Critical theory: translation
Critical theoryHorkheimer, Adorno, HabermasDavid RasmussenHEGEL, MARX AND THE IDEA OF A CRITICAL THEORYCritical theory1 is a metaphor for a certain kind of theoretical orientation which owes itsorigin to Hegel and Marx, its systematization to Horkheimer and his associates at theInstitute for Social Research in Frankfurt, and its development to successors, particularlyto the group led by Jürgen Habermas, who have sustained it under various redefinitions tothe present day. As a term, critical theory is both general and specific. In general it refersto that critical element in German philosophy which began with Hegel’s critique of Kant.More specifically it is associated with a certain orientation towards philosophy whichfound its twentieth-century expression in Frankfurt.What is critical theory? The term bears the stamp of the nascent optimism of thenineteenth century; a critical theory can change society. Critical theory is a tool of reasonwhich, when properly located in a historical group, can transform the world.‘Philosophers have always interpreted the world, the point is to change it.’ So statesMarx’s famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Marx got this idea from Hegel who, in his
Phenomenology of Spirit,2 developed the concept of the moving subject which, throughthe process of self-reflection, comes to know itself at ever higher levels of consciousness.Hegel was able to combine a philosophy of action with a philosophy of reflection in sucha manner that activity or action was a necessary moment in the process of reflection. Thisgave rise to one of the most significant discourses in German philosophy, that of theproper relationship between theory and practice. Human practical activity,
praxis in thesense that classical Greek philosophy had defined it, could transform theory. There aretwo famous instances where Hegel attempted to demonstrate the interrelationship ofthought and action in his
Phenomenology of Spirit, namely, the master/ slave dialecticand the struggle between virtue and the way of the world.In the former example, whichattempts to demonstrate the proposition, ‘Self-Consciousness exists in and for itselfwhen, and by the fact that, it so exists for another: that is, it exists only in beingacknowledged,’3 the slave transforms his or her identity by moulding and shaping theworld and thus becomes something other than a slave. In the latter example, the modernway of the world (essentially Adam Smith’s concept of the political economy of civilsociety) triumphs over the ancient classical concept of virtue as a higher form of humanself-knowledge oriented toward freedom. Historical development, as theinstitutionalization of human action, became an element in human rationality. Criticaltheory derives its basic insight from the idea that thought can transform itself through aprocess of self-reflection in history.Marx, early on in his development in a text that has come down to us under the title
Onthe Jewish Question,4 argued from Hegel’s critical insight into the context of modernsociety. Having already done an analysis a few months before of Hegel’s
Philosophy ofRight, he turned his attention to the development of the modern state by reflecting onBruno Bauer’s essay by the same name. Here, he would come to the conclusion that thecourse of human freedom culminating in the modern state (which Hegel had so brilliantlydocumented as leading from slavery to emancipation—the so-called course of humanreason) was no emancipation at all. Indeed, the promised liberation of modern societyfrom the shackles of the Middle Ages had not occurred. Hence, the task of socialemancipation which could be carried on by critical reflection would lead the very agentsof that reflection to a further task, namely, the transformation of society throughrevolution. Consequently, the promise of critical theory would be radical socialtransformation. The ancient assumption that the purpose of reflection was for knowledgeitself, allied with the further assumption that pure contemplation was the proper end ofthe human subject, was replaced by another end of reflection also to be derived fromclassical thought, but with its own peculiarly modern twist; theory when allied with
praxis has a proper political end, namely, social transformation.However, for Marx this was not enough. Two factors remained. First, whence was suchknowledge to be derived? Second, what would be the nature of such knowledge?Between the autumn of 1843 and the summer of 1844, Marx would provide answers toboth questions. The answers came in the form of a class theory in which the newlyemerging ‘proletariat’ were to play the central role. For Marx, they became the concretesubject of history with the result that hopes for emancipation would be anchored in acritical theory, which would in turn be associated with the activity of a particular class.Again, Hegel had provided the groundwork for this understanding by associating thebasic interest in civil society in his philosophy of law with the interest of a particular
Stände. Of the three orders of society—agricultural, business and civil service—it wasonly the latter which could represent the universal interests of humankind. With Marx,that latter task was transferred from the civil servants, who could no longer be trusted, tothe proletariat, who he somewhat confidently asserted would bring about the socialrevolution necessary to overcome the contradictions with modern political society.With regard to the second question, it was again Hegel, the philosopher of modernity
par excellence, who taught Marx to look not to intuition
per se but to the manifestation ofreason in practical institutional form for an appropriate understanding of the world. Hegelhad been the first philosopher both to understand and to use the work of the politicaleconomists in his work. Marx, first in a review of James Mill’s
Elements of PoliticalEconomy and later in a much more elaborate fashion, would work out a thesis about thedynamics of history leading him to assert that economic activity had a certain priority inthe development of history.This thesis would lead Marx to assert shortly thereafter, in
The German Ideology,5 thatfor the first time real history could begin. The very assumption behind a book which hadthe audacity to put the term ‘ideology’ into the title was that thought alone wasideological. There was a higher truth which Marx, through his methodology, would beable to attain, namely the ‘productive’ activity of humankind. Human history would thenbe simultaneous with human production. The term for this new approach to the world ofreflection and action would be ‘historical materialism’ and it would attack other more‘idealistic’ modes of thinking as ‘ideological’. Hence, a critical theory would be able tounearth the false presumptions that had heretofore held humanity in their sway. Later, in
Capital, Marx would label the kind of thinking which he had characterized as ‘ideology’in
