the attempt to overcome the causes of human suffering. The consciousness
of shared suffering and the solidarity that it can produce is the catalyst for
what Horkheimer (1970:56) called the “original human interest” to create a
better, more reconciled future society.
According to Horkheimer, the secret motivation of Marxist thought was
this “compassion” for the innocent victims of the capitalist class antagonisms.
Marxism’s compassion is generally not acknowledged because it can become
subjectively privatized and turned into a substitute, e.g., charity, instead of
the class conscious, concrete revolutionary praxis for a more just, merciful,
rational, good, free and reconciled future society. It is from this conscious-
ness of shared suffering and the finitude of all worldly things that the radi-
calized religious notion of the Infinite One or totally Other is understood and
expressed by Horkheimer.
Absolute Abandonment
The notion of the totally Other thereby preserves the harsh reality of human-
ity’s unalterable abandonment and prevents the creation of any social power
or form of knowledge from being made into a new theistic, bourgeois civil
religion of consolation or salvation. Such a religion – and its theoretical devel-
opment as in the Rational Choice Theory of religion – has the capability of
not only distracting humanity from the truth of its ultimate aloneness, a dis-
traction which thereby eviscerates even the possibility of such human soli-
darity as a power of social change, but also functions socially to legitimate
if not anoint the systematically produced social antagonisms that further cre-
ate the fragmentation, isolation, suffering and horror of humanity.
As Horkheimer repeatedly states throughout his writings, humanity has
no knowledge of God, whose existence, thereby, cannot be proven. Not even
the consciousness of humanity’s abandonment in finitude can be used in a
reverse manner to prove the existence of God. Quite the contrary, the expe-
rience and knowledge of human suffering makes the belief in Christianity’s
theodicy of an all-loving and almighty God most unbelievable. All that can
be brought about by such a consciousness of the natural and socio-historical
negativity is a longing for such a totally Other than what is that can thereby
become a revolutionary motivation in both theory and praxis for the creation
of a more reconciled future society. The consciousness or knowledge of the
abandonment of humanity is possible only with the thought and hope of
The Notion of the Totally “Other” • 139