There is nothing like editing a Frankfurt School reader to make one feel very small.
Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse were the silent intellectual giants of my undergraduate philosophical training at Swarthmore College. The Critical Modern Social Theory seminar, then taught by Braulio Munoz, was the one that I never got to take. By the time that I had acquired what my youthful self believed to be the minimum necessary background to do so, it was time to graduate. In a real sense, I went on to graduate school in order to finally get to take a class on the Frankfurt School. I was fortunate that I had, indeed, been sufficiently prepared by several truly legendary teachers: Braulio Munoz (who also taught Modern Social Theory), Hugh Lacey, Ken Sharpe, and Rich Schuldenfrei. I was equally fortunate to have studied the material for the first time, when I finally did, with Asher Horowitz—to whom, along with my dear friend Kurt Tauber, this volume is gratefully and affectionately dedicated.
In more recent years I have talked about the work of the Frankfurt School with two wonderful interlocutors in particular, in addition to Asher: David McNally and Christian Thorne. David has generously agreed to write a short Foreword, and Christian was prepared to re-translate “Subject and Object” had I been able to secure the required rights from the German publisher. I want to thank both of them for their friendship and invaluable intellectual company. I would also like to thank Catherine Kellogg for sharing her syllabus with me when I first undertook to design my own Frankfurt School seminar. Catherine’s syllabus influenced mine, and it was when I was creating that first course kit that I conceived of this volume. Marie-Claire Antoine, the original acquisitions editor for Continuum, encouraged the proposal and delivered the contract. (I will get to Matthew Kopel, who took over when Continuum was incorporated into Bloomsbury.) Kaitlin Fontana, Kim Storry and James Tupper saw to it that the book was produced and publicized, handling every aspect of the process with care and good cheer. I’d also like to express thanks to two graduate assistants who have helped with the project, Everett Fulmer and Jeremy Tauzer, and to Peter and Harold Marcuse for their kind and supportive response to my requests for permissions for several out-of-print pieces.
Maybe there are people whose intellectual lives do not presuppose, at every turn, their relationships with friends, family, colleagues, and students. But I am not one of them. I can’t come close to listing every name here that I wish that I could, but I would like to thank Alexander Bird, Otha Day, Noah Efron, Howard Engelskirchen, Elizabeth Foreman, Meg and Jim Groff, Janet Jackel, Diane and Gary Laison, Patricia Montoya, Paul Park, Jim Rhodes, Becky Robin, Jonathan Sher, Judy Sloan, Irem Kurtsal Steen, Kurt Tauber, and Christian Thorne for the roles that they play as bedrock. Thank you also to core communities on both Facebook and Twitter—and to Stella Gaon, for explaining the opening sentences of “Subject and Object” to me when we were both still at OISE. Finally, I simply cannot thank Matthew Kopel at Bloomsbury enough. He is the Editor from God. Or otherwise from Krypton.