The German Ideology as ‘fetishism’. He did so in the famous last section of the firstchaper of volume 1, entitled ‘The fetishism of commodities and the secret thereof.Marx’s choice and use of metaphor is interesting, if not compelling. He uses ‘ideology’,‘fetishism’ and ‘secret’ as if there was some ominous conspiracy against humankindwhich a certain kind of critical and theoretical orientation could unmask. The term‘fetishism’ had a religious origin designating a fundamental confusion regardingperceptual orientations to the world. The very assumption that a certain theoreticalorientation could unleash the ‘secret’ behind ideology as a kind of ‘fetishism’ representeda kind of confidence that would not only shape the historical development of criticaltheory in the future, but also unearth its problematic nature.At the risk of oversimplification, one might state that there are two basic strains in thehistory of German philosophy. One strain argues that thought or reason is constitutive,the other that it is transformative. The former orientation can be traced to the debateinitiated by Kant over the limits of human reason, while the latter can be traced toHegel’s philosophy of history, which attempted to locate philosophical reflection in adiscourse about the history of human freedom.Critical theory could be said to ally itself with this latter theme, even though theconstitutive element would play an ever more significant role. In its classical, Hegelian-Marxist, context, critical theory rests on the nascent Enlightenment assumption thatreflection is emancipatory. But what is the epistemological ground for this claim? Inother words, how is thought constitutive for action? Which form of action is proper,appropriate or correct? In the early writings, Marx attempted to ground theepistemological claims of transformative action in the concept of
Gattungswesen, i.e.,species being. This concept, taken directly from Ludwig Feuerbach, who in turn hadconstructed it from both Hegel and Aristotle, affirms that in contrast to the radicalindividuation of the subject in modern thought, the aim or purpose of a human being is tobe determined through intersubjective social action. In Hegelian terms, one constitutesvalid self-knowledge through social interaction defined as human labour. According toMarx, the problem with the modern productive process is that it fails to allow the workerto constitute him-or herself as a species being, i.e., as a person who can function
foranother human being. Hence, the labour process reduces him or her to an animal, asopposed to a human, level making him or her autonomous, competitive and inhuman—co-operating with the productive process and not with other human beings. The point ofrevolution would be to bring the human being to his or her full and proper capacities as abeing for whom the species would be the end, object and aim.There were problems with this view. To be sure, Marx represents the culmination of acertain kind of political theory that began with Hobbes, and which was in turn critical oforiginal anthropological assumptions that saw the human being as an autonomous agentemerging from a state of nature. However, in a certain sense, the concept of species-beingwas as metaphysical as the Hobbesian notion of the human being in a state of nature, aview which was so aptly and appropriately criticized by Rousseau. It is my view thatMarx was aware of the essentially epistemological problem that lay at the foundation ofhis own thought. Does one ground a theory of emancipation on certain anthropologicalassumptions regarding the nature of the species, assumptions which were as metaphysicalas those the theory was attempting to criticize? Marx attempted to overcome thisdilemma by providing historical evidence. In this context, his later work, the volumes of
Capital, represent a massive attempt to give an account of human agency which was bothhistorical and scientific. Hence, the quest for a valid constitutive ground for criticaltheory began with Marx himself. Marx as a political economist would bring massivehistorical research to bear on the claim that capitalism is merely a phase in humandevelopment and not the be-all and end-all of history. Hence, as a true Hegelian, hewould assert that like any economic system it bore the seeds of its own destruction. As aconsequence, the metaphysical claims present in the notion of species-being would reemergeas a claim about the implicit but incomplete socialization present in capitalism,which, when rationalized, would transform the latter into socialism. As is well known,Marx even went beyond that to attempt to develop, on the basis of his historicalinvestigations, a scientific, predictive formula announcing the end of capitalism on thebasis of the ‘falling rate of profit’. The formula assumed that as capital advanced it wouldbe able to generate less and less profit and so would lose its own incentive. Hence, theforce of capitalism, unleashed, would lead to its own imminent self-destruction. Thevictor, of course, would be socialism, which would emerge from the fray, new-born andpure, the ultimate rationalization of the irrationalism implicit in capitalism. As the familywould inevitably give way to the force of civil society in Hegel’s philosophy of law, socapitalism would break down and re-emerge as socialism.In 1844 the young Marx had accused his one acknowledged theoretical mentor, Hegel,of harbouring a certain ‘latent positivism’.6 There are those who would accuse the olderMarx of having done the same. If capitalism is to fall of its own weight, what is the linkbetween thought and revolutionary action that so inspired the younger Marx? Indeed,what role would the proletariat, the heretofore messianic class of underlings, play in thetransformation of society? And what of critical theory? It too would be transformed intojust one more scientific, predictive positivistic model. In Marx’s favour, this desire tosecure the claims of a critical theory on the firm foundation of positivistic science wasalways in tension with the more critical claims of exhaustive historical analysis. But itwas Marx himself who bequeathed to the late nineteenth century, and subsequently byimplication to the twentieth century, the ambiguities of a critical theory. One couldimagine the great social thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries comingtogether to pose a single question: upon what can we ground a critical theory? Would itbe the proletariat now transformed into the working class? economic scientific analysis?the critical reflection of a specific historically chosen agent (the vanguard)? informedindividual
praxis? Perhaps critical theory would produce a ‘dialectic of enlightenment’ socunning that its very inauguration would produce its own destruction as certain later heirswould predict. Certainly, the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries saw theconcretization of a particular form of Marxism in a political society, not merely in theformer USSR but also in the various workers’ movements in Europe and elsewhere, aswell as in the founding of the International, which would raise these questions. A kind ofcritical theory found its apologists from Engels to Lenin, from Bernstein to Luxemburg,from Kautsky to Plekhanov. Yet the systematization of critical theory as a model ofreflection owes its life in the twentieth century to a group of academics who, originallyinspired by the German workers’ movement, attempted to give to critical theory a life inthe German university.
