Denouncing Idols: A Philosophical Task

Abstract

The guiding question is to indicate relations between the theme of the absence or suppression of individualities and the emergence of idols. Among the many cases that the history of philosophy holds, here are given reasons for assuming that Arthur Schopenhauer and Max Horkheimer is two examples of philosophical denunciations of idolatry and fanaticism. The symmetries in the way that thinkers deal with the issue are made possible not only by the surgical and original reading that the father of Critical Theory does of Schopenhauer, but also, and especially, by the Horkheimerian assertion that “Schopenhauer’s doctrine has meant at present by denouncing idols ruthlessly”. From Schopenhauer, the criticism of the absence of individuality, the banality and the in-difference of “ordinary men”. From Horkheimer, the concern with forms of social atomization that, when they arise, necessarily threaten and suppress all that can be called proper and genuine.