La ragione prima dell’eclisse: Società borghese e teoria critica in Horkheimer nei saggi degli anni ’30 e dei primi anni ’40

The article examines Max Horkheimer’s reflections on the concept of reason as they developed in the 1930s, and dwells on the article Vernunft und Selbsterhaltung, which in the early 1940s paved the way for the well-known critical examination of Western reason in Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944, 1947) and Eclipse of Reason (1947). The article shows that Horkheimer’s exploration of the meaning of the term “concept” is at the heart of the Frankfurt programme of the 1930s (interdisciplinary materialism and critical social theory) and dialogues intensely with the West’s great philosophical tradition.