Beyond moral idealism: Horkheimer’s materialist theory and the criticism of kantian morality

Abstract

The present work aims to explore Horkheimer's reflections on bourgeois morality, present and synthesized in Kantian morality. Starting from the same, but in an attempt to overcome it qualitatively, Horkheimer offers a materialist basis for morality, anchoring it in a historical and concrete reality. In this sense, he points to a praxis to be carried out in the world aimed at building happiness as a collective right. There is, therefore, no ultimate foundation for morality, as it is no longer guided by the dogmatization of principles or the affirmation of universal commands, since its core is eminently historical. Politics and compassion become the foundations of materialist morality that will bring about substantial changes in society. This was how Horkheimer thought at a certain moment in his life and historical context, however, with the rise of totalitarian regimes and the consecration of a technical and instrumental rationality, which made the execution of his reflections in practice unfeasible, the thinker of critical theory, will becoming increasingly pessimistic, without however abandoning hope, after all, the historically given element is not absolute, and the desired and necessary transformations depend on the constant exercise of reflections on the present historical reality.