as well as in Machiavelli it has more to do with the

strength than on the form of rule - then it coincides with monar

chy. The statement "['Etat c'est moi" attributed to Ludwig XIV is, as

it were, the result of Hobbesian state-philosophy. In modern times, it was not until the Enlightenment that

thought of social essence was grasped in its own right. It dominates

the opposition between the Philosophes de la lumiere and

Rousseau. If Helv6tius, entirely in agreement with the rationalist

tradition, explains: "the fatherland is only its citizens; to make a

real entity out of the fatherland, means to call up many false

thoughts," then it is Rousseau who establishes the myth of the

nation. The fatherland should be its own entity, which penetrates the individuals, is constituted by the general will, and is eternally

self-renewing out of the same general will. The whole of organized

people - as a living power, as a second nature - reacts power

fully upon the individual, no less sublime and charitable than

unmutilated first nature. After the purity of conviction has been lost

in a mendacious civilization, in the "age of the perfected sinful

ness," to speak with Fichte, man must find his way back to first

nature on a higher level. The blatant inequality, the domination of

the few over the many has destroyed the naive virtue of the natur

al condition; it emerges again as social virtue, as love for universal

essence, for the fatherland, which one can rightfully recognize as

one's own. Society is the kernel of Rousseauian philosophy. Rous

seau refers - not entirely correctly - to Montesquieu. In his com

parative study of the dependency of national institutions on cultur

al and natural conditions - in the conservative and static sense -

Montesquieu had put forth the thesis of the mediator-role of clergy, aristocracy and corporations between the king and the people; he

made society the object of his analysis. Many German romantics,

including Hegel, have followed Rousseau in his admiration of Montesquieu, and one usually traces back the concept of the



SCHOPENHAUER AND SOCIETY 87

"Volkgeistes" to his "esprit general." The first of the moderns, how

ever, who did not apply philosophy to society, but rather, devel

oped philosophy out of the idea of society is Rousseau, and after

him Kant, whose practical and historico-philosophical writings are

thoroughly based on the idea of the correct society. Independent of one another, Saint-Simon and Hegel finally distinguished the state

from society as its own area of research. With them, society counts

as a sphere of its own structure and energy that mediates state and

individual as well as individuals among one another; each individ

ual is no less determined by society than by nature and the state.

Whereas the theory of society still forms a unity with philosophy

among the young Hegelians, above all with Marx, it steps out of

philosophy with Comte (around 1840) as its own science, and

according to the other basic disciplines, it acts as last and highest

discipline and leaves behind a vacuum. The positivistic period of

sociology, like thinking generally, has dawned.

When Schopenhauer speaks of social life, he more often means sociable "being together" (la compagnie, le monde) than

middle class society as a whole. However, if society is in question, then the affinity with the Aufk/srers in the proper sense reveals

itself far more than with Rousseau or the romantics, not to mention

Hegel. As particles of matter are controlled by mechanical laws, so

the relation of the individual is controlled through psychological ones. Society is held together through the psychological mecha nism of anxiety and aggression, in which caution at times comes to

assist. Since education according to Schopenhauer - and here he

stands in contrast to Helv6tius and the others - only concerns the

intellect and not character, it is clear that this essence of society cannot be changed. Like all thinkers who do not strive to under

stand the dark sides of the human psyche in their connection with the social whole, but rather directly hypostatize them as eternal characteristics, as a natural condition, Schopenhauer believes in

the endless continuance and naturalness of an essentially repres sive society.

