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Horkheimer, M. (1948). Ernst Simmel and Freudian Philosophy. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 29:110-113.

(1948). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 29:110-113

Ernst Simmel and Freudian Philosophy1

Max Horkheimer
It may sound unorthodox to speak about Simmel and Freud as philosophers. The very concept of a Freudian philosophy
appears almost as a contradiction in terms. Is not psychology a science and science clearly separated from philosophy? The word
philosophy seems to remind us of rationalizations of unconscious wishes, hypostatization of dreams and ideologies, the very
objects unveiled by Freud's analytical research. In disregard of existing taboos, he dared look behind the cloak of lofty ideas and
ideals and made it his task to trace back individual as well as social habits and attitudes to primitive biological drives. The
conflict of these drives with the prevailing framework of civilization served him as the principle of explanation in order to
debunk not a few of the religious and philosophical entities which people like to offer as their motives. Freud and his most
congenial disciples, among whom Ernst Simmel certainly belonged, were the relentless enemies of intellectual super-structures
including the metaphysical hiding places of the mind. It was his credo 'that there is no other source of knowledge of the Universe
but the intellectual processing of carefully verified observation, in fact what is called Research, and that no knowledge can be
obtained from revelation, intuition, or inspiration'. Does not Simmel's clear voice ring in our ears when we read how Freud
quoted Heinrich Heine's persiflage of the idealistic philosopher: 'With his nightcap and his nightshirt-tappers, he botches up the
loopholes in the structure of the world.'
Yet, Freud's negative attitude against philosophical illusions is itself an expression of his unique approach to the decisive
problems of life, an approach of the kind we may well call philosophy. Only we must understand the term philosophy in an
unconventional way, free from connotations of an idealization of the gruesome realities of our world. In contrast to such dubious
teleological efforts of humanity there have always been other meanings of philosophy. Here philosophy signifies the theoretical
belief that without truth there is no human life, and the will to make uncompromising truth the leading principle of one's life, the
subordination to this goal of all personal interests. Furthermore, philosophy means the ability to have new and genuine
experiences, the power to overcome the hypnotic spell of current ideologies, to resist the deadening effect of daily routines on
our organs of perception, and to open new horizons in our understanding of nature and humanity. Both elements, the passion for
truth and the capacity to raise the human mind on new levels (of understanding rather than of domination) are parts of the
definition of philosophy, and real philosophers have always understood it in that sense.
If we want to see the work of thinkers such as Freud and Simmel in its true perspective, I think it is essential to stress its
philosophical aspect. Though they were scientists, psychologists, physicians, their true significance is not identical with their
achievements in any rigid division of intellectual labour; at all times they transcended the boundaries of traditional disciplines.
Freud's psychological discoveries pertain to sociology and anthropology as well as to psychology. He shares his field of interest
at least as much, if not much more, with Salomon Reinach, Comte and Spencer, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as with Bier or
Muensterberg. For Simmel as for Freud—as for all great psychologists—psychology was more than psychology: it was the key
for the understanding of the irrationalities of human existence, of the enigmatic totality of the life process of society as well as of
the individual. He saw in it a potential remedy for the mortal threats to civilization from these irrationalities.
During the heroic period of psycho-analysis, when it was struggling against the prejudices of official science, this
philosophical aspect of psycho-analysis was somewhat hidden behind
—————————————
1 Read at the Memorial Meeting for Ernst Simmel held in Los Angeles. This paper emanates from my continuing collaborative work with
Theodore W. Adorno. The ideas here expressed are common to both of us.

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its justified assertion of its scientific character. To-day the situation is different. Psycho-analysis has been victorious. Not only
have Freud's views revolutionized the relations of parents and children, so that now the child's position is completely different
from what it was before Freud's work, not only do psycho-analytic categories occur in the most distinguished scientific literature,
as Kant's and Descarte's concepts occur in the theoretical documents of their respective periods, but psycho-analysis is more and
more recognized as an indispensable methodology in practically all the fields in which psychology must play a rôle. Psycho-
analysis, therefore, faces the danger of all victorious movements: that it may make peace with the machinery of the existent, that it
may lose its philosophical impetus and degenerate from a critical instrument into one of many auxiliary devices and techniques in
the daily professional routine. Freud, in his endeavour to make the scientific side of analysis understood, became a true
enlightener in the philosophic sense; he made a stand against powerful religious and philosophical contentions and prided himself
on being inflexible in this respect. But psycho-analysis to-day, it seems to me—and I think I express the fear of our friend Simmel
—lives more and more in peace with everything outside its own well defined department, i.e. an auxiliary of psychiatry. I shall
not go into the consequences of this change for the analysts as well as for their patients, but I venture the hypothesis that it makes
itself felt down to the most subtle details of therapy, not to speak of giving up its contribution to the humanities as a whole. What
was once conceived as a truth that would help to change the world, is transformed into a device to make people more content and

