I’m having fun trying to put together something for tomorrow’s research call at a very short notice.
I’m thinking of organising discussion around theories of change as pursued by the Frankfurt School thinkers, Freud and Second Renaissance (totally ignoring Wilber and knowing that it doesn’t make a lot of sense because Wilber’s theory incorporatese more than these 2).
I’m exploring whether the goals, scope and the view of culture when integrated into Second Rennaisance lead to some “softening” or “fuzziness”
if you have any other ideas how it can be additionally spiced up - let me know. There’s still time for micro-pivoting.
Love the raw materials! The key word (I almost missed it) is “theories of change”. My vote is to highlight that.
Some ideas about how to parse it:
theories of change per the Frankfurt School
theories of change per Freud
to what extent did the Frankfurt School incorporate Freud? What residual differences are there?
Then … does 2R have a theory of change distinct from any of those? If so, how so?
As for Wilber, to me there is lots mapping there about the likely direction of change, but not much really about the mechanisms. My area of interest in more in mechanisms. Don’t need to hear any more about quadrants, lines, levels, etc.
I need to be careful because the Frankfurt School is a rabbit hole if we start analysing individual thinkers. The discussion around the topic might be interesting depending who turns up.
Habermas is one of my personal foundation stones, especially his most recent work. I’d say that recent work transcends the “Frankfurt School” label and takes what I would consider a metamodern turn. To me, that brings Habermas pretty close to what a 2R theory of change might be.
The younger Habermas is closer to the original Frankfurt School. Maybe the connective tissue between all those thinkers is the attempt to account for the failure of classic Marxism, if not the failure of reason or the Enlightenment itself. Like you suggest, they all parse the situation differently, but are generally informed by the same problematic.
To me, the recent Habermas is going full metamodern in locating the origins of culture in ritual, delving into the Axial Age, and grounding public sphere discourse in spiritual and religious lifeworlds. Classic Frankfurt School stops short of that - they are all trying to tweak “reason” somehow or another and recover some version of the primacy of what Habermas calls the post-metaphysical.
This whole problem of the redemption (or irredeemability) of reason makes Freud a natural addition to the conversation. Freud’s work correlates in different measure to different Frankfurt School approaches. So what to focus on? Good question! I guess it mostly depends on what the people in the room are most energized by.
My research call is scheduled for next week - we can struggle with “metamodern” old man Habermas then …
Meanwhile, I just now pointed Copilot at Freud and Frankfurt School in general. We could almost pick any of these as theme for the day.
How do different members of the Frankfurt School of critical theory appropriate or react to the work of Freud?
Copilot said:
Copilot
The Frankfurt School’s engagement with Freud is complex and varied—different thinkers appropriated, critiqued, or reinterpreted psychoanalysis to fit their critical theory projects. Here’s a structured overview:
1. Erich Fromm
Appropriation: Fromm initially embraced Freud’s insights into unconscious drives but shifted toward a social character theory.
Reaction: Criticized Freud’s biological determinism and libido theory, arguing that personality is shaped by socio-economic structures.
Key Move: Replaced instinctual drives with cultural and social needs—emphasizing freedom, love, and productive orientation.
2. Herbert Marcuse
Appropriation: In Eros and Civilization, Marcuse reinterprets Freud through a Marxist lens.
Reaction: Accepts repression as necessary for civilization but argues that surplus repression is historically contingent under capitalism.
Key Move: Imagines a non-repressive society where technology reduces toil, allowing libidinal energy to flourish beyond domination.
3. Theodor W. Adorno
Appropriation: Uses Freud’s theory of the unconscious to explain authoritarian personality and mass culture.
Reaction: Skeptical of Freud’s optimism about sublimation; sees culture industry as manipulating unconscious desires for conformity.
Key Move: Psychoanalysis becomes a tool for ideology critique, showing how repression is exploited by capitalist media.
4. Max Horkheimer
Appropriation: Integrates Freud into a broader critique of instrumental reason.
Reaction: Concerned that Freud’s focus on individual psyche neglects structural domination.
Key Move: Advocates a synthesis of psychoanalysis and social theory to understand how rationality becomes a tool of domination.
5. Later Thinkers (e.g., Habermas)
Reaction: Habermas critiques Freud for being too centered on repression and instinct, proposing communicative action as a new paradigm.
Key Move: Shifts focus from unconscious drives to intersubjective communication and rational discourse.
Common Threads
Appropriation: Freud’s concepts of repression, unconscious, and libido were crucial for analyzing domination beyond economics.
Critique: Biological reductionism and ahistorical instincts were rejected.
Innovation: Psychoanalysis was socialized—linked to ideology, culture, and power.
Would you like me to create a comparative table showing each Frankfurt School member’s stance on Freud (appropriation, critique, innovation)? Or a diagram mapping Freud’s concepts to their reinterpretations in critical theory?
Yes, it’s an interesting topic, but let’s flatten it a bit. Marx didn’t integrate any of the psychoanalysis because it wasn’t there to integrate at the time. Frankfurt School used Freud to understand how culture is manipulating the unconscious and explain domination, authoritarianism, neutralisation of the rational… How did it help practically? The original Marx’s idea of “awakening” the masses and educating them to be able to see is still unresolved, even with the advent of Freud.