As much as previous history seems to confirm Schopen hauer's skepticism, as dreadful the attempts, above all, to change



88 MAX HORKHEIMER

manifested themselves, the justification for repression belongs to

the world that makes repression necessary. If the social pessimism of Hobbes still had an enlightening, progressive meaning

- if it was indeed all about bringing an end to the religious and civil wars

through a strong state - then it functions since the Biedermeier

period as pure reaction. Voltaire's contempt for the populace refers to the misused masses, who thwarted a better life against their own

interests. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, does not see the

canaille in the plebeian and aristocratic mob, who find pleasure in

the martyrdoms of Greve-place and applaud every act of atrocity, but in the uprisings of 1848. The same thought, the same theory in a different historical moment is a different thought, a different the

ory. In the nineteenth century, the glorification of strong state

power against the insatiable desires of the mass no longer serves

the rational arrangement of the territory, the unfettering of eco

nomic forces, but rather increasingly serves the struggle against all

tendencies aiming at reform. It gives the one who is failing a clear

conscience. This is the case in the second half of the century even

more than in the first. The history of the economy is not indifferent

to Schopenhauer's increasing renown. The triumphs of technology and the development of industry, which stand in "interaction" with one another - Schopenhauer hated the category

- did not bring man the expected happier existence. Just as little as the societal dif

ferences between approximately 1850 and 1914 had expanded, so

much did their meaning, subjectively and objectively, increase. The

relationships become strained, the upswing leads to active insecu

rity. Germany above all experiences this phenomenon since the

foundation of the Reich. It is not, like others, saturated. The fact that

it owes its unity to military victory establishes its political style. Since agriculture needed protective tariffs due to external competi tion, and industry wanted to feel power behind it in foreign trade and needed a firm hand against socialistic demands on the home

front, even national-liberals finally saw hope in the quick extension

of army and navy, in the strong state. International competition led

to large alliances, the arms race, and the power blocs. The colonial

system, the place in the sun, the inner and external crises produced




in the unconscious of the people's disappointment and resignation, the overcompensating feeling of guilt

- that is all characteristic of

the Wilhelminian epoch. Pessimistic philosophy became the rationalization of disturb

ing conditions in reality. It helped to push the absence of facilita

tions expected by technical progress onto the being of the world, instead of deriving the upcoming disaster out of a state of society in

which technology has grown over the head of man. Philosophical

quietism and fin de siecle-mood fit together well. In contrast to the

Aufk/srer faith in reason and the perfectibility of man, with whom

Schopenhauer shares the atomistic picture of society, he insists on

the senselessness of historical striving, be it in theory or practice, word or deed. And while the well-founded suspicion against his

toric movements, especially glorious ones, is contained in

Schopenhauer's rejection of the philosophy of history, his affirma

tion of the existing is contained in the pronouncement of sense

lessness. In the absence of a sufficient theory of society, however, and above all in the assumption of the practical insignificance of all

results of every creaturely effort, it is difficult to see for whom

Schopenhauer demands quiet and order, and why an independent

philosopher's interest in the maintenance of relations should be

philosophically weightier than a dependent unskilled worker's

interest in the change of such relations. From a strictly logical per

spective, philosophical pessimism is no more consistent with ratio

nal argumentation for the status quo than with propaganda for a

coup. The maintenance, the continuance of an order, in any case

does not leave the order unchanged. The same society that Scho

penhauer wanted to see protected from change finally became,

according to its immanent laws, according to its own concept, a dif

ferent society. The effective defense of this society contributed in its own right to abolishing the peace and exposing the so-called great times in Europe, from which philosophy has always taken flight.

In Schopenhauer's intransigent nominalism in the face of

society, however, lies at the same time the root of his greatness. Just as in nature genera are bare abstractions, he says, "so in the human

race only the individuals and their course of life are real, the



90 MAX HORKHEIMER

nations and their lives are mere abstractions."2 He expressed no

enthusiasm for Rousseauian myth. He denies the existence of the

collective and insists on living individual entities, on man and ani

mal with their needs and passions, their striving after existence

[Dasein] and well-being, and their misery. In the presentation of his

doctrine it has been well noted that he describes the will to happi ness as blind and insatiable. Fewer however have noticed that he

did not measure merely the universe by this happiness, but also the

intelligible order. Kant and Rousseau also saw that in the course of

civilization the welfare of the individual did not improve steadily; it does not appear as the aim of history. Schopenhauer and his suc

cessors however, not to mention university philosophy, have nev

ertheless justified history, have indeed made its justification the

task of comprehensive constructions. Schopenhauer's philosophy on the other hand - and not merely in its practical, but also in its