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efficient within the world as it is. It is this danger which calls for our consciousness of the philosophical motive of psycho-
analysis.
Freud's approach was that of a materialist psychology. Where Victorian ideology talked about the sublimity of love and
proved callous to the suffering brought about by underlying instincts, Freud spoke about erogenous zones and used a
physiological terminology. His tendency to derive the highest values from material processes, to resolve the psychological into
the physiological and even physical, is almost overlooked in the eagerness to derive the physical from the psychological. This
latter tendency, which forms one part in Freud's work, has much less materialistic, critical implications, and therefore less
detrimental consequences for prevailing ideologies. Where Freud spoke of 'Lebensnot', i.e. of very material conditions as the
basic cause of certain psychological conflicts, we are tempted to abide by ego-weakness and other derivative complexes which
are more easily accessible. However, in an intellectual situation in which the theoretical core of Freud's work, his biological
materialism, is being rejected as 'deep stuff', unverifiable, and unable to produce quick returns, it is the more necessary to stick to
Freudian orthodoxy in this fundamental sense, and to prevent that kind of shallowness which has so often proved to be the fate of
great schools of thought in the humanities and social sciences.
What makes the greatness of Ernst Simmel, and his death an irreparable loss in the strictest sense, is what might be called his
productive orthodoxy. He did not swear in verba magistri. As a matter of fact, his life work was devoted, in one of his most
decisive aspects, to an attempt to go beyond his teacher's doctrine, namely, to overcome the dualism of the libido theory, the
distinction between ego drives and object drives. This at least seems to me the implication of his theory of incorporation, of
'devouring'. But the intention was just the opposite of the fashionable adaptation of psycho-analysis to the wants and needs of
to-day's organized mass culture. He wanted to get closer to the unconscious sources, down to the point where they coincide with
biological forces—not to translate them into terms of a common-sense, ultimately rationalistic ego psychology. It is his
uncompromising and at the same time subtle, tender attitude, based on the knowledge of universal human frailty, which makes him
a real successor, a real philosopher in the Freudian sense.
Both Simmel and Freud were theorists at heart. The guiding forces of their studies were strictly identical with those of
enlightenment in the sense of the emancipation of mankind from all heteronomous powers. They pursued radical demythification.
Their trust in science was a fighting belief, a critical scientific Weltanschauung as Freud called it himself. 'From the point of
view of science we must necessarily make use of our critical views … and not be afraid to reject and deny. It is inadmissible to
declare that science is one field of human intellectual activity, and that religion and philosophy are others, at least as valuable,

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and that science has no business to interfere with the other two, that they all have an equal claim to truth, and that everyone is free
to choose whence he shall draw his convictions and in what he shall place his belief. … The bare fact is that truth cannot be
tolerant and cannot admit compromise or limitations, that scientific research looks on the whole field of human activity as its
own, and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical attitude towards any other power that seeks to usurp any part of its province.'
Freud belonged to the generation, influenced by Auguste Comte, in which the study of the State, society, and the individual soul
branched off from philosophy but still carried the libido which these objects as religious or philosophical entities had carried
before. Freud and his disciples looked at psychology as Durkheim looked at sociology: as a key to the riddle of human history.
While they made the irrational their subject-matter, they remained rationalists in the best sense of the word. They believed that
the spell of the irrational is due to inward and outward repression, and that this spell would be broken if it became truly and fully
conscious; they aimed at overcoming rationalizations by consequent rationality. The principle of unswerving unqualified truth,
which defines the course of the technical analytic procedure, is in fact its metaphysical presupposition—the idea that there is
something like objective truth, and that the ills of human existence are ultimately due to the perversions and deflections of that
truth under the impact of taboos and other mental and extra-mental forms of coercion. This is the philosophical core of
Freudianism; to surrender it to any expediency such as, for instance, smoother adaptation to outside requirements, inevitably
dissolves the Freudian doctrine. It leads to the deterioration of psycho-analysis into a more or less sophisticated kind of
psychotechniques.
It is this surrender to expediency which makes it so necessary to stress the philosophical content and origin of Freudianism,
and few among the second generation of analysts were so keenly aware of it as the late Otto Fenichel and Ernst Simmel. These
thinkers were opposed to the employee-mentality which tries to make everything 'function' for the sake of the machinery. Together
with a number of young American teachers of their art they resisted the trend of psycho-analysis being sold out by quick
technicians within its own field. Science indeed was to replace metaphysics but science as a philosophical force. It should do
away with metaphysical illusions such as prejudices and superstitions, but should carry over the basic concepts of rationality:
truth, freedom, and justice. Without its genuine theoretical framework psycho-analytic therapy itself would become a blind
instrument of manipulation and powerless to achieve the aims for which it was created.
In this connection it is highly significant that Simmel was drawn to that realm of problems which to-day, in the era of
Buchenwald and Auschwitz, is clearly the sore spot of modern civilization: racial and anti-minority prejudice. Simmel was the
first one to give a more than metaphorical meaning to the term massdelusion, by pointing out that race hatred is essentially closer
to psychosis, and to paranoia in particular, than to neurosis. By thus applying the psycho-analytic method to the most modern
complex of social questions, he fell in line with the great, emancipatory tradition of psycho-analytic philosophy. And he had the
boldness to draft, as an effective antidote against the fascist poison, plans for a large-scale 'mass catharsis'.
It was his intense interest in the study of race prejudice which constituted the basis for that intimate collaboration between
him and the Institute of Social Research, for which I speak to-night. I am proud to emphasize that the two large research projects
on social discrimination which we undertook jointly with groups in Berkeley would never have come into being without his

