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In this communication, I will concentrate on some aspects of the relationship between Max

Weber and Max Horkheimer in his writings of the 1930s. In fact, this relationship could be

extrapolated beyond this period. The sociology of Weber continues to play a prominent role in the

conceptualization of Horkheimer. For example, the concept of disenchantment of the world

(Entzauberung der Welt) is identified in Dialectic of Enlightenment as the project of enlightenment;

in Eclipse of reason, the concepts of subjective and objective reason were relationated with the

concepts of rationality from Weber. However, at the moment, I believe it is important to highlight

the questions of the 30s.

“Traditional and Critical Theory”, Weber's sociology is among the currents of thought that

understand theory in its traditional sense. His concept of objective possibility carries the scientific

model of the natural sciences to the historical and sociological interpretation. Disregarding or

ignoring any reflection on its relationship to the social process, the science so conceivedaccommodates itself to the bias of its paper in the current context of the division of labor. By

deductions based on mathematical operations, traditional science believed to be in possession of

knowledge that could open access to world order. However, contents itself with the unordered set of

irrational facticities that appears to the immediate observation. Although traditional thinking is

inseparable from the actual technical progress of the capitalist era and its mode of operation

imagines itself as eternal, it no longer represents the actual function and neither does the current

science for human existence, because to do so, science should impregnate itself with the interest in a

rational society.

To better understand this criticism, I should briefly address some methodological aspects of

weberian sociology. Therefore, I would like to address the necessary conditions to think about the

causal attribution in the sciences that deal with social life, according to Weber.

As a first step, we must distinguish systematically the problems related to the causal

relationship between particular historical fact and action of concrete men of questions about the

meaning in terms of ethical responsibility. It is necessary a reflection contrasting conditions

historically available and appropriate to the aims and objectives pursued by agents. Not to mark any

appreciation of personalities and cultural phenomena, but rather to understand the action of the

actors in the socio-historical context in which they occur.

The sciences of culture retrospectively accompany the tour traced by agents. According to

the knowledge about the external conditions around him, the agent ponders what paths lead to the

desired future. Ideally, he introduces a causal link to ensure that, among the various possible

developments, he can ensure expected results. In turn, the researcher part of a more advantageous

situation. Already aware of subsequent events, he must choose among the numerous phenomena

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and historical events, facts and decisive causal determinants that accomplished such a constellation.

By this way, the scientist finds the set of possible actions which the agent faces. The greater the

degree of clarity about the objectives and appropriate means for the implementation of a specific

historical action - as it is more immune to physical and psychological coercion and to the affects

that disturb judgment about the well-balanced equation between means and goals – the social action

becomes more understandable to the scientific interpretation.

Fully rational action would be perfect transparency to the analyst. Deduction of subsequent

events is considered in a line of continuity in which the rationality of action plays an essential role.

The possibilities of effecting the course of social action are increasing to the extent that agents

behave in such manner.

In this sense, the notions of rationality of action and subjective freedom relate internally in

Weber's sociology. The statements that claim to equate the notion of freedom to any kind of irrationality or incalculably of human conduct are vigorously opposed by his sociology. Essentially

marked by the absence of objective determinations and eternally subject to setbacks of historical

contingency, individuals are only able – and only precariously – to overcome the blind random

mundane when they introduce a universe of values in their actions and their social relationships. For

more unstable they are, these bonds also respond to the demands of internal logical consistency and

lack of contradiction. Only in this way, agents are able to conform their destiny according to the

rationality derived from the aspiration for a particular goal.

It is interesting to analyze the positions of Horkheimer. Horkheimer also believes that

knowledge in the social sciences would offer, in principle, more reliable results than the

investigation of natural processes. If they are not, if sociology has to deal repeatedly with the

contradictions between its theoretical assertions and the course of societies, this deficiency is not

linked to a lack of intellectual ability. In fact, it is the expression of a contraction that characterizes

the existing forms of sociability. The antagonism between individuals and society, whose form of

expression is changed historically, obstructs the legitimate scientific aspirations for future events.

To enable it to secure predictions, the social order itself should be at the mercy of choices that are

not confused with prosaic equation between means and ends. The reason and social life will become

transparent only to the extent that men no longer act as members of an irrational body. Only when it

exceeds the limits imposed by the capitalist mode of production and social life be transformed as a

result of conscious spontaneity of free individuals. While the economy continues to multiple

immanently crises and exacerbates social contrasts and differences, the harmony between

sociological theory and social events will be always precarious and inauthentic.