theoretical part - withheld from reality the honor of embedding it

in a gold-mine of eternity. His rejection of the coup is motivated

neither by the categorical imperative, nor the objective spirit, nor

through a concealed philosophical sense, but rather explicitly by the freedom that he is blessed with by his monetary means and

pension. The fear of being exposed to social reality without means, no less than his gratitude towards the defenders of an order feared

by him, passes no kind sentence over this. The sense of the busi

nessman, which he adopted from his father, the impartiality which

owes itself to the talent of being at home even in other countries

and languages, and educated sobriety have with Schopenhauer become philosophical. Behind the pessimism that let itself be ide

ologically used in the Wilhelminian age, behind the contempt of

contemporary business in all spheres stands the unwavering inter

est in the earthly and otherworldly fate of the individual. Philoso

phy has to take account and because the balance is negative, the

Saint is right in the end. He who bets on the world is deceived.

Through Schopenhauer's mistrust of reform and revolution the

existing is not glorified. The caution of the businessman organizes the innermost ele

ments of his doctrine. The transcendental aesthetic attains such




great meaning in the World as Will and Representation because it

demonstrates the subjectivity of the principle of individuation.

Since space and time do not concern the things in themselves, the

multiplicity of all men and things proves itself to be semblance, just as the effort on behalf of one's own well-being at the expense of

others proves to be a bad investment. The successful one in this

world reckons himself rich on the basis of illusions. The doctrine of

the ideality of pure intuition corrects a mistaken calculation. The

fact that someone will injure the majority for the sake of wealth

and power does not brand him so much a sinner as one who is

bruised, for what he receives is actually nothing. Philosophy exists

so that one isn't made a fool of. Schopenhauer's work is dominat

ed throughout by this instinct, and it is, among all his successors,

passed on unadulterated to Nietzsche.

The characteristics of an enlightened citizen of the eighteenth century come forward more powerfully in the superior, thoroughly cultured style and details than in the conception of the whole. No

linguistic gesture that feigns at depth in order to render meaning lessness and death meaningful by a sleight-of-hand, no theology of

Nothingness, no replacement of the philosophy of history through a historicization of Being, in which the victims do not appear and

the hangmen hide themselves - none of this would be compatible with the clear tone of Schopenhauer's writings. As much as he

maintains the thesis of the unalterability of suffering and nastiness, and as much as he stresses the uselessness of protest, his style forms in equal measure a singular protest against that fact that it is so. The

horror is not to be idolized, and its interpretation into something

positive he regards as wicked. If irreconcilability with the eternal

cycle of disaster is understood as sublimated revenge, then Scho

penhauer was a vindictive philosopher. It is certainly the case that he perceives the negative through the medium of the historical decline of his own social form of existence. Citizens of his kind dis appear. But if general interest in progress for the better can simul

taneously register in the emancipatory literature of a particular social class, in its optimism, then in the philosophy of its downfall, the interest in so-called progress is preserved in its pessimism. The



92 MAX HORKHEIMER

black and white schema of rise and fall does suffice for the social estimation of cultural phenomena.

Where Schopenhauer reports on history, war, crusades, inqui sition, he sounds like Voltaire, for whom he, like Goethe and

Nietzsche, felt the greatest respect. With Voltaire he shares not only the assertiveness with which he rejects free will and theodicy, but also and above all the defense of religion for pragmatic reasons and as a folk-ethics. To be sure, when it is a matter of determining the truth of faith Schopenhauer is far more radical than the determined French theist, whose criticism did not apply at all to religion but to

fanaticism. Both keep to philosophy instead of revelation, but

Schopenhauer sought information about the essence of the world, about this world and the next and claims in no way to miscalcu late. For him, the private man, the question about the fate of the

soul, death, and original innocence lies closer to the center of his

thoughts than for Voltaire, the militant writer, to whom a more just order in this world was closer to his heart. However, the fact that

Schopenhauer brought the same piercing intellect into play in

metaphysics as the Aufkkirer did in worldly criticism, the fact that he considered and dedicated himself to the ultimate things not only

with transparent, logical methods - one only needs to think of the deduction via analogy by which he expanded the perception of the inner sense to the very foundation of his system

