The following introduction has two parts: the first part provides a sketch of the Frankfurt School’s history, highlighting the circumstances under which the authors discussed in this issue engaged philosophically with matters of economy. We thereby follow the prevailing periodization, starting with the school’s foundation in 1924 and ending with Theodor W. Adorno’s death in 1969 and the school’s preliminary dissolution. The second part of the introduction explores the legacy of the Frankfurt School’s philosophical critique of economy. Max Horkheimer’s writings (...) thereby serve as a model case for such a critique and become the point of departure for the discussion of contemporary critical theories of the economic. (shrink)

Philosophy of science and the sciences are related in an arbitrary and noncommital way. This has problematic consequences in terms of the disciplinary autonomy of the sciences, as shown in the example of the science of education. A new determination and definition of the relation between science and the philosophy of science demands, on the one hand, a greater willingness towards metatheoretical reflection and critique of the part of the individual sciences and, on the other hand, a reorientation within the (...) philosophy of science towards performing "service functions" with regard to the metatheoretical selfdefinitions of the sciences. This can be achieved by a constructivist, pragmatic and historical theory of knowledge and science. A central factor in a changed relationship between science and the philosophy of science is the scientific discipline's determination of its field of enquiry. This is seen to be an integral part of the process of establishing a discipline as a science. (shrink)

In the following pages I will outline the main biographical data and the intellectual activity of two of the major protagonists of the debate on the mechanistisches Weltbild within the Frankfurt “Institut fur Sozialforschung” in the thirties. I have included a selected bibliography of Grossmann's and Borkenau's works, and refer to titles with abbreviations [H.G.…] and [F.B.…].