Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory 367ing for the students.’^2 Jürgen Habermas recollects a further ritual that
formed a standing feature of the Kant and Hegel seminars: Horkheimer’s
attempt to upstage Adorno. He frequently came half an hour late to the
seminar, sat down next to Adorno and got him to give an account of the
discussion up to that point. Horkheimer then as a rule felt it incumbent
on himself to put forward a counter-thesis to Adorno’s difficult dialectic
interpretation. Although this was often much simpler, Adorno would
instantly adopt it: ‘Exactly, that’s just what I think, Max.’ Those present
found it hard to accept Adorno’s opportunistic behaviour, but many,
especially among the younger members of the institute, disapproved
much more of Horkheimer’s superior attitude. Adorno was regarded as
much the more original thinker and also as the person who was respons-
ible for dealing with institute business and the research projects. Oskar
Negt, for example, who came to Frankfurt in the mid-1950s, took note
of ‘the play-acting element in Horkheimer’s thinking’, while Adorno
was a man ‘who thought while he talked’.^3
In his lectures, there were only two occasions when Adorno turned
his attention to sociological questions. In the summer semester of 1960,
he gave a course of lectures on ‘Philosophy and Sociology’ which in a
number of respects anticipated arguments that appeared later in ‘The
Positivist Dispute’ and also his criticism of Émile Durkheim’s Essays on
Sociology and Philosophy.^4 His last course of lectures, in the summer
semester 1968, bore the title ‘Introduction to Sociology’.^5
Even though lectures on sociological topics were something of an
exception, Adorno did in fact teach sociology from the mid-1950s on.
This took the form of weekly seminars for sociology students, and the
atmosphere there was felt to be far less elitist and tense than in the
philosophy seminars. Adorno was always at pains to transmit a socio-
logical way of thinking by analysing specific social phenomena and
by endeavouring to make them comprehensible in a lively manner. A
knowledge of the history of sociological thought was presupposed.
The emphasis was placed on the analysis of contemporary society, its
classes and stratification, and its social conflicts. Alongside the ‘classics’
of sociology, such as Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte,
Émile Durkheim, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Max Weber, etc., there
was an ongoing preoccupation with the logic of the social sciences
and the relationship between social theory and social research. But, as
Adorno emphasized in his seminars from the outset, what sociology
is cannot be laid down by any precise conceptual definition, nor can it
be reduced to a single scientific methodology, but can only be learnt ‘by
doing it’.^6
Adorno’s open-mindedness and the broad spectrum of his interests
encouraged his contact with Arnold Hauser, the sociologist of art and
culture of Hungarian origin who had been teaching art history at the
University of Leeds since 1951. He was invited to give a talk at the
institute in January 1954. This talk led to a friendship between him