[FRA:] critical theory syllabus reviewed

[Ralph Dumain]

A couple months ago I requested recommendations for texts for a local, 
informal, introductory reading group on critical theory.  We were thinking 
of beginning with these texts:

Max Horkheimer's "Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937)

and

Herbert Marcuse, "Philosophy and Critical Theory," (1937).

Since then, I received recommendations (and some disrecommendations) for 
these works:

primary sources:

Max Horkheimer, "The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks 
of an Institute for Social Research" (1931)

Dialectic of Enlightenment, Chapter 1

Adorno, Minima Moralia

Adorno, "Aldous Huxley and Utopia"

Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (first part)

secondary sources:

Martin Jay, _The Dialectical Imagination_

Held's _Origins of Critical Theory_

Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School

Hullot-Kentor's "Right Listening and a New Type of Human Being" from "The 
Cambridge Companion to Adorno"

other thinkers:

Kant
Hegel
Marx
Freud

Also suggested were thematic approaches, e.g. technology.  On the 
socialization of professionals, I thought of Jeff Schmidt's DISCIPLINED MINDS.

Since this initial round of inquiries I acquired two companion volumes from 
MIT Press:

Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings
Max Horkheimer; Translated by G.Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer and 
John Torpey

On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives
ed. Seyla Benhabib, Wolfgang Bonss, John McCole

I've been reading selections from these books over the past month (and from 
an entirely different perspective, the logical empiricist perspective 
according to Philipp Frank, whose essays I've been putting up on my web 
site).  I'll report on these books in more detail later.  I love some of 
Horkheimer's essays from the 1930s.  I'd like to add a couple of them to my 
"syllabus," esp. "The Rationalism Debate in Contemporary Philosophy" from 
the former volume.  This, together with essays in _Critical Theory:
Selected Essays_, comprise Horkheimer's best work, from the 1930s.   The 
ECLIPSE OF REASON doesn't compare.

I also find this material by and about Horkheimer to be very dense, 
requiring careful exegesis.  This also reminds me of the problem of 
prerequisites.  How to approach this material without a prior grounding in 
Kant, Hegel, and Marx at the very least, plus perhaps Freud.  Schopenhauer, 
Nietzsche?

I'll have more to say about Horkheimer, but in the meantime, I'm open to 
further recommendations.