Sociology 319
March 9, 2000
1. Dates for Major Critical Theorists
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)
Theodor Adorno (1903-1969)
Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
Jurgen Habermas (1929- )
2. Characteristics of the Authoritarian Personality (Horkheimer and Adorno)
- Conventionalism. Rigid adherence to conventional, middle class attitudes.
- Authoritarian Submission
. Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.
- Authoritarian Aggression
. Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.
- Anti-intraception
. Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tenderminded.
- Superstitions and Stereotyty
. The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories.
- Power and ‘Toughness’
. Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and t
oughness.
- Destruction and Cynicism
. Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
- Projectivity
. The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
- Sex
. Exaggerated concern with sexual ‘goings-on.’
From Douglas Kellner. 1989. Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity.
Oxford: Polity Press, p. 116
Last edited on November 24, 2004.
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