The linguistic turn in the early Frankfurt School: Horkheimer and Adorno

Was there a “linguistic turn” in Frankfurt School Critical Theory before Habermas’s “communications-theoretical” one? Might later Wittgenstein and the early Frankfurt School have adopted similar pictures of language? I propose that both questions should be answered affirmatively, with a special focus on Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason. Other commentators have sought to bring later Wittgenstein into conversation with the Frankfurt School, but mostly to criticise Horkheimer and Adorno. In contrast, I argue that, thanks to the picture of language the latter share with (later) Wittgenstein, we can reconstruct their theory in a way that renders it more defensible. Insofar as the human life form and language are inseparable, language can be an inextinguishable reservoir of what Horkheimer called “objective reason”. Recognising this allows us to answer Habermas’s critique of Horkheimer and Adorno as committing a performative contradiction in their (purportedly) totalising critique of modern rationality. Moreover, paying attention to this inseparableness can enable us to engage in disclosive social critique. By considering as example the current debates around sustainability, I show how becoming forgetful of this inseparableness can blind us to dependency relations in meaning and how this can have pernicious effects on how public debates are framed and conducted.