I think that collective unconscious is a more interesting idea, especially when it comes to surfacing some archetypes. When people talk about “ancient wisdom” and returning to some old paradigms - that would make sense. I’m still unconvinced, but it’s an interesting topic.
I also find it interesting when people “rate” that someone offered not only an analysis but also a potential solution. Well, if that solution is nonsense - I’d much rather take the “honest” admission that they have no answers…
None of these 20th century Freud-Marx fusions really worked out, which is what led to interest in collective unconscious and other typical preoccupations of integral and metamodern such as transpersonal psychology. I guess a key question for the research call is do you want to 1) focus on the various 20th century thinkers who were still trying to sort the Enlightenment and classic Marxism, or 2) do you just want to acknowledge that project hit a dead end and that we need to start current theorizing with elements like Jung and the transpersonal? To me it feels like you are not really satisfied with 1) but also not convinced about 2), which leads to a degree of polarity or tension in the topic selection.
I want to open the floor for discussion about the comparison of these schools of thought (in terms of theory of change). whether any further critique and enhancement of Marxism made it “better”? Whether Freud is more comfortable in the original Marxism or in metamodernism (for example). The struggle, tension and contradiction in teh psyche was considered normal developmental pathway by Freud. marx believed in dialectical materialism - which fits the Freudian model. Where are we now? More confused or better equipped?
Adorno thought that “universal theories” are unrealistic - he advocates micro work - not talking about scaling up anything. He’s contradicted as much as he sees the world contradicted.
Frankfurt school is steeped in pessimism because they cannot bring themselves to sledgehammer thinking of Marx.
Horkheimer is interesting because his idea is to enforce change through systemic incoherences. But he also has an “unresolved” node which is - getting people to the point where they can critically reflect. Well, we don’t have that mechanism. If anything - people are less able to see through the mystifiation and lies.
Habermas with his deliberative democracy and bottom-up legitimacy and “fixing” of communicative rationality seems so out of touch now. These ideas are very much “alive” within pro-social and democratic movements, but seem totally ineffectie, given the current climate
Fromm is intereseting with his having/being - but that’s very similar to Marcel and other relational thinkers. Love and intra-personal realitonships - so much potential around that.
The connection between all this AI startup action and Habermas, etc. is the notion of “agentic humans”. I’ve been inspired by overlapping ideas between Habermas and Paolo Friere, and would currently update Freire’s work into something like the “pedagogy of agency”. My current NSC program is essentially a pilot program in the pedagogy of agency - a deliberately developmental space in the key of IT.
All of this informed by both Freud and Marx by way of UTOK, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Jason Storm, and others in the metamodern space. In UTOK terms, Freudian drive theory comes in through the vehicle of Mind 1, and the more socially informed dimensions of personality theory come in through the vehicle of Mind 3. So my model can absorb all the Frankfurt School anyone wants to throw at it, but it adds a bunch of more current layers as well.
So I’ll call your “ineffective” and raise you my pilot program, which is starting to blow up like a candidate Next Big Thing. Ikigai is the triggering mechanism - it gets people thinking about both the Freudian and Marxian dimensions of social change. Verkaeke’s 3R is the fly wheel that powers the model. My reference in the Discord bullets to “non-linear” is a pointer to a much more elaborate program of recursive curriculum structures for the hyper-acceleration of student agency. Student agents become their own Promise Protocol “microenterprises”. They can brand themselves and transact with the world. They can also intentionally affiliate in more communally-based microenterprises. The energy source is Gaian ground truth accessed though the Ikigai framework. That energy gets spun up in a very overclocked way though frequent Vervaeke 3R cycles. The student team microenterprises can then set out to makeover the world.
My pitch document to school leadership to expand this program is under the title of “Project 2026”. Project 2025 was about enforcing oppression. Project 2026 is pure liberation.
Agentic humans are protocol constrained to be coalition-resistant and economically incentivised through skin-in-the-game. I’d still refer to Horkheimer - expose (systemic incoherence), restore critical reason and create conditions for the emergence of honest behavoiur. You’re right - promise protocol is bottom-up legitimacy, but it creates rationale for it through the protocol.
To me, systemic incoherence implies Donella Meadows leverage opportunity. My current college is systemically incoherent on stilts, which is why paradoxically I’m finding a great opportunity to implement an alternative education pilot program that would have been a complete fantasy even a year ago. Collapse of System A becomes an affordance for System B.
The topic of “critical reason” leads us into developmentalism. “Critical reason” is not something we are born with. For that matter, the very notion of critical reason is rather culturally informed by Western experience in particular. When exactly did humans manifest paradigmatic critical reason? When exactly was that golden age? My approach to the pedagogy of critical reason is to a) ground energy in feeling and perception (Ikigai “love”, Vervaeke “participatory”, McGilchrist “right brain”, Freud “libido’), b) process linguistic expression of feeling and perception through dialogic practice (Freire, Habermas, Socrates). That’s how to get students to think philosophically and act agentically.
