Paper in an international conference: “Freud and the Present: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Culture” (Riga, 18–19 May 2019)
Max Horkheimer, the founder of the so-called “Frankfurt School” (of sociology), characterised Marxian social theory in 1937 as a new science of institutional criticism, which concentrates, unlike the natural sciences and humanities, on the analysis of their matrix, civil society, as a transitory social formation. Freudian theory also implies criticism of individual and collective institutions that have become obsolete. For a long time, following Freud’s “self-misunderstanding” (J. Habermas), it has been misjudged as natural science. In terms of intellectual history, both forms of criticism belong to the tradition of Schelling and Ludwig Feuerbach as critics of Hegel’s idealism.
