Forms of Life in Max Horkheimer

In her book Kritik von Lebensformen Rahel Jaeggi adopts the “form of life” notion as the main framework needed for problematizing capitalism as a social whole rather than as a mere economic system. Jaeggi explicitly refers to Adorno insofar as she does not elaborate or propose a substantial model of the good life, but rather insists on what does not work in our forms of life. But there are also interesting references to Horkheimer in her work. For example, in the fourth part of Kritik von Lebensformen, Jaeggi mentions a passage from Horkheimer’s essay “Traditional and Critical Theory”, in which the expression “forms of life” appears: “In the transition from the present form of society to a future one human beings will for the first time constitute themselves as conscious subjects and actively determine their own ‘forms of life’ [ihre eigenen Lebensformen]” (M. Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory”, trans. by M. J. O’Connell, Critical Theory. Selected Essays, New York, Continuum, 2002, pp. 188-243: 233). According to Jaeggi, Horkheimer uses this expression without any particular conceptual intention, but his description of the tasks that people would have to accomplish in order to make the transition to the future society, has an emancipatory potential (R. Jaeggi, Critique of Forms of Life, Cambridge, MA-London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018, p. 312). In Jaeggi’s view, this intuition could be rephrased by stating that a form of life can be considered profitable and flourishing when it is based on processes of collective self-determination . My paper aims to explore the meanings of the term “forms of life” (“Lebensformen”) in Horkheimer’s essays and the theoretical role it plays in his project of a critical theory of society developed over the 1930s. On the one hand, Horkheimer considers forms of life as patterns of conduct and habits that are constituted within the framework of specific relations of production: they are accompanied by certain psychic traits and particular behaviours, and do not seem to be shaped intentionally by individuals. On the other hand, the German philosopher uses the term “form of life” to refer to culture and its proper domains (customs, art, religion, philosophy), which, interwoven with each other, constitute forces capable of preserving or breaking up a given social form. But – taking into account the positions of Marx and Engels on the relationship between economic structure and cultural superstructure – by “form of life” he also means the result of the interrelations between the material processes of a society and the development of cultural relations which influence the institutions and the particular characters of men. Furthermore, in my paper I show, from the Horkheimerian perspective, how important it is to develop the emancipatory potential of the forces of rupture that work on forms of life involving social inequality and generalised suffering – such as modern bourgeois society. Transforming a form of life is indeed possible, but it requires that men – men trained in theory – consciously and collectively appropriate their role as producers of the whole of their historical forms of life. To put it another way, it is a question of resolving the antinomy of passivity and activity inscribed on the very heart of the bourgeois economic system, according to which “the activity of society is blind and concrete, that of individuals abstract and conscious” (M. Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory”, p. 200). Therefore, the scope and importance of theoretical work appear to be fundamental: by breaking the fixed order of society, as well as the compartmentalisation of specialised knowledge that does not question its historical and social underpinnings, critical theory proposes to unleash the emancipatory power that nestles in the bourgeois-capitalist way of life.