Horkheimer's critique is on-topic but not, I think, very illuminating in the end. To my eye, he poses some interesting questions, fails to have answers, makes predictions that ended up being proved wrong over the following 80-odd years, and does a very unconvincing imitation of Nietzsche trying to get out of the conundrum.

(Not that a convincing imitation would have worked as a rational argument, though it might have aroused one's passions sufficiently to discard one's desire for a rational argument.)