FROM GRÜNBURG TO HORKHEIMER: THE FOUNDATION OF CRITICAL THEORYAlthough the term ‘critical theory’ in the twentieth century owes its definition primarilyto an essay written in 1937 by Max Horkheimer,7 the institute which became associatedwith this term was founded almost two decades earlier. Certainly one of the moreinteresting experiments in the history of German institutional thought began when FelixWeil, the son of a German exporter of grains from Argentina, convinced his father,Hermann, to provide an endowment which would enable a yearly income of DM 120,000to establish, in the year 1922, an Institute for Social Research in affiliation with theUniversity of Frankfurt. Weil, inspired by the workers’ movement, and having written athesis on socialism, wanted an institute which could deal directly with the problems ofMarxism on a par equal to other established disciplines in the University. The firstcandidate for director, Kurt Albert Gerlach, who planned a series of inaugural lectures onsocialism, anarchism and Marxism, died of diabetes before he could begin. Hisreplacement, Karl Grünberg, a professor of law and political science from the Universityof Vienna, an avowed Marxist, who had begun in the year of 1909 an Archive for theHistory of Socialism and the Worker’s Movement, was present at the official creation ofthe Institute on 3 February 1922. In his opening address, he indicated that Marxismwould be the guiding principle of the Institute. And so it was for a decade. To be sure, itwas the kind of Marxism that was still inspired by the nineteenth century, by the idea ofthe proletariat, by the workers’ movement, by the example of the Soviet Union and theMarx-Engels Institute in Moscow, by the conception of Marxism as a kind of sciencewhich could penetrate heretofore unknown truths which had been obscured by so-called‘bourgeois’ thought. Indeed, mocking Frankfurt students celebrated its orthodoxy byreferring to it as ‘Café Marx’.Certainly, Marxism need not be vulgar to be orthodox. Academic problems which werestandard fare for a now more or less established theoretical tradition were commonplace.Principal among them was the study of the workers’ movement. Indeed, if Marxian classtheory was correct, the proletariat were to bear the distinctive role of being those whowere able to interpret history and bring about the transformation that such insight wouldsustain.
Praxis would then be associated solely with their activity. From anepistemological point of view, the problem of the relation of theory to
praxis would berevealed. As Lukács would later think, there would be a certain transparent identitybetween Marxian social theory and the activity of the working class. Hence, academicstudy of the working class would be the most appropriate, indeed, the most proper,subject of study for an institute which conceived itself in Marxist terms.For the Institute for Social Research at that time, Marxism was conceived by analogyto science. Hence, the original works of the Institute were associated with capitalistaccumulation and economic planning, studies of the economy in China, agriculturalrelations in France, imperialism and, along with this, through close collaboration with theSoviet Union, the establishment of a collection of the unpublished works of Marx andEngels. However, it wasn’t until the leadership passed from Grünberg to the more ablehands of one of the young assistants at the institute, Max Horkheimer, in 1931, that theInstitute was to make its mark through both productivity and scholarship. AlthoughHorkheimer was never the believing Marxist Grünberg had been, certain events inGermany and the world would shape the Institute, distancing it from Marxian orthodoxy.The rise of fascism and the splintering of the workers’ movement as well as theStalinization of Russia would force the Institute to stray from the conventional Marxistwisdom about both theory and science as well as shake its confidence in the workers’movement.During the 1930s, the roster of the institute would include Theodor Adorno, LeoLowenthal, Erich Fromm, Fredrich Pollach, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin(indirectly though, since he never became a fully-fledged member) and others. Althougheach figure would eventually be known for independent work, and although certainmembers would break with the general orientation of the Institute, in retrospect what issomewhat amazing about this illustrious group of scholars was its concern for sharing acommon theoretical programme under a distinctive directorship. Indeed, the two mostpowerful theoretical minds, Adorno (1903–69) and Horkheimer (1895–1973), continuedto collaborate for their entire lifetimes. Also, it was during this period that the distinctiveperspective with which this group came to be identified began to be developed. Moderncritical theory can be dated from this period.The problematic which sparked a critical theory of the modern form was the demise ofthe working class as an organ of appropriate revolutionary knowledge and action coupledwith the rise of fascism and the emergence of Stalinization. Taken together, these eventswould de-couple the link between theory and revolutionary practice centred in theproletariat which had become commonplace in Marxian theory. What became apparent toHorkheimer and others at the Institute was that once this link was broken, essentially thelink with a certain form of ideology, it would be necessary to forge a unique theoreticalperspective in the context of modern thought in general and German thought in particular.It would not be enough either comfortably to study the workers’ movement or to defineMarxist science. The road upon which the Institute embarked would have to bear its owndistinctive stamp and character. In brief, not only would this de-coupling give criticaltheory its peculiar dynamic for the 1930s but, as the torch was passed in the 1960s to ayounger generation, this same thrust would give it definition. Hence, while Grünberg’sArchive for the History of Socialism and the Workers’ Movement would define theInstitute in more traditional Marxian terms, the chief organ of the Institute underHorkheimer,
The Journal for Social Research, would record a different purpose, namelythe movement away from Marxian materialism. Writing in 1968 Jürgen Habermas wouldput it this way:Since the years after World War II the idea of the growing wretchedness of theworkers, out of which Marx saw rebellion and revolution emerging as atransitional step to the reign of freedom, had for long periods become abstractand illusory, and at least as out of date as the ideologies despised by the young.The living conditions of laborers and employees at the time of
The CommunistManifesto were the outcome of open oppression. Today they are instead motivesfor trade union organization and for discussion between dominant economic andpolitical groups. The revolutionary thrust of the proletariat has long sincebecome realistic action within the framework of society. In the minds of men atleast, the proletariat has been integrated into society.(
Critical Theory [8.104], vi)Horkheimer’s 1937 essay, ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, which attempted tosystematically define critical theory, does not begin by underlining an association with theMarxist heritage which still distinguished the Institute and journal with which it wasassociated. Rather the essay begins by trying to answer the more general question regardingtheory
per se, ‘What is theory?’ (
ibid., p. 188). In the traditional sense, theory is akind of generalization based upon experience. From Descartes to Husserl theory has beenso defined, argues Horkheimer. As such, however, theory traditionally defined has apeculiar kind of prejudice which favours the natural sciences. Horkheimer, reflecting thegreat Diltheyian distinction between
Geisteswissenschaften (social sciences) and
Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) makes the appropriate criticism. Social scienceimitates natural science in its self-definition as theory. Put simply, the study of societymust conform to the facts. But Horkheimer would argue that it is not quite so simple.Experience is said to conform to generalizations. The generalizations tend to conform tocertain ideas present in the minds of the researchers. The danger is apparent: so defined,theory conforms to the ideas in the mind of the researcher and not to experience itself.The word for this phenomenon, derived from the development of the Marxist theoreticaltradition following Lukács’s famous characterization in 1934, is ‘reification’. Horkheimerdoesn’t hesitate to use it. Regarding the development of theory he states, ‘But theconception of theory was absolutized, as though it were grounded in the inner nature ofknowledge as such, or justified in some other ahistorical way, and thus it became a reifiedideological category’ (
