Now Available: The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion – Translating Critical Faith into Critical Theory

I’m please to announce that my latest book on the Frankfurt School’s dialectical approach to Abrahamic religions is now available. The book was published by Ekpyrosis Press, a new publishing house dedicated to dialectical and critical thought. Below is the description of the book:

In his book, The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion: Translating Critical Faith into Critical Theory, I argue that at the core of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory resides a secularized theology. Unlike their predecessors, especially Feuerbach, Marx, Lenin, Freud, and Nietzsche, who argued for an abstract negation of religion, the first generation of Critical Theorists followed Hegel’s logic and attempted to rescue and preserve the revolutionary, emancipatory, and liberational aspects of religion in their own secular non-conformist philosophy. They saw in both Judaism and Christianity certain conceptual and semantic elements that could be enlisted into their struggle for a future reconciled society, one beyond the slaughterbench of history. In order to rescue religion, theological concepts had to go through a process of translation, wherein such materials migrate from the depth of the religious mythos into publicly accessible reasoning, thus making the revolutionary impulse of prophetic religion accessible to the secular world. I also argue that this translation of religion remains relevant to today’s post-secular societies, especially in regard to religious Muslims attempting to find their place in Western countries, which are often hostile to religion and religiosity. Examining the strengths and weaknesses of Habermas’ “translation proviso,” he argues that both religious and secular citizens of the West can learn from the Frankfurt School’s dialectical approach to religion in order to find a space wherein both religious faith and secular reason can not only co-exist, but can also join together in the process of creating a more reconciled future society.

ISBN (Hardcover): 978-1-7350576-3-7 $39.00 (332 pages) Hardcover

ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-7350576-2-0 $28.00 (332 pages) Paperback

Praise for The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion:

Dustin J. Byrd’s book, The Frankfurt School and the Dialectics of Religion: Translating Critical Faith into Critical Theory, is a comprehensive examination of Horkheimer, Adorno, Löwenthal, and Benjamin’s critical rescue and emancipation of the utopian, transcendent, and non-conforming aspects of Abrahamic religion. Like Hegel before him, Dr. Byrd not only reveals the dialectics of history as expressed in the work of the Frankfurt School, but also determinately negates them in his own work on Islam and Muslims. One cannot find a better expression and expansion of the Critical Theory of Religion today.

~ Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert, Emeritus Professor of Religion and Society at Western Michigan University

www.ekpyrosispress.com