after having become their student, von Friedeburg converted from the tra-
ditional German nationalism and militarism of his parents and ancestors to
the critical theory of society. Not for nothing Horkheimer often compared, in
the last years of his life, particularly during the third student movement, the
critical theorists with the Jewish initiators of Christianity, who had likewise
been misunderstood and had suffered much. In any case, the critique of late
capitalist society out of the longing and the hope for the totally Other obvi-
ously has its high price. Discipleship – religious or secular – is costly.
God-Hypostases
For the critical theorists, in this longing for the entirely Other as perfect jus-
tice or as unconditional love, the God-hypostases of the past world-religions
and philosophies were concretely superseded (Hegel 1986m). The notion of
the totally Other not only negated critically, but also preserved, elevated, and
fulfilled not only the notion of the Infinite or Infinity, but also that of the
Thing-in-itself, the Absolute, the Unconditional, the Ultimate Reality, the
Transcendent, the Truth, the Eternity, the Beauty, the Summum Bonum,
the Divine, the Idea, Reason, Providence, Wisdom, Infinite Power, shortly,
the Theological, in terms of the absolutely Non-Identical or New, which does
not only transcend the traditional world religions, dead or alive, but also the
secular modernity, which has tried to neutralize or liquidate them (Hegel
1986k; Horkheimer 1970). In this sense, the critical theory is truly post-mod-
ern. While in 1970 Horkheimer could no longer remember exactly who had
used the notion of the totally Other first, he or Adorno, in 1971, two years
before his death, Horkheimer was certain that it stemmed from Adorno and
not from himself. In any case, precisely that notion of the totally Other was
the very content of the negative and inverse cipher theology which Benjamin
and Adorno had initiated explicitly on the Island of Ibiza and which Hork-
heimer accepted implicitly (Adorno 1970a). It does not really matter who first
formed the notion of the inverse theology, Adorno or Benjamin, or who artic-
ulated first the concept of the longing for the totally Other, Horkheimer or
Adorno. It is important only that all three critical theorists shared explicitly
or implicitly the notion of the inverse theology of the entirely Other and that
it permeated their different versions of the critical theory of society, and that
it motivated them to reach beyond the modern dichotomy between the reli-
gious and the secular.
102 • Rudolf J. Siebert