The Authoritarian State
Only once, as mentioned before, did Horkheimer break the third command-
ment of the Mosaic Decalogue, and the Kantian prohibition against all wan-
dering into the intelligible dimension of the Thing-in-itself – God, freedom
and immortality – and the Hegelian determinate negation, and named the
totally Other perfect justice. Otherwise, the absolute justice was a projection
of the human mind, and the entirely Other – while existing – was neverthe-
less completely unknown (Horkheimer 1988b). Of course, even the Hebrew
Psalmist had deviated from the third commandment of the Mosaic Law, taken
radically, when, in Psalm 91 he gave God four names in the first two verses:
Elyon, Shaddai, Yahweh and Elohim. Horkheimer ’s mother used to pray
Psalm 91, in Stuttgart, under fascist oppression. Horkheimer ’s parents let the
first verse of Psalm 91 be put on their gravestone in the Jewish Cemetery of
Bern, Switzerland, where they had lived in exile for some time from fascist
Germany. Horkheimer had the second verse of Psalm 91 inscribed on his
gravestone in the same cemetery: “In you, Eternal One, alone I trust.” Obviously,
the Psalmist, who wrote Psalm 91, relaxed somewhat the third command-
ment of the Mosaic Ten Words. Certainly, the critical theorists had radical-
ized the second and the third Commandment of the Decalogue to the extent
that they practically considered the use of any name for the Absolute, or the
totally Other, to be forbidden. Thus they had to pay for it with some com-
promises: be it that Horkheimer called the totally Other perfect justice, or
that he allowed one of the four names of God in Psalm 91, Elohim, to be put
on his gravestone, or that Adorno named the absolutely Non-Identical uncon-
ditional love (Horkheimer 1988b).
Action instead of Patience
According to Horkheimer, it was a vain hope that contemporary debates in
the Church would or could make religion once again the vital reality, it had
been in its beginning (Horkheimer 1985a). Horkheimer was sure that good
will, solidarity with wretchedness and the struggle for alternative Future III,
a better world order, had now thrown off their religious garb once and for
all. The attitude of today’s martyrs was no longer patience, but action. The
martyrs’ goal was no longer their own immortality in the afterlife, but rather
the happiness of the human beings, who would come after them, and for
whom they knew, how to die. According to Horkheimer, good will, the sol-
100 • Rudolf J. Siebert