ibid., p. 194). Although various theoretical approaches would comeclose to breaking out of the ideological constraints which restricted them, theoreticalapproaches such as positivism, pragmatism, neo-Kantianism and phenomenology,Horkheimer would argue that they failed. Hence, all would be subject to the logicomathematicalprejudice which separates theoretical activity from actual life. Theappropriate response to this dilemma is the development of a critical theory. ‘In fact,however, the self-knowledge of present-day man is not a mathematical knowledge ofnature which claims to be the eternal logos, but a critical theory of society as it is, atheory dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life’ (
ibid., p.199). Of course, the construction of a critical theory won’t be easy. Interestingly enough,Horkheimer defines the problem epistemologically. ‘What is needed is a radicalreconsideration not of the scientist alone, but of the knowing individual as such’
(ibid.).Horkheimer’s decision to take critical theory in the direction of epistemology was notwithout significance. Critical theory, which had heretofore depended upon the Marxisttradition for its legitimation, would have to define itself by ever distancing itself from thattradition. Indeed, one of the peculiar ironies resulting from this particular turn is that thevery tradition out of which critical theory comes, namely Marxism, would itself fallunder the distinction between traditional and critical theory. Ultimately, in many ways theMarxist tradition was as traditional as all the other traditions. But, of course, the 1937essay fails to recognize this. Indeed, this dilemma of recognition would play itself out inthe post-1937 period. This is the very irony of the systematization of critical theory.Equally, this epistemological turn would change permanently the distinction andapproach of critical theory. As I suggested earlier, critical theory found its foundation inthe transformative tradition in German thought as inspired by Hegel and Marx. Now,having embarked upon an epistemological route, it would find it necessary to draw uponthe constitutive dimension of German thought. If one could not ground critical theory inMarxian orthodoxy, certainly the assumption behind the 1937 essay, it would benecessary to find the constitutive point of departure for critical theory in an analysis ofknowledge as such. Unfortunately, Horkheimer was unprepared to follow his own uniqueinsight. Instead, the constitutive elements of knowledge to which he refers are taken in amore or less unexamined form from the Marxian heritage. The distinction betweenindividual and society, the concept of society as bourgeois, the idea that knowledgecentres in production, the critique of the so-called liberal individual as autonomous, theprimacy of the concept of history over logos—these so-called elements which areconstitutive of a critical theory were part of the Marxist heritage.Taken as a whole, ‘Tradition and Critical Theory’ is strongly influenced by theHegelian-Marxist idea that the individual is alienated from society, that liberal thoughtobscures this alienation, and that the task of critical theory must be to overcome thisalienation. Horkheimer put it this way,The separation between the individual and society in virtue of which theindividual accepts as natural the limits prescribed for his activity is relativizedin Critical Theory. The latter considers the overall framework which isconditioned by the blind interaction of individual activities (that is, the existentdivision of labour and class distinctions) to be a function which originates inhuman action and therefore is a possible object of painful decision and rationaldetermination of goals.(
ibid., p. 207)Horkheimer is vehement in his critique of the kind of thought that characterizes so-called‘bourgeois’ individualism. For him, ‘bourgeois thought’ harbours a belief in an individualwho is ‘autonomous’ believing that it, the autonomous ego, is the ground of reality.Horkheimer counters this view with another, reminiscent of the early Marx. ‘Criticalthinking is the function neither of the isolated individual nor a sum total of individuals.Its subject is rather a definite individual in his real relation to other individuals andgroups, in his conflict with a particular class, and, finally, in the resultant web ofrelationships with the social totality and with nature’ (
ibid., pp. 201–11).Of course, this view is dangerously close to traditional Marxian class theory andHorkheimer knows it. After all, who is this ‘definite individual’ whose ‘real relation’ is toother individuals? Traditional Marxist theory answered, the proletariat. Horkheimer issuspicious. ‘But it must be added that even the situation of the proleteriat is, in thissociety, no guarantee of correct knowledge’ (
ibid., p. 213). Horkheimer is hard pressed tofind the appropriate replacement of the proletariat without falling back into what hecalled ‘bourgeois individualism’. He is doubtful of the proletariat’s ability somehow to‘rise above…differentiation of social structure…imposed from above’. But if he wants toeliminate the proletariat as a source of truth or correct knowledge, he doesn’t quite do it.Indeed, the intellectual or critic can proclaim his or her identity with the proletariat.Horkheimer is not entirely without optimism. ‘The intellectual is satisfied to proclaimwith relevant admiration the creative strength of the proletariat and finds satisfaction inadapting himself to it and canonizing it’ (
ibid., p. 214). Indeed, Horkheimer is optimisticabout this identification. If, however, the theoretician and his specific object are seen asforming a dynamic unity with the oppressed class, so that his presentation of societalcontradictions is not merely the expression of the concrete historical situation but also aforce within it to stimulate change, then his real function emerges’ (
ibid., p. 215).Horkheimer’s reliance on Marxian doctrine as the epistemological foundation forcritical theory becomes more apparent as the essay develops. Hence, a critical theory ofsociety will show ‘how an exchange economy, given the condition of men (which, ofcourse, changes under the very influence of such an economy), must necessarily lead to aheightening of those social tensions which in the present historical era lead in turn towars and revolution’ (
ibid., p. 266). As such, critical theory has a peculiar insight into thepotential history of modern society. As Marx used political economy and the theory ofthe primacy of production, Horkheimer will use this model of economic determinism topredict the development of social contradictions in the modern world. Indeed, he goes asfar as to state that critical theory rests upon a ‘single existential judgment’, namely, ‘thebasic form of the historically given commodity economy, on which modern history rests,contains in itself the internal and external tensions of the modern era’ (
ibid., p. 227).Equally, critical theory will be able to overcome the ‘Cartesian dualism’ thatcharacterized contemporary traditional theory by linking critical with practical activity,theory and
praxis. Indeed, it was this belief that critical theory was somehow related topractical activity that would distinguish this kind of theoretical endeavour. ‘The thinkermust relate all the theories which are proposed to the practical attitudes and social stratawhich they reflect’ (
ibid., p. 232).In retrospect, one may view this 1937 declaration as something of a
tour de forceattempting to break away from at least some of the most fundamental tenets of traditionalMarxist theory, while at the same time in a curious way being caught in the very web ofthe system from which it was trying to escape. Hence, while dissociating itself from theassumption that truth and proper knowledge were to be rendered through the proletariat,the fundamental tenet of Marxian class theory, this treatise on critical theory celebratedconcepts such as economic determinism, reification, critique of autonomy and socialcontradiction—assumptions derived from traditional Marxian social theory—as validnotions. Simultaneously, this position could not seek to justify itself independently of theevents of the time. As the French Revolution determined Hegel’s concept of the politicalend of philosophy as human freedom, and as the burgeoning Industrial Revolutiondetermined Marx’s thought, critical theory attempted to respond to the events of the time,the decline of the workers’ movement and the rise of fascism. Hence, the indelible markof the Institute, and of the essay on critical theory in the decade of the 1930s, was theconviction that thought was linked to social justice. The thesis, as old as the GermanEnlightenment itself, was that thought could somehow be emancipatory. Thepredominance of this view gave the Institute its particular character, especially whencontrasted to the other German philosophical movements of the time, phenomenology,existentialism and, to some extent, positivism. Although influenced by the same set ofevents as the other German philosophical movements it was critical theory that was todistinguish itself by addressing the political oppression of the day.
