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CritiqueLECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL T HEORY
KEY TERMS AND THEMES
Intellectual legacy of German critical theory (Frankfurth School): Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and
Habermas.
- Social-theoretical negativism: lack of socially effective rationality because of pathological
deformation by capitalism & negativism as suffering comes from a lack.
- Social pathology of reason
- Rational universal
- Self-actualization → human emancipation trough consciousness and self-reflection
- Emancipatory interest → one of the aims of critical theory as it is social theory connected to
practice. Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it – Marx.
o Critical theory is not scientific theory with an aim of producing knowledge, it is more practical
as such.
“(…) social criticism must offer a theoretical explanation that allows the development of an apparatus to be
understood as the unintended consequence of a chain of intended circumstances or actions” Honneth 2009,
186
“(…) the social circumstances that constitute the pathology of capitalist societies have the peculiar structural
feature of disguising precisely those states of affairs that would otherwise provide particularly urgent grounds
for public criticism.” Honneth 2009, 30
“Without a realistic concept of ‘emancipatory interest” that puts at its center the idea of an indestructible
core of rational responsiveness on the part of subjects, this critical project will have no future.” Honneth
2009, 41-42
Honneth fears that critical theory has become outmoded and wishes to safeguard it.
ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF GERMAN Hollywood as cultural industry for film (like a
CRITICAL THEORY factory) for money
- Philosophical: Marxism and German
It started with the Frankfurter Schule in 1923
conservatism holds most prominent
but didn’t really pick up until Horkheimer
positions.
became director. It was closed by Nazis as it was
- Political: hegemony of liberalism, rising
the only openly Marxist school and then moved
antisemitism, emergence of Nazism and
to New York. Later most members would go to
communism.
California for Hollywood. In 1949 they moved
There was a collective disappointment in the
back to West-Germany.
Enlightenment as it produced this in the 20th
century.
The time it emerged in was turbulent:
- Historical: WW1, interbellum, WW2 → the
end of ww1 leads to universal suffrage and
opens up the political arena for more
political actors.
- Cultural and economical: Hollywood, roaring
20s and the stock market crash of the 30s →
,DIALECTIC OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT to affirm their existence through mutual
recognition.
“What we had set out to do was nothing less than
to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly
Marx: pathological deformation of reason by
human state, is sinking into a new kind of
capitalism.
‘barharism’”
- Commodity fetishism: human relations
- The central thesis: there is already
perceived as economic relations between
enlightenment in mythology, and the
objects.
enlightenment reverts to mythology. You
- Alienation: this is fourfold: of labor, the
can’t anchor rationality in life.
product of labor, nature, others and oneself.
- Economic point: The increase in economic
It is the subjective experience of
productivity which creates the conditions for
disconnection.
a more just world also affords the technical
- False consciousness: misconstruction/
apparatus and the social groups controlling it
misdirection of the causes of suffering.
a disproportionate advantage over the rest
- Anthropological presupposition: human
of the population.
beings are productive beings shaping the
- Cultural point: Films and radio no longer
course of history through their labor.
need to present themselves as art. The truth
that they are nothing but business. The call
Freud: suffering and emancipatory interest
themselves industries, and the published
- Psychoanalysis explains the absence of
figures for their directors' incomes quell any
revolutionary upheaval as there is an
doubts about the social necessity of their
unconscious drive of the subject to be
finished products.
attached to their domination.
- Political point: As they designate obsolete
- But in suffering there is the emancipatory
sections of the population for extermination,
element, as it is still suffering.
the administrations of totalitarian states are
- Anthropological presupposition: human
merely the executors of economic verdicts
beings are bound to their own life through
passed long ago.
unconscious complexes of drives and forces
of attachments.
THE BASICS OF CRITICAL THEORY
- It is based on a historically effective reason: Additionally, important are:
the unity of a single rationality in the - Kant: immanent norms of enlightenment and
diversity of established convictions. anti-authoritarianism
- Social-theoretical negativism: lack of socially - Nietzsche: critique of rationality and power
effective rationality because of pathological (everything is produced in a network of
deformation by capitalism & negativism as power, so nothing is free of power)
suffering comes from a lack. - Weber: increasing complexity of society and
- It is important to overcome the social disenchantment (people as subjects, not full
suffering caused by socially deficient humans).
rationality (rationality isn’t accessible to all
evenly). All members of society need socially
effective rationality for self-actualization to
meaningfully direct their lives.
MAIN INSPIRATION
Hegel: rational universal and cooperative self-
actualization.
- The rational universal is required for
cooperative self-actualization as for me to
live my life, I am partially dependent on
others. So how can we as collective organize
ourselves so we can live our best lives?
- The common good upon which all members
of society have rationally agreed.
- Anthropological presupposition: human
beings are intersubjective beings who seek
, LECTURE 2: HABERMAS
KEY TERMS AND THEMES
- Communicative bs strategic action
- Critical theory
- Immanent critique
- Rational argumentation via the public use of reason
- Linguistic turn
- Instrumental vs communicative rationality
- Public sphere
- Life world vs system world
- Social evolution trough collective learning
- Formal pragmatics
- Intersubjective consensus
- Deliberative democracy
- Radical proceduralisation: legitimacy is derived from the procedure of democratic will-formation
(everyone is the author and addressee of the law).
Habermas turned to language, to situations in which human beings exchange words, thoughts,
arguments with the objective to reach agreements about what to do. Rationality is in Habermas’ view
the outcome of public reasoning. Purposive, instrumental types of rationality, as used in politics and
economy (and the ‘system world’ in general), can obstruct and distort this communication. In other
words, instrumental (or strategic) rationality ‘colonizes’ our communicative reasoning. Habermas wants
critical theory to disclose the interests involved in the constitution of knowledge and rationality.
HABERMAS
Habermas was born in 1929 and is still alive and FRASE’S FEMINIST CRITIQUE
active today. He grew up in the post war era, - It is impossible to bracket power differences
where the rebuilding of Europe was key. Thus, as they are reproduced in norms and
Habermas moved beyond the negativism of the practices. Ex. in a reading room only white
first generation of the Frankfurth school. man with money are present.
He regarded the enlightenment as an unfinished - There is not one public sphere with one
project as we are still busy with the betterment opinion, there is a plurality of competing
of society. Furthermore, the focus on rationality publics with a multitude of opinions.
becomes communicative. The totalitarian - It is never clear what is the common good,
regimes both utilized rationality, giving it a bad private aims are usually dominant.
reputation. Habermas seeks to salvage parts of - Weak vs strong publics instead of the public
it. With rational communication we cannot help opinion vs the state.
but be convinced of a good argument → the
forceless force of a better argument.
FEATURES OF THE BOURGEOIS PUBLIC
SPHERE
- Status differences bracketed: Within the
public sphere your status is irrelevant, it is
the argument that is decisive.
- Discussions trough communicative
rationality oriented at understanding each
other, so with the purpose of coming
together, not arguing.
- Inclusive.
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