The critical theory of society is the most intense secular consciousness and
awareness of this need for future-orientated remembrance and redemption
out of the deepest religious roots in the present transition from the modern
to the postmodern paradigm or constellation of human history: the longing
for the totally Other and the rescue of the hopeless (Habermas 2002; Mendieta
2005; Küng 1991; 1994; 2004).
F. Conclusion: Truth?
In 1967, six years before his death, Horkheimer stated that, without faith in
God, every friendliness carried the stamp of meaninglessness (Horkheimer
1988a:369; Ott 2001). Also, without faith in God, the notion of truth had no
meaning.
The Effort of Thinking
According to Horkheimer, Adorno went even further and said that, without
a God, thinking was meaningless: everything else had been finished for a
long time or was without interest. At that time – 1967 – Adorno was still alive
and thus could have objected: but he did not. In Horkheimer ’s view, with-
out faith in God, men and women fell back behind the Middle Ages, if not
even behind Antiquity and what Karl Jaspers had called the axis – time:
shortly, into utter barbarism. Also, for Bloch, thinking meant transcending
(Horkheimer 1988a:369). In Horkheimer ’s view, for the positivists the notion
of the truth was as much a superstition as the notion of God. But then, for
Horkheimer, the question arose: why should one still make the effort to think
in so far as one did not deal with purely pragmatic goals? Horkheimer ’s
answer was: out of despair. For the positivists, there was no Other, for which
the mere functioning or the usefulness for some practical purposes was no
measure. An ideology like positivism, did not presuppose the notion of truth,
but only the concept of harmony. All that has been true, particularly also for
positivistic sociology in the tradition of Max Weber or Emil Dürkheim. In
Horkheimer ’s perspective, it had been the error of Kant and Schopenhauer,
that they concluded, unlike Hegel, with the same categories, which belonged
to the world of appearances, to something beyond the phenomena.
106 • Rudolf J. Siebert