and Adorno 1969; Adorno 1997). In Horkheimer ’s view, the positivists did
not know the facts of the true insight and the right action in the emphatic
sense. The positivists did not know that the hate against a decent person and
the deep respect toward a base and mean individual were not only in the
face of social morality, but also, before the truth, wrong impulses and feel-
ings. They were not only ideologically blameworthy, but they were as a mat-
ter of fact, objectively factually wrong experiences and reactions, no matter
if they achieved a purpose or not. From the standpoint of positivism, no
moral politics could be derived. In a purely positive scientific, or scientistic
perspective, hate was, in spite of all social-functional differentiation, not worse
than love. For positivism there was no logically cogent justification, reason-
ing or argumentation for why somebody should not hate, if doing so brought
him social advantages: Jews in fascist Germany, or African Americans in the
old or new Confederacy. The positivist can say in the sense of George Orwell
or Aldous Huxley that war is as good or as bad as peace; freedom is as good
or as bad as slavery and oppression; truth is as good or as bad as lies (Adorno
1997:97–122). Orwellian lies about weapons of mass destruction lead to the
second Iraq war. What Dachau, Gulago, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, etc.,
have in common in spite of all differences, is the fact that they are all bar-
barous expressions of a positivistic trend toward alternative Future I – the
entirely administered society, and alternative Future II – the totally milita-
rized society aiming at total war. The tortured victims could care less if their
pain, if their torturers were motivated by black, red or brown fascism, neo-
conservatives, or neo-liberalism.
Heaven and Hell
Horkheimer argued that the positivists still depended on heaven and hell.
They allied themselves with religion. Even the most positivistically orien-
tated universities in Europe and America still have chapels and chaplains
and religion or theology departments. Even the SS employed Christian chap-
lains during World War II and carried belts saying: God with us! As Herbert
Marcuse discovered already in the 1950s and 1960s, the academic promotion
of religion fell only too often in line with the predominant positivistic trend
in antagonistic civil society (Marcuse 1962:65–66). The positivistic-scientistic
attitude was unable to liberate the repressed and transfigured critical and
revolutionary content of religion (Marcuse 1962:65–66). In some positivistic
sociology departments, religion is considered to be good, i.e., eufunctional,
Toward a Dialectical Sociology of Religion • 73