Precarious, because modern societies are not organized by a substantive rationality. The

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administration of the economy and politics, the formation of individuals, the establishment and

operation of cultural spheres, all the moments that make up the totality of collective life suffer

equally from the inconsistencies of what was constituted by capitalist modernity as formally

rational. In describing the plot of this ratio, traditional sociology can capture – and sometimes with

great insight - certain essential elements of those societies. However, it is routinely surprised by

phenomena that do not behave according to the parameters imagined by its concepts.

Inauthentic, because the assumption of eventual convergence between theory and

empiricism is the illegitimacy of society to assume the active role of the subject. Although covered

with wandering and numerous blind spots, such harmony is not a simple metaphysical coincidence,

but arises from a false social base. An unconscious consortium of social practices and economic

activities promotes the synthesis of common experience to all individuals. The same disposition by

which society confronts nature is rediscovered in the offices and university laboratories. The socialwork determines the object of science and the knowing subject. The appearance of universality is

increased by the most banal subjective perception. The men are surrounded by goods everywhere

and they attenuate the human imagination with a reality formed by industries, administrative

agencies and departments entertainment.

However, this correspondence of everyday perception does not remove fully the

contradictory character of the whole. The old liberal illusion that isolated individuals, to pursue the

realization of their selfish interests, maintain social life in reasonable parameters of civility no

longer convinces anyone else. If that were not enough, the decline of the liberal period adds to set

an even higher degree of irrationality. The dynamic that accumulates material wealth and political

power is also responsible for the sterility of recent times. Under capitalist conditions, the work

continues to produce not only goods, but also the reality that enslaves increasingly, threatening all

humanity with poverty and violence.

This contradictory harmony, at same time, allows the traditional science to legitimize its

operations and results and it is the mark of their untruth. Although we should not abandon

traditional scientific practices, it is urgent to recognize and overcome its bias. The question is not

limited to restrict or eliminate the improprieties of a particular scientific method, but the peculiarity

of the very reason that grounds it.

Thus, it can be said that Weber saw where the necessary conditions for the exercise of

sociology as an empirical science, and at the same time, grounded freedom and human autonomy

corresponds to Horkheimer the peculiar contortions heteronomy of a subject illegitimate. It is

interesting to note that within the weberian sociology, this association between the rationality of

action and human freedom can be read from a contradictory outcome. Thus, it's possible to say that

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where Weber imagined the conditions to ground the sociology as empirical science and, at the same

time, the human liberty and autonomy, for Horkheimer it would correspond to the contradictions of

heteronomy from the working of an irrational mechanism. The large historical process that

culminated at the modern societies, developed the highest degree of formal rationality, and

emancipated the scientific knowledge and the cultural productions from religious moorings,

paradoxically, condemned the humanity to the more inscrutable fate. In The Protestant ethic and

the spirit of capitalism:

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when

asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate

worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic

order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine

production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this

mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible

force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In

Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like

a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment”. But fate decreed that the cloak

should become an iron cage.

It is precisely this problem that Horkheimer proposes to elucidate – modern societies have

become a fatality. It should not continue to be accepted as natural and not remain incomprehensible.

Certain aspects of cultural spheres, which promise to maintain the cohesive whole contradictory,

conduct their work. To overcome this situation, cultural aspects that foster resignation behaviors

should not continue with the final word. The culture, this complex group of elements that can act in

the maintenance or dissolution of social systems, is the battleground. According to Horkheimer, the

necessary conditions to create an emancipated society, culturally differentiated and harmonic are

promoting its progressive aspects, to guide its procedures substantially rational and to discuss

critically everything that seems to be natural and unquestionable. In “On the problem of truth”:

But domination over nature is not exercised according to a unified plan and

purpose, but merely serves as an instrument for individuals, groups, and nations which use

it in their struggle against one another and, as they develop it, at the same time reciprocally

circumscribe it and bend it to destructive ends. Thus, the bearers of this spirit, with their

critical capacity and their developed thinking, do not really become masters but are driven

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by the changing constellations of the general struggle which, even though summoned up by

men themselves, face them as incalculable forces of destiny. This seemingly necessary

dependence, which increasingly bears fruit in disruptive tensions and crises, general misery

and decline, becomes for the greatest part of humanity an incomprehensible fate

However, are they sufficient to make western reason and society into something truly

rational? The confidence in the supposedly progressive elements of the reason – and of the culture

in general – is enough to overcome its regressive elements? The course of history seems to have

denied that progressive potential of reason. A society in which human slaughterhouses, designed

rationally and with industrial efficiency, needs analysis even more radical. Face blindness caused by

what should illuminate, the simple contrast – sometimes dualistic – between certain progressive

aspects with many other so retrograde of reason – and also of capitalist societies – does not seem to

have the necessary critical capacity. The western reason – as human organ of domination over

nature - relates dialectically these moments: myth is enlightenment and enlightenment is myth.

However, these are questions I should deal with at another time.

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