HORKHEIMER, ADORNO, AND THE DIALECTICAL TRANSFORMATION OF CRITICAL THEORYCritical theory in the post-1937 period would be characterized by two essentially relatedperspectives, one which broadened its critique of modes of rationality under the heading‘critique of instrumental reason’ and the other which attempted a grand analysis ofculture and civilization under the heading ‘dialectic of enlightenment’. With theonslaught of the Second World War, Horkheimer and Adorno shared not only a deeppessimism about the future course of rationality but also a loss of hope in thepotentialities of a philosophy of history for purposes of social transformation. Theconfidence in the great potentialities of thought as unleashed by the GermanEnlightenment went underground, replaced by the pessimism of the two major thinkers ofcritical theory who gave up not only on being thinkers in solidarity with the proletariatbut also on the redemptive powers of rationality itself. In this sense, not only do theyrepresent a critique of what is now quite fashionably called ‘modernity’, but they may bethe harbingers of postmodernity as well.In the course of the development of critical theory under the ever more pessimisticvision of its principal representatives, the focus would change from Hegel and Marx toWeber. Although they were never to give up entirely on Hegel and Marx, it was Weberwho would articulate the pessimistic underside of the Enlightenment which Horkheimerand Adorno would come to admire. Hegel, through his notion of reflection which made adistinction between true and false forms of externalization, between
Entaüsserung and
Entfremdung, always sustained the possiblity of reason being able to overcome itsfalsifications. Marx, although less attentive to this distinction, retained the possibility ofovercoming falsification or alienation through social action. Hence, whether it wasthrough the reconciliatory power of reason in the case of Hegel, or the transformativeforce of social action in the case of Marx, a certain emancipatory project was held intact.Horkheimer, and eventually Adorno, initially endorsed that project. However, whenHorkheimer wrote his
Critique of Instrumental Reason [8.105] it was under the influenceof Weber’s brilliant, sobering vision regarding reason and action forged through acomprehensive analysis of the genesis and development of western society. Weber hadspeculated that in the course of western history, reason, as it secularizes, frees itself fromits more mythic and religious sources and becomes ever more purposive, more oriented tomeans to the exclusion of ends. In order to characterize this development, Weber coinedthe term
Zweckrationalität, purposive-rational action. Reason, devoid of its redemptiveand reconciliatory possibilities, could only be purposive, useful and calculating. Weberhad used the metaphor ‘iron cage’ as an appropriate way of designating the end, the deadendof modern reason. Horkheimer would take the analysis one step further. Hischaracterization of this course was designated by the term, ‘instrumental reason’. Impliedin this usage is the overwhelming force of reason for purposes of social control. Thecombined forces of media, bureaucracy, economy and cultural life would bear down onthe modern individual with an accumulated force which could be described only asinstrumental. Instrumental reason would represent the ever-expanding ability of thosewho were in positions of power in the modern world to dominate and control society fortheir own calculating purposes. So conceived, the kind of analysis which began with thegreat optimism inaugurated by the German Enlightenment (which sustained the beliefthat reason could come to comprehend the developing principle of history and thereforesociety) would end with the pessimistic realization that reason functions for socialcontrol, not in the name of enlightenment or emancipation. And what then of a criticaltheory?No doubt that question occurred to Horkheimer and Adorno, who, as exiles, nowsouthern Californians, collaborated on what in retrospect must be said to be one of themost fascinating books of modern times,
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Is enlightenment,the avowed aim of a critical theory, ‘self-destructive’? That is the question posed by thebook, the thesis of which is contained in its title. Enlightenment, which harbours the verypromise of human emancipation, becomes the principle of domination, domination ofnature and thus, in certain hands, the basis for the domination of other human beings. Inthe modern world, knowledge is power. The book begins with an analysis of Bacon’s socalled‘scientific attitude’. The relation of ‘mind’ and ‘nature’ is ‘patriarchal’ (
ibid., p. 4);‘the human mind, which overcomes superstition, is to hold sway over a disenchantednature’
(ibid.). ‘What men want to learn from nature is how to use it in order wholly todominate it and other men. That is the only aim’
(ibid.). Hence, ‘power and knowledge’are the same. But the thesis is more complex. The term ‘dialectic’ is used here in a formwhich transcends Hegel’s quasi-logical usage. Here dialectic circles back upon itself insuch a manner that its subject, enlightenment, both illuminates and destroys. Myth istransformed into enlightenment, but at the price of transforming ‘nature into mereobjectivity’ (
ibid., p. 9). The increment of power gained with enlightenment has as itsequivalent a simultaneous alienation from nature. The circle is vicious: the greaterenlightenment, the greater alienation. Magic, with its desire to control, is replaced byscience in the modern world, which has not only the same end but more effective means.According to this thesis, the very inner core of myth is enlightenment. ‘The principle ofimmanence, the explanation of every event as repetition, that the enlightenment upholdsagainst mythic imagination, is the principle of myth itself’ (
ibid., p. 12). Indeed, theyobserve, in the modern obsession with the mathematization of nature (the phenomenon soaccurately observed by Edmund Husserl in his famous
