Assignment 4: Max Horkheimer-The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari

“Self-awareness in contemporary society is directly connected with belonging to some collectivity: to an age group or vocational group, and ultimately to the nation. The divergence between individual and group that is now disappearing continues to show up among stunted individuals, criminals, and people who can assert themselves only by opposition to everything else.”  Max Horkheimer  Feudal Lord, Customer, and Specialist.

Max Horkheimer was born on the 14^th February, 1895 in Stuttgart, Germany.  He was a director of the Frankfurt School and very influential in most of the social and cultural research in line with the understanding of capitalism. He was a philosopher and social scientist. He was greatly influenced by Karl Marx works even though he analyzed the contemporary society in his own way. Some of his books are: Dialectic of Enlightenment  (in 1944 when he collaborated with his colleague Theordor Adorno), Towards a New Manifesto, Eclipse of Reason in 1947, Critique of Instrumental Reason, Between Philosophy and Social Science among others. He did a great job trying to enlighten society how working class are only part of the production process that would never be a tool for the social change needed. And he thought, only great ideas and theories could liberate society. He died in Nurremburg, Germany on July, 7, 1973.

I think his ideas could relate to the film we screened and to today’s mass culture.  The film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” depicts the exact character of Caligari when Max Horkheimer said in his quote that “stunted individuals, criminals, and people who can assert themselves only by opposition to everything else.” This is true in a sense that, Calagari epitomizes himself as those criminals in the society who do not really recognize their sense of belonging to particular community, and could harm others without even thinking about the consequences of their actions. Such people are almost always impeding the progresses of its community or even nations at large. We saw how Caligari was conniving with Cesare to achieve their diabolical agendas knowing that such social vices as killing or murdering would only cause social stagnation and put fear among citizens of that particular society. But they both never cared even when they were seriously causing chaos and mayhem to the place they were known to belong.

     And in today’s mass culture, Max Horkheimer ideas or quote can still relate.  For instance, when people in a particular association, company, community, or society see themselves us one people, there is always harmonious living amongst them and there is a sense of responsibility in coming together to defend themselves. They see themselves as one people with common purpose. Typical example of the nation coming together was the recent ‘Boston Marathon bombing’ that saw the police and military officers going after the bomber/fugitive.