About this episode

This episode reviews the Frankfurt School's influence on modern thought and the misconceptions surrounding their contributions.

The philosophers of the Frankfurt School practiced a technique called negative dialectics, where concepts are defined as much by what you can't say about them as what you can . Appropriately, the Frankfurt School has ended up defined by what you can't say about them. You can't say that they invented a new form of left-wing thought called Cultural Marxism. This would be (according to Wikipedia) the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory , a "far right anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that misinterprets Western Marxism, especially the Frankfurt School, as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics, and political correctness". You're not supposed to dub them a transitional stage between Communism and postmodernism. You're not allowed to speculate that a lot of the academic humanities, as they're practiced today, descend from the Frankfurt School's brand of critical theory. You're not supposed to think of them as the point where the muscular pro-technology leftism of the early 1900s shattered into the pessimistic degrowth leftism of the present. Art is long, life is short. Most of us only manage to not do a few things in our limited span on Earth. But the…

More episodes of Astral Codex Ten Podcast

• The AI Superforecasters Are Here · July 17, 2026 · 41 min
• Chip Off The Old Block · July 17, 2026 · 21 min
• The Metaculus Threat To Democracy Index · July 10, 2026 · 10 min
• Should People Avoid Whole-Body Screening Info? · July 10, 2026 · 25 min
• Preliminary Thoughts On The Midjourney Scanner · July 10, 2026 · 24 min
• Waiting For The Miracle · July 10, 2026 · 1h 11m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Astral Codex Ten Podcast podcast page.