The dialectic of authority concept: Max Horkheimer contribution to Studies on Authority and Family.

• Grant number: 23/04417-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: May 01, 2024
• End date: August 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Francisco de Ambrosis Pinheiro Machado
• Grantee: Monica Taeko Kozaka
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research proposes to understand the dialectic present in the concept of authority as elaborated by Max Horkheimer in Studies on Authority and Family from 1936. Stem from a totalizing and dynamic view, strongly influenced by historical materialism, the author understands the authority attached to the whole social, due to this it can gain productive or obstructive contours depending on the material arrangement that raises it. In this regard, we intend to analyze and elucidate to which extent the authority concept, since it is essential for individuals and society formation, accepts a gradation of a rational order in which it plays a fundamental role for individuals liberation and emancipation or a gradation of an irrational order in which it is identified with authoritarianism as a submission to the existence, it encourages the domination maintenance of the established status quo.