The Crisis of European Scienceand Transcendental Phenomenology) they find representatives of a kind of ‘return of themythic’ in the sense that enlightenment always ‘intends to secure itself against the returnof the mythic’. But it does so by degenerating into the ‘mythic cult of positivism’. In this‘mathematical formalism’, they claim, ‘enlightenment returns to mythology, which itnever knew how to elude’ (
ibid., p. 27). Such is the peculiar character of the dialectic ofenlightenment, which turns upon itself in such a way that it is subsumed by the veryphenomenon it wishes to overcome.Critical theory distinguishes itself in this period by ever distancing itself from theMarxian heritage with which it originally associated. Some would see this as a departurefrom the very sources of reason from which it was so effectively nourished. Hence, aform of rationality gone wild. Others might see it from a different perspective. Perhapsthe
Dialectic of Enlightenment represents the coming of age of critical theory as criticaltheory finally making the turn into the twentieth century. As such, the philosophy ofhistory on which it so comfortably rested, with its secure assumptions about the place ofenlightenment in the course of western history (to say nothing of the evolution of classand economy), was undercut by the authors’ curious insight into the nature ofenlightenment itself. Enlightenment is not necessarily a temporal phenomenon given itsclaims for a particular time and place in modern historical development. Rather, forHorkheimer and Adorno, enlightenment is itself dialectical, a curious phenomenonassociated with rationality itself. In this view, the dialectic of enlightenment could betraced to the dawn of human civilization. Here we encounter a form of critical theoryinfluenced not only by Kant, Hegel, Marx and Weber but also by Nietzsche and perhapsKierkegaard. It would follow that texts that witnessed the evolution of human historywould be placed side by side with those which gave testimony to its origin.Enlightenment can then be traced not to the so-called German Enlightenment, or to thewestern European Enlightenment, but to the original written texts of western civilization,which, as any former Gymnasium student knows, were those of Homer. Nietzsche iscredited with the insight. ‘Nietzsche was one of the few after Hegel who recognized thedialectic of enlightenment’ (
ibid., p. 44). They credit him with the double insight thatwhile enlightenment unmasks the acts of those who govern, it is also a tool they useunder the name of progress to dupe the masses. ‘The revelation of these two aspects ofthe Enlightenment as an historic principle made it possible to trace the notion ofenlightenment as progressive thought, back to the beginning of traditional history’
(ibid.).Horkheimer and Adorno do not concentrate much on the illusory character of theenlightenment in Homer, ‘the basic text of European civilization’ as they call it. Thatelement has been over-emphasized by the so-called fascist interpreters of both Homer andNietzsche. Rather, it is the use or interpretation of myth as an instrument of dominationas evidenced in this classic text that they perceive as fundamental. Here, Weber andNietzsche complement one another. The other side of the dialectic of enlightenment is thethesis on instrumental reason. Hence, the ‘individuation’ of self which is witnessed in theHomeric text is carried out through what seems to be the opposition of enlightenment andmyth. ‘The opposition of enlightenment to myth is expressed in the opposition of thesurviving individual ego to multifarious fate’ (
ibid., p. 46). The Homeric narrativesecularizes the mythic past in the name of the hero’s steadfast orientation to his own‘self-preservation’. It secularizes it by learning to dominate it. Learning to dominate hasto do with the ‘organization’ of the self. But the very instrumentality associated withdomination has its curious reverse side; something like that which Marcuse would latercall ‘the return of the repressed’. As they put it regarding Homer, ‘Like the heroes of allthe true novels later on, Odysseus loses himself in order to find himself; the estrangementfrom nature that he brings about is realized in the process of the abandonment to naturehe contends in each adventure; and, ironically, when he, inexorably, returns home, theinexorable force he commands itself triumphs as the judge and avenger of the legacy ofthe powers from which he has escaped’ (
ibid., p. 48).There is no place where this curious double thesis is more effectively borne out than inthe phenomenon of sacrifice. Influenced by Ludwig Klage’s contention regarding theuniversality of sacrifice, they observe that individuation undercuts the originary relationof the lunar being to nature which sacrifice implies. ‘The establishment of the self cutsthrough that fluctuating relation with nature that the sacrifice of the self claims toestablish’ (
ibid., p. 51). Sacrifice, irrational though it may be, is a kind of enabling devicewhich allows one to tolerate life. ‘The venerable belief in sacrifice, however is probablyalready an impressed pattern according to which the subjected repeat upon themselves theinjustice that was done them, enacting it again and again in order to endure it’
(ibid.).Sacrifice, when universalized and said to apply to the experience of all of humanity, iscivilization. Its elimination would occur at enormous expense. The emergence ofrationality is based on denial, the denial of the relationship between humanity and nature.‘The very denial, the nucleus of all civilizing rationality, is the germ cell of aproliferating mythic irrationality: with the denial of nature in man not merely the
telos ofthe outward control of nature but the
telos of man’s own life is distorted andbefogged’ (
ibid., p. 54). The great loss is of course that the human being is no longer ableto perceive its relationship to nature in its compulsive preoccupation with selfpreservation.The dialectic of enlightenment continues to play itself out. To escape fromsacrifice is to sacrifice oneself. Hence the subthesis of
Dialectic of Enlightenment: ‘thehistory of civilization is the history of the introversion of sacrifice. In other words, thehistory of renunciation’ (
ibid., p. 55). It is this sub-thesis that they associate with the‘prehistory of subjectivity’ (
