Quotes from Stephen Eric Bronner

Luftmensch—the impractical individual whose imagination has lifted him beyond the world.

Hegel believed that progress is ultimately furthered by the person who is out of step with the majority. Only this person, the genuine nonconformist, really experiences the constraints on freedom. Only this person is in the position of questioning the prevailing understandings of happiness. For

Method is the most sterile of all concerns…. Nothing was ever accomplished through method alone.

The Frankfurt School was profoundly mistaken in thinking that the Enlightenment—or, better, its scientific rationality—should be interpreted as triumphant or in isolation from the theory and practice of its rivals. Enlightenment thinking has always been on the defensive. That remains the case.