What is “honest”, in the end? I’d say it’s something like “energetically aligned”. In the face of a chaotic world with many human predators afoot, sometimes keeping one’s mouth shut, not to mention strategic misdirection of those with hostile intent, is about the most “honest” approach going. We need Promise Protocol because true relationships need to be very carefully constructed. Globalized trust building will likely require decades if not centuries.
Although I’m all in favor of benefiting both self and others at the same time, to call that behavior fundamentally “honest” seems somewhat idiosyncratic. I did a quick search to see what the Internet thinks “honest” means, and settled on this from Wikipedia as roughly consensus:
“Honesty or truthfulness is a facet of moral character that connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, straightforwardness (including straightforwardness of conduct: earnestness), along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc.”
A useful question to ask is, if the government of a particular territory is run in effect by a criminal conspiracy, is dissembling or surreptitiousness in opposition to that regime “honest” behavior? In WWII the Allies practiced all sorts of deception to outwit Hitler. Dishonest? Honest? Virtues without context may not be virtues at all!
He does hint at this from time to time, talking about the conveyor belt of development. I guess he’s given us a decent enough language for talking about the need for such an actionable theory, but I’d agree his work comes up short where mechanism is concerned. But I do appreciate Integral Theory a lot for laying out the requirements for such a mechanism–i.e. how do we know when we’ve found an adequate change mechanism?
One of my grad students took a few of my bullet points, fed it into Gemini and got the output below. This somehow speaks directly to both Wilber and your work.
”Bob’s bullet points are framing the Promise Protocol idea within the context of Agency, Training, and a Process-Optimized Structure. He’s essentially suggesting a systematic, evidence-based mindset for how people and organizations—especially in education—can operate in a future shaped by advanced AI and corporate efficiency models.
Here is an elaboration of each of his ideas: Fleshing Out Bob’s Bullet Points
Agentic AI can only be managed by agentic humans.
● Core Idea: In the future, as AI systems become more “agentic” (meaning they can act, make decisions, and pursue goals autonomously), controlling or directing them will require humans who are equally proactive, self-directed, and capable of high-level, independent decision-making.
● Elaboration: A person who simply follows rote instructions won’t be able to effectively supervise a complex AI agent that is handling dynamic, real-world tasks. Agentic humans are those trained to exercise initiative, take ownership, gather evidence, and make high-stakes judgments—the very skills needed to oversee a fleet of AI workers.
This whole “non-linear” learning model here is basically a bootcamp for developing agentic humans.
● Core Idea: The experimental, non-traditional learning model they are currently using (presumably tied to the Promise Protocol idea) is ideal for cultivating agency in students.
● Elaboration: Traditional, linear learning (fixed curricula, fixed assessments) only trains people to follow a path. A “non-linear” model—which likely involves self-directed projects, problem-solving, and evidence-gathering outside of a rigid structure—forces students to be resourceful, define their own goals (their “promises”), and prove their performance. This is the bootcamp for developing the agentic skills needed for the future workforce.
Agentic humans are trained for the role of “human in the loop” in agentic AI architectures.
● Core Idea: The ultimate job for the future agentic human is to serve as the critical oversight mechanism in automated systems.
● Elaboration: An “agentic AI architecture” is a system where AI agents handle the bulk of the work. The “human in the loop” is the person who provides the final review, handles exceptions, makes ethical calls, and steps in when the AI fails or reaches its decision limits. This role requires agency—the ability to understand the whole system, quickly assess evidence, and take definitive action. The Promise Protocol structure (Promise \rightarrow Evidence \rightarrow Assessment) trains exactly this type of systematic, evidence-based decision-making”
With respect to Wilber’s model, it’s basically “second tier” or bust. Any CS student wanting a career beyond custodian or dishwasher better level up ASAP.
But note the potential performative contraction in Wilber’s model. Anyone who tries to follow Wilber’s model in a step-by-step fashion will never get to second tier, because the whole point of second tier is to get beyond the need for step-by-step!
Let me sum it up this way: “If you meet inner development goals on the road, kill them!”
These things are better thought of as agents, i.e. things that make promises, whereas microenterprises are a special type of agent that makes two types of promises:
Based on the Rendanheyi model’s focus on autonomous, market-facing units, a microenterprise agent would make two primary categories of promises:
Market-Facing Promises: These are commitments made directly to external customer agents about value to be delivered through some well defined activities. They are specific to the microenterprise’s domain, such as a promise for “delivery within 48 hours” or “99.9% uptime.”
Collaborative Promises: These are internal commitments made to other microenterprise agents to form a “superagent” network. These promises manage dependencies, such as one agent promising to deliver a component so another can fulfill the final customer promise.
I haven’t added this domain yet, but any agent making the above promises could be classified as a microenterprise. This would likely extend the organization agent you can find here.
Then there’s the platform cooperative company (in formation) called the Promise Foundation that will act as a factory to several microenterprises, the first of which I will be pitching on the 20th at a German AI incubator. On the ‘How we fund the future of trust’ section of promise.foundation, you’ll see some additional promises that Promise Foundation’s microenterprises must make.
Fleshing Out Bob’s Bullet Points