- but also with a

cultivated, psychological experience that was free of an employee's fear and equal to that of the great novelists - this unification of

depth and businesslike impartiality made his work the expression of a never again recurring constellation and a key to the history of

philosophy. Just as the Other stands out against its will in Schopenhauer's

dark view of the world, his insistence on the bad society points towards a better one.3 In some places to be sure the passion of

thought strives beyond the verdict of social pessimism. Already in

the first volume of the World as Will and Representation, one fi nds the thought of "Cockaigne,"4 which in an enlightened state could be realized with a truly harmonious order. Of course, he heaps on reasons why it nevertheless doesn't work: the fact that we remain




so distant from this goal, the useless leisure, the boredom that must

arise, the private little businesses and finally war and overpopula tion. The thought of societal good is more decisively formulated in

the second volume of the Parerga: "If further progress at the same

rate is made in the development of machinery, the result after time

may be that the efforts of human labor will be almost entirely saved, just as are those of horses to a large extent even now, for we

could, of course, conceive of a certain universality of mental cul ture in the human race which, however, is impossible so long as a

large part thereof must apply itself to heavy physical labor.

Irritability and sensibility in general as well as in particular are

always and everywhere in antagonism just because on and the same vital force underlies both. Further, since artes molliunt mores

[the arts mitigate manners and customs], wars on a large scale and rows or duels on a small will then perhaps disappear entirely from

the world, just as both have now become much rarer. It is not, how

ever, my purpose here to write a Utopia."5 Whatever was not inten

tional is fulfilled more fundamentally by the negative diagnoses than by deviations into the positive. The manner in which those bit ter and humane recognitions were confirmed in most recent histo

ry still exceeds the premonition of the evils that - as is quoted in section 62 of the World as Will and Representation

- "only a bold

imagination can conjure up in the mind."6 At the same time, one

need not think only of the fanaticism, the endless persecutions, and the cruel expulsions and extermination of entire national and reli

gious groups, which Philalethes describes in the Dialogue on

Religion,7 they found their monstrous afterlife in the century of

Hitler and Stalin; it is enough to recall the everyday life of society in countries where the struggle against the poor has been most suc

cessfully carried out. An infinite amount has been achieved; not

merely economic crises, but also the crises of liberal institutions were banished again and again. Schopenhauer's utopian outlook is

all but realized, however the pressure did not give way. In spite of the unimaginable increase of the forces of production, life did not become easier with advancing alleviation. The abating misery --

which, to be sure, still exists in the middle of civilization (in regions



94 MAX HORKHEIMER

like Southern Italy it appears most blatantly), lies not merely as

threat, inside and outside, in the ambush, but the improvement has

created new, ideal and real, burdens.

It would be easy in Schopenhauer's sense to make the present

speak. People multiply quicky, those bound to technological needs

even more quickly. If the number of inhabitants in a country has

doubled since 1900, then at the same time the special types of new

appliances, which the man on the street must acquire, partly because of his occupation, partly because of the indispensable

prestige, have multiplied a thousandfold. The civilizing effect of

such equipment is unmistakable: the progressive abolition of

domestic voluntary work for women, the assimilation of the exis

tence of worker and entrepreneur, the democratization of exis

tence. And civilization is not the opposite of culture, as it was

claimed by the agents of the third Reich, but its prerequisite. The

compulsorily accepted shift of economic energies to the instrument

is also unmistakable. The acquisition of automobiles and radios

becomes indispensable and within reach, the investment in a seri ous private library becomes a rarer and much less rewarding luxu

ry; one learns the summary and conclusion of books on broadcasts

and the press, nuance only counts for the expert. In any case, this

same shift results in the favorable reduction of working hours, but

it can only be converted into leisure to a modest extent. Before the

various instruments of mass-entertainment can fight boredom in

one's free-time (which itself is reduced by the way to and from

work), the maintenance of the apartment and the appliances await, a maintenance that even a well-paid worker must take care of him

self as a result of the rising prices for household work and repairs. Women themselves are pursuing careers. Monthly payments for

these ever more comfortable appliances continue until the appli ances themselves become obsolete and need to be replaced by still more "'comfortable" ones. It is therefore a matter of keeping step with the obligations that each alleviation of labor imposes on us.

