A review of Sotsialnaia filosofiia Frankfurtskoi shkoly: kriticheskie ocherki ( The Social Philosophy of the Frankfurt School: The Critical Essays, Moskva-Mysl, Praga-Svoboda, 1975). This is the first fundamental attempt in Soviet philosophical literature to analyze one of the most influential schools in modern bourgeois philosophy. H. Marcuse, E. FROMM, T. Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, and K. Offe are the main representatives of this school. The chronological identification of the school, consisting of three phases in its development, is considered to be successful. Criticism of Czechoslovak and Jugoslav revisionists is praised. The criticism of left rebel H. Marcuse is overly simplified. His revolution, changes in his views, and the substantial contradiction in his last works should have played a more important part in the book. The main success of the book is in its ability to demonstrate the small bourgeois character of the Frankfurt school, the subjective and idealistic principles of its theories, and total bankruptcy of its guidelines.
The teachings of S. Freud have penetrated, in their various versions, into every pore of American culture, though not all partisans of psychoanalysis recognize the validity of the >Freudian ethic.< However, the admission that psychoanalysis pays attention to human values was made by one of its greatest theoreticians, H. Hartman. Additional confirmations of the presumed moralistic character of psychoanalysis, in spite of the insistence of its founder or rigorous scientific premises, are made by P. Rieff in >The Mind of the Moralist,< and E. FROMM in >Sigmund Freud's Mission,< (no publication information available). These attempts to formulate an ethical content in Freud's work contradict his persistent refusal to make value judgments himself. The variations in the interpretation of Freud in America are a reflection of the pluralism born of the social contradictions of US society. At the same time, the broad influence exercised by psychoanalysis over the American intelligentsia is such that American social science attempts to solve many of its tasks using the language and concepts of psychoanalysis.