Negative Notion of the Truth
According to Horkheimer, the critical theorists of society were able to say
what was not true (Horkheimer 1988a:488; Haag 1983). Through this nega-
tive notion of the truth, the critical theorists were able to contribute to – in
Kantian terms – approaching the truth. The critical theory meant an approach
to the truth in so far as it could express what was not true, and thereby implic-
itly that there was a truth. For Horkheimer to say that something was not
true, presupposed that there was something that was true, in spite of the fact
that the critical theorists were not able to know it, not to speak of formulating
it. If this presupposition was disputed, so Horkheimer argued, then the state-
ment that something was not true, was meaningless. For Horkheimer, in these
thought processes revealed itself the affinity of philosophy and art. It was the
task of the artist to express the truth. But while the philosopher expressed
the truth on the level of the notion, the artist could do this only in a notion-
less language, e.g., in music. Maybe, so Horkheimer argued, then truth could
express itself also through religion and ethics, shortly, through the right life.
But the truth cannot be grasped through art, religion or life in the way of the
notion, as for example, Hegel tried to do in his dialectical philosophy. For
Horkheimer, what was accessible to man was all relative and transitory as
he himself. But, so Horkheimer insisted, in the concepts of the relative and
the transitory and the finite, were contained the notions of their opposites:
the Absolute, the Intransitory, the Infinite – the totally Other, the Truth.
Secularized Messianism
According to Horkheimer, Marxism had often been called secularized Mes-
sianism, and that rightly so (Horkheimer 1988a:491). Marxism, so Horkheimer
explained, is grounded in the longing for the We want to be happy on earth.
This longing was then represented as alternative Future III – the good soci-
ety, in which freedom and justice were realized. The critical theory had to do
with Marxism only in so far as it shared its longing for alternative Future III.
However, according to Horkheimer, the critical theory of society was guided
by another decisive Jewish thought: You shall not make yourself a carved image
(Horkheimer and Adorno 1969:23–24; Horkheimer 1988a:491). Horkheimer
inversed and translated this Jewish religious thought into the modern secu-
lar language: You cannot say anything about the Absolute. For Horkheimer, that
statement was identical with the prohibition of Kant that the thought was
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