TY - JOUR A1 - Rosenthal, Alvin S. T1 - A Utopian Vision of the Frankfurt School JF - Humanity and Society, Vol 2 (No. 2, 1978), pp. 90-103. N2 - Each writer in the Frankfurt school of critical sociology stressed different aspects of a utopian vision. Three examples of their work from the period of their exile in the United States are examined to reveal these differences: E. FROMM, Escape from Freedom, New York: Avon, 1941; H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, Boston: Beacon, 1941; and M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. The Frankfurt school hoped to reconcile man and nature in a dialectical relationship, but was unable to communicate this need on a mass basis to their society. Reasons for their failure can be understood by examining a model of successful communication at this level. Aeschylus's The Oresteia (Lattimore, R. Trans, New York: Washington Square Press, 1967) provides such a model, and offers a comparison for the Frankfurt school. The play reveals man's need to harness nature for the betterment of society. The existing polis of Aeschylus's time represented his expression of the new order of rationality, and made it simpler to express abstract ideas, unlike the critical theorist who needed to create a means of expressing abstract ideas. Only a limited medium--the press--was available to the Frankfurt school. The writing styles of the critical theorists are discussed. Y1 - 1978 ER -