The psychic energy that is at the disposal of the individual for per sonal interests is, however, by nature limited, and the great internal

expense that the life of the whole (which reproduces itself without




external compulsion) currently demands of the individual - the

tense attention at work as well as in mechanically transmitted plea sure - requires much of this energy. Perhaps Helvetius was not

wrong, when he connects boredom, which Schopenhauer only views as evil and at best as responsible for superstitions,8 with cor

rect culture, since he sees boredom as the ground of the imagina tion. The boundary between leisure and boredom is blurry; people arrive at neither. In technical civilization, people become so thor

oughly cured of their ponderousness that they forget resistance.

Resistance however is the soul of Schopenhauerian philosophy. His idea of the compensation of progress through fresh suf

fering, in whose execution the representation of the better imposes itself, would today find rich illustrative material, even if one looks

only to the free western countries and closes one's eyes to the need

and terror in the East. As one who spoke disdainfully about smok

ing and of the childlike games of people that require no spiritual exertion, Schopenhauer could wrathfully point to mass-culture

today and its advertisements, which would have found for him their

proper place. But in the - negative -

critique of the present con

dition, in which the structural has absolutely risen in power, he

would have to advance to the recognition that the power and inten

tion of the individual who enters into the whole is as much deter

mined by it as it by the individual. The totality of social relations

currently constitutes itself as a reality with its own lawfulness. It is

the society that produces itself and changes from socially connect

ed individuals and not the individual isolated from society that

grants provision and protection in its particular distribution and

gradation. It is individuals and groups - which always have differ

ent effects depending on their place in society and which fulfill

their function as it arises from the power-play of the whole - and not independent affects and ideas, that form the foundation of the

institutions that are decisive for right and wrong. The whole, in

which the person who is free and independent vis-Ai-vis society reports and slaves away, generates culture and mass-culture, the state of the whole determines the state of language, indeed all intel lectual realms; like the development of organs to experience and



96 MAX HORKHEIMER

advance intellectual realms, the whole causes the rise of technolo

gy and higher life expectancy, the necessary production of

machines and consumer goods, as well as their irrational force. The

superhuman social being is produced by men; without their activ

ity and against its will, it would be able to do nothing, it is only

strong through their power and yet it effects in turn all individuals.

Just as few of the psychological laws are derived from the

social - such attempts to run indulge in superficiality - so are few

of the social laws derived from the psychological. The interplay of

both, like that of individual and society, is in each epoch, indeed

in each historical moment, different. If the psychic mechanisms in

all individuals, taken in isolation, are the same, then they have a

different effect in every different whole. Every general solution

remains abstract, even the pessimistic, if only because practice does not merely depend on truth, but truth depends also on the

actions of man. This is what the doctrine of the primacy of practi cal reason in Kant meant. In the face of his legacy, which is pre served everywhere in Schopenhauer's philosophy, psychologism carries so little standing as the social universalism of every type.

Translated By Todd Cronan

1 Gesammelte Schriften, Band 7: Vortr?ge und Aufzeichnungen, 1949-1973, ed.

Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1985), 43-54.

2 Schopenhauer, S?mtliche Werke, ed. Grisebach, vol. II (Leipzig o.J.), 519.

3 Cf. Heinz Maus, Kritik am Justemi Heu. Eine sozialphilosophishce Studie ?ber

Schopenhauer (Bottrop i. W.), 1940.

4 Schopenahuer, S?mtliche Werke, vol. I, 451.

5 Schopenhauer, S?mtliche Werke, vol. V, 254f.

6 Schopenhauer, S?mtliche Werke, vol. I, 451.

7 Schopenhauer, S?mtliche Werke, vol. V, 372ff.

8 Schopenhauer, S?mtliche Werke, vol. I, 417.



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