ibid., p. 54).The text to which Horkheimer and Adorno have turned their attention is written byHomer, but the story is about the prehistory of western civilization. Odysseus is theprophetic seer who in his deeds would inform the course of action to be followed byfuture individuals. Odysseus is the ‘self who always restrains himself, he sacrifices forthe ‘abnegation of sacrifice’ and through him we witness the ‘transformation of sacrificeinto subjectivity’. Above all, Odysseus ‘survives’, but ironically at the ‘concession ofone’s own defeat’, an acknowledgement of death. Indeed, the rationality represented byOdysseus is that of ‘cunning’: a necessity required by having to choose the only routebetween Scylla and Charybdis in which each god has the ‘right’ to do its particular task.Together the gods represent ‘Olympian Justice’ characterized by an ‘equivalence betweenthe course, the crime which expiates it, and the guilt arising from that, which in turnreproduces the curse’ (
ibid., p. 58). This is the pattern of ‘all justice in history’ whichOdysseus opposes. But he does so by succumbing to the power of this justice. He doesnot find a way to escape the route charted past the Sirens. Instead, he finds a way tooutwit the curse by having himself chained to the mast. As one moves from myth toenlightenment, it is cunning with its associated renunciation which characterizes reason.The great promise held by enlightenment is now seen when perceived in retrospect fromthe perspective of the earlier Horkheimer and Adorno to be domination, repression andcunning.The thesis contained in
Dialectic of Enlightenment can be extended beyond the originof western civilization. As its authors attempt to show, it can be brought back to critiqueeffectively the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as well as attempts to overcome it. Asself-preservation was barely seen in Homer as the object of reason, the so-calledhistorical Enlightenment made a fetish of it. ‘The system the Enlightenment has in mindis the form of knowledge which copes most proficiently with the facts and supports theindividual most effectively in the mastery of nature. Its principles are the principles ofself-preservation.’ ‘Burgher’, ‘slave owner’, ‘free entrepreneur’ and ‘adminstrator’ are itslogical subjects. At its best, as represented in Kant, reason was suspended between ‘trueuniversality’ in which ‘universal subjects’ can ‘overcome the conflict between pure andempirical reason in the conscious solidarity of the whole’ (
ibid., p. 83), and calculatingrationality ‘which adjusts the world for the ends of self-preservation’. In this view, Kant’sattempts to ground morality in the law of reason came to naught. In fact, Horkheimer andAdorno find more base reasons for Kant’s attempt to ground morality in the concept of‘respect’. ‘The root of Kantian optimism’ is based in this view on the fear of a retreat of‘barbarism’. In any case, in this view the concept of respect was linked to the bourgeoiswhich in latter times no longer existed in the same way. Totalitarianism as represented infascism no longer needed such concepts nor did it respect the class that harboured them.It would be happy with science as calculation under the banner of self-preservation alone.The link between Kant and Nietzsche is said to be the Marquis de Sade. In Sade’swritings, it is argued, we find the triumph of calculating reason, totally individualized,freed from the observation of ‘another person’. Here, we encounter a kind of modernreason deprived of any ‘substantial goal’, ‘wholly functionalized’, a ‘purposelesspurposiveness’ totally unconcerned about effects which are dismissed as ‘purely natural’.Hence, any social arrangement is as good as any other and the ‘social necessities’including ‘all solidarity with society duty and family’ can be dissolved.If anything, then, enlightenment means ‘mass deception’ through its fundamentalmedium of the ‘culture industry’ where the rationality of ‘technology’ reigns. ‘Atechnological rationale is the rationale of domination itself (
ibid., p. 121). In film, inmusic, in art, in leisure this new technology has come to dominate in such a way that thetotality of life and experience have been overcome. In the end, in accord with this view,the so-called enlightenment of modern civilization is ironic, total, bitter and universal.Enlightenment as self-deception manifests itself when art and advertising become fusedin an idiom of a ‘style’ that fashions the modern experience as an ideology from whichthere is no escape. In the blur of modern images, all phenomena are exchangeable. Anyobject can be exchanged for any other in this ‘superstitious fusion of word andthing’ (
ibid., p. 164). In such a world, fascism becomes entertainment, easily reconciledwith all the other words and images and ideologies in the vast arena of modernassimilation.In the end,
Dialectic of Enlightenment can be viewed as a kind of crossroads formodern philosophy and social theory. On the one hand, reason can function critically, buton the other, it cannot ground itself in any one perspective. Reason under the image ofself-preservation can only function for the purpose of domination. This is critical theorytwice removed; removed from its foundations in the Marxism of the nineteenth centuryfrom which it attempted to establish its own independence, and removed once again fromany foundation to function as a raging power of critique without foundation. In this sense,this book, more than any other to come from the so-called Frankfurt school, hailed theend of philosophy, and did so in part to usher in the era now designated as postmodernity.Thus, it was not only to the successive reconstruction of phenomenology from Husserlthrough Heidegger that the harbingers of postmodernity could point as legitimateforebears of their own movement, but to the voices which rang out in the
Dialectic ofEnlightenment whose prophetic rage led the way. It was left to Foucault to probe themultiple meanings of the discipline of the self and the institutional repression of thesubject unleashed by the Enlightenment, and to Derrick to articulate the groundlessnessof a position which seeks the role of critic but cannot find the way to a privilegedperspective which would make possible the proper interpretation.