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active interest and advice. The symposium on antisemitism, which he published in 1946, may be regarded as evidence of the
closeness between his theoretical endeavours and those represented by our Institute.
Some of those who are here present will remember that in the beginning of the thirties our group, following a correspondence
with Sigmund Freud, made it possible for the first time for a psycho-analytic institution to be brought into close contact with a
German university. The Psycho-Analytic Institute in Frankfurt and our Institute at Frankfurt University collaborated in the
dissemination of modern social and psychological theory as well as in the study of such problems pertinent to both psycho-
analysts and social science. It was our common conviction that Freudian doctrine transcended by far the fields of psychology or
psychiatry and that it was imperative to hand down and develop not only the techniques or

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therapeutic skills but the letter and spirit of Freud's thought. In our opinion humanity could not afford to neglect what might be
called the non-professional aspects of his work.
I have known for many years that Simmel's idea was that this task should be one of the functions of the psycho-analytic
institute which he wanted to create and organize in Los Angeles. Again and again he told me about his plan. The institute, which
he wanted to call Freud Institute, should not confine itself to turning out thousands of students who could use psycho-analytic
methodology as a kind of supplement to their medical training. Its activities should be defined by the extent of Freud's own
achievements and it should offer the opportunity of getting acquainted with his whole work. It should be a source of enlightenment
for all those students and scholars who in their own fields could not do without the insights provided by the encyclopedian mind
of the founder of psycho-analysis. In the last conversation which I had with Simmel in the week before his death he again took up
this topic. However, he did not hide his concern that the anti-philosophical and—in this sense—anti-Freudian trends within the
ranks of the psycho-analysts themselves might defeat his plan. The institute, he said, might possibly come into existence but not as
he had perceived it, and he deplored, for this reason more than for any other, that his physical strength was weakened by his
disease. When I heard of his death I thought that what he had told me was almost a legacy. He wanted to say that psycho-analysis
should live, psycho-analysis of which the therapeutic technique is the one pole and the other is abstract theory, such as
philosophical anthropology and metapsychology. In short, Freudian doctrine should live as a whole.
I cannot close without adding a word about the personal relationship between Simmel and Freud which, in my opinion, was
founded on the identity of their philosophical outlook. When we leaf through the letters which Freud wrote to Simmel in Europe
as well as in this country, we cannot help comparing the friendship of these two thinkers with the ties which existed between the
fighting French enlighteners of the eighteenth century. As early as in 1924 Freud wrote to Simmel in Berlin that he knew nobody
in that city, and I quote, 'who would deserve, through the genuinity and intensity of his intellectual attitude, the admission into that
circle, if it still existed, as you'. The circle Freud had in mind had been the most intimate and esoteric group of the psycho-
analytic movement; it corresponded indeed to the secret conventicles of those enlighteners and encyclopedists. Its function was to
watch and to further the development of psycho-analysis and to foster a kind of analytic solidarity. Freud's belief in Simmel as
one of the few who understood him best and as a real brother in arms has never changed. The confidence Freud showed him in
Berlin accompanied Simmel to Los Angeles. 'It is good to hear', Freud writes from his exile in London in a truly Voltairian way,
'that our Hydra (he refers to the Hydra of psycho-analysis—M. H.), after the horrible mutilations of the last year, grows a new
head in California'. They were united in a courageous spirit, unrelenting and unconforming in their will to make no concessions
when it came to theoretical truth. Once Freud wrote from Berchtesgaden: '… you should not take so much pains to convince the
people who don't want to be convinced, and you should not give the impression that you hoped to achieve it. … It should be made
a principle not to meet half way with them from whom one has nothing to receive and who have to gain everything from us'. This
was Freud's proud attitude and he wanted Simmel to share it with him. It had grown from a common way of thinking, a common
philosophy—not merely from a common profession.
Now a new loss is added to the painful wounds which psycho-analysis has suffered during these last years, as a therapy, a
theory, a movement, and a philosophy. Our consolation can be, on the one hand, what Freud expresses in the little paper on
Vergänglichkeit ('Frailty'). Here he denies 'that the transitoriness or evanescence of the beautiful is accompanied by its
depreciation. On the contrary, ' he says, 'transitoriness enhances its value. The value of that which is evanescent is a value of
rarity in time.' On the other hand, we can carry on their work and see to it that Freudian philosophy in its full meaning does not
perish.

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Article Citation [Who Cited This?]

Horkheimer, M. (1948). Ernst Simmel and Freudian Philosophy1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 29:110-113
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