580 Notes to pp. 376–377
Enlightenment, the participants also had the opportunity to discuss a central
text from the period before the return from exile. There was constant talk
about Marx, the Marxist tradition, the history of the workers’ movement
and the theoretical problems of critical theory. Marx’s theory set the stand-
ard by which to judge other sociological theories’ (Alex Demirovic, Der
nonkonformistische Intellektuelle, p. 477).
42 According to Demirovic, these objections were based on the claim that
the study had relied on ‘too narrow a link between politics, democracy
and education’. This had led to talk of a ‘political society’. In a letter to
Adorno, Horkheimer asked, ‘If it is the case that the nation is “imprisoned
in a bourgeois society by the shackles of a liberal constitution and the rule
of law”, how is it to make the transition to a so-called political society
for which it is “long-since ready”, according to Habermas, if not by the
use of force? Such statements in the research report of an institute that is
financed out of the public funds of this shackling society are impossible’
(Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 447); see Demirovic, Der
nonkonformistische Intellektuelle, p. 257ff.
43 Jürgen Habermas, Student und Politik, p. 44.
44 Abendroth gave his talks within the framework of an internal institute
lecture series on ‘Politics and Sociology’. See the letter from Adorno to
Abendroth, 14 November 1957, Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt
am Main (Br 1/15); Abendroth, Antagonistische Gesellschaft und politische
Demokratie.
45 Jürgen Habermas, Student und Politik, p. 156.
46 This agreement can be seen in his letter to Horkheimer, 15 March
1960, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek,
Frankfurt am Main. See also Demirovic, Der nonkonformistische
Intellektuelle, p. 253ff.
47 See Horkheimer’s letter to Adorno, 27 September 1958, Horkheimer,
Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 437ff. Adorno’s marginal comments on the
original letter in the Theodor W. Adorno Archive make it clear that he
by no means shared Horkheimer’s general settling of accounts with
Habermas’s Marxist position as that had been expounded in his report
on the literature ‘Zur philosophischen Diskussion um Marx und den
Marxismus’, in Habermas, ‘Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as
Critique’, in Theory and Practice, p. 195ff.
48 Adorno to Horkheimer, 15 March 1960, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive,
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
49 See René Görtzen, ‘Habermas: Bi(bli)ographische Bausteine’, p. 543ff.
50 Adorno’s artistic and academic interests were so extensive that he tended
to accept very many invitations to conferences, discussion forums and
congresses. In addition to those already mentioned – the Darmstädter
Gespräche and the legendary Summer Courses for New Music – he took
part, for example, in the Forum on Art in Baden-Baden in summer 1959
where the topic discussed was ‘Is Modern Art being “Managed”?’ Or,
in 1967, he attended the ‘Rencontres internationales de Genève’, which
addressed the subject of ‘Art in Society Today’. See Adorno, ‘Vorschlag
zur Ungüte’, GS, vol. 10.1, p. 330; ‘Die Kunst und die Künste’, GS,
vol. 10.1, p. 432; see also Jutta Held, ‘Adorno und die kunsthistorische
Diskussion der Avantgarde vor 1968’.