Abstract

Abstract“What we call meaning is bound to vanish”: Under this heading, an interview with Max Horkheimer was published in Der Spiegel (Jan 5, 1970). Revisiting this interview, the article focuses on Horkheimer’s thesis that human beings share the “longing that the injustice which characterizes the world must not be the final word”. It examines the extent to which Horkheimer’s notion of the “desire for the totally other” may be inspired by Kant’s claim that religion is grounded in the “need of practical reason”. A further topic of discussion is Horkheimer’s critical assessment concerning current tendencies toward a “total administration of the world” that may ultimately “reduce thinking to the level of industrial processes”. Relating this critique to Kant’s reflections on the “unbelief of reason (Vernunftunglaube)”, which is based on “the maxim of reason’s independence of its own need”, the article raises the question of Horkheimer’s significance today: What relevance does Horkheimer’s method of casting doubt on any “politics that is not based on theology, metaphysics and, of course, morality” have for today’s discourse on such matters? In this context a brief glance is cast at Jürgen Habermas’s post-metaphysical reading of Horkheimer’s “negative theology”. Die Forschung zu diesem Beitrag wurde durch das Russian Academic Excellence Project at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Aleksandra Nevskogo Street 14, 236016 Kaliningrad, Russische Föderation) unterstützt.