Entre Pollock e Benjamin: teoria e práxis no “Estado autoritário” de Horkheimer

Abstract

The article states the following theses about Max Horkheimer’s essay “The Authoritarian State”: a) that there is in this text a particular tension, which is very difficult to solve, between a pessimistic and an optimistic stances from its author, and that this tension refers to a tense way of understanding the separation of theory and praxis; b) that these tensions could be better understood in the light of the horkheimerian maxim of “theoretical pessimism” and “practical optimism” and, parallely, of the contextual and in a certain sense contradictory influences of Friedrich Pollock and Walter Benjamin. The article tries then to explore those influences in order to better understand how the poles of those tensions could find a dialectical articulation in Horkheimer at thar singular historical moment.