History and Structure

by Alfred Schmidt

Well-written, clear and informed, the study does much to clarify the present discourse between the Frankfurt School's critical theorists and the structuralisms.

Well-written, clear and informed, the study does much to clarify the present discourse between the Frankfurt School's critical theorists and the structuralisms.

Genres: Philosophy, History

174 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Alfred Schmidt was a German philosopher. He studied history and English as well as classical philology at the Goethe University Frankfurt and later philosophy and sociology. He was a student of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer and gained his doctorate with his The Concept of Nature in Marx.

Schmidt was professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt from 1972 and was made emeritus in 1999. Schmidt's primary research topics were the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, philosophy of religion, and Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy.

Reviews

[Feliks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schmidt is a fine, engaging thinker and writer; this little examination of trends in Hegelian studies is silky and supple reading. A pleasure. Part of a find series of publications on German intellectualism. I plan to acquire more titles from this publisher. We could all do with more Hegel!

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 2 out of 5]

What is the spirit of Marx's materialist method? Is the Althusserian structuralist school justified in exorcising all traces of history and political subjectivity from the materialist critique, leaving only the 'cold', inhumanist categories of the critique of political economy to do all the descriptive and explanatory work? If we are to actually practice 'ruthless criticism' we cannot simply dismiss these questions as products of idle scholastic curiousity. Schmidt's essay traces the precarious middle way between absolute historicism and theoretical anti humanism to the extent that he excavates a Hegel who anticipates Marx's decision to prioritize the logical over the historical in his inquiry into the "auto-development" of the categories of bourgeois economics, however with the caveat that we do not confuse the order of thought with the order of the real. While Capitalism presents itself as an immanent, logically defined timeless totality, leaving its prehistory behind as an empty shell, it does so only at a certain point in historical time, i.e. the present.

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that cracked structuralism. I'll probably have more to say about it later.

[Jeremy Tibbetts · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read, but must be read very slowly. One can extrapolate a lot of Marx's ideas from here, but without a very solid prior undestanding of Marx and the history of Marxist thought it is easy to get lost.