ADORNO AND THE AESTHETIC REHABILITATION OF CRITICAL THEORYBut if critical theory was willing in the late 1940s to give up partially on theEnlightenment and the possibility of a modality of thought that harboured within it apotential for emancipation, it was not totally ready to do so. Hence, critical theory in itscurious route from the early 1920s to the present would make one more turn, a turntoward aesthetics. The wager on aesthetics would keep alive, if in muted fashion, theemancipatory hypothesis with which critical theory began. Adorno, inspired in part byBenjamin, would lead the way out from the ashes left in the wake of an instrumentalrationality whose end, as the end of philosophy, was almost apparent. If the generalclaims of the
Dialectic of Enlightenment were to be sustained, the theoreticalconsequences for critical theory would be devastating. Hence the question regarding themanner in which a critical theory could be rehabilitated, but this time under the suspicionof a full-blown theory of rationality. In a sense, through Horkheimer’s and Adorno’srather devastating analysis of rationality as fundamentally instrumental, and ofenlightenment as fundamentally circular, it would have seemed that the very possibilityfor critique itself would be undermined. The aesthetic redemption of the claims of criticaltheory would have to be understood from the perspective of the framework of suspicionregarding the claims of cognition. Since cognition would result inevitably ininstrumentality, it would be necessary to find a way in which critique could belegitimated without reference to cognition
per se. Aesthetics, with which Adorno hadbeen fascinated from the time of his earliest published work, would provide a way out. If
Dialectic of Enlightenment could be read as a critique of cognition, art represents forAdorno a way of overcoming the dilemma established by cognition. Adorno sees thecapacity of a non-representational theory in the potentiality of art as manifestation. Theexplosive power of art remains in its representing that which cannot be represented. Inthis sense it is the nonidentical in art that can represent society, but only as its other. Artfunctions then for Adorno in the context of the programme of critical theory as a kind ofstand-in for a cognitive theory, which cannot be attained under the force ofinstrumentality.Adorno, however, was not quite ready to give up on a philosophy of history which hadinformed his earlier work. Hence, under the influence of Benjamin and in direct contrastto Nietzsche and Heidegger, he was able to incorporate his understanding of art within atheory of progress. At the end of his famous essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction’,8 originally published in the
Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung in1936,9 Benjamin has postulated the thesis that with photography, ‘for the first time inworld history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasiticaldependence on ritual’. As a consequence, art no longer needed to sustain a claim onauthenticity. After photography, the work of art is ‘designed for reproducibility’. Fromthis observation, Benjamin drew a rather astonishing conclusion: ‘But the instant thecriterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function ofart is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on anotherpractice—politics’ (
ibid., p. 244). However, it should not be assumed that the politicswith which modern an was to be associated was immediately emancipatory. The thesiswas as positive as it was negative. ‘The logical result of Fascism is the introduction ofaesthetics into political life’ (
ibid., p. 241). But for Benjamin this was a form of therelationship between aesthetics and politics which would attempt to rekindle the oldassociation between art and ritual. ‘The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with itthe Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatuswhich is pressed into the production of ritual values’
(ibid.). However, the tables can beturned; while fascism ‘equals the aestheticism of politics’, Benjamin claimed, Marxist ashe was, that ‘communism responds to politicizing art’ (
ibid., p. 242).Adorno would use this insight into the nature of art and historical development freed ofBenjamin’s somewhat materialist orientation. While he affirmed that ‘modern art isdifferent from all previous art in that its mode of negation is different’ becausemodernism ‘negates tradition itself, Adorno addressed the issue of the relation of art notto fascism but to capitalist society. Beyond that, Adorno’s task was to show how artcould overcome the dilemma of rationality as defined through the critique ofinstrumentality, while at the same time sustaining the claim that art had a kind ofintelligibility. How could art be something other than a simple representation of thatsociety? Adorno would return to the classical aesthetic idea of mimesis in order to makehis point. Art has the capacity to represent, but in its very representation it can transcendthat which it is representing. Art survives not by denying but by reconstructing. ‘Themodernity of art lies in its mimetic relation to a petrified and alienated reality. This, andnot the denial of that mute reality, is what makes art speak’ (
Aesthetic Theory [8.23], 31).Art, in other words, represents the non-identical. ‘Modern art is constantly practicing theimpossible trick of trying to identify the non-identical’
(ibid.).Art then can be used to make a kind of claim about rationality. ‘Art’s disavowal ofmagical practices—art’s own antecedents—signifies that art shares in rationality. Itsability to hold its own
qua mimesis in the midst of rationality, even while using themeans of that rationality, is a response to the evils and irrationality of the bureaucraticworld.’ Art then is a kind of rationality that contains a certain ‘non-rational’ element thateludes the instrumental form. This would suggest that it is within the power of art to gobeyond instrumental rationality. This is what art can do which cannot be done incapitalist society
per se. ‘Capitalist society hides and disavows precisely this irrationality,whereas art does not.’ Art then can be related to truth. Art ‘represents truth in the twofoldsense of preserving the image of an end smothered completely by rationality and ofexposing the irrationality and absurdity of the status quo’ (
ibid., p. 79).It is Adorno’s claim then that although art may be part and parcel of what Weberdescribed as rationalization, that process of rationalization in which art partakes is notone which leads to domination. Thus, if art is part of what Weber called the‘disenchantment of the world’, it leads us in a direction different from that ofinstrumental reason. Hence, the claim that ‘Art mobilizes technology in a differentdirection than domination does’ (
ibid., p. 80). And it is for this reason, thinks Adorno,that we must pay attention to the ‘dialectics of mimesis and rationality that is intrinsic toart’
(ibid.).Whereas the
Dialectic of Enlightenment could be conceived as a critique of cognition,Adorno uses art to rehabilitate a cognitive claim. ‘The continued existence of mimesis,understood as the non-conceptual affinity of a subjective creation with its objective andunposited other, defines art as a form of cognition and to that extent as “rational”’
(ibid.).Hence, in a time when reason has, in Adorno’s view, degenerated to the level ofinstrumentality, one can turn to art as the expression of the rehabilitation of a form ofrationality which can overcome the limitation of reason by expressing its non-identitywith itself. In this sense, the claims of critical theory would not be lost but betransformed. Indeed, the earlier emancipatory claims of critical theory would bereappropriated at another level. Here again, Adorno’s view seems to be shaped by that ofhis friend Walter Benjamin. Art can reconcile us to the suffering which can never beexpressed in ordinary rational terms. While ‘reason can subsume suffering underconcepts’ and while it can ‘furnish means to alleviate suffering’, it can never ‘expresssuffering in the medium of experience’. Hence, art has a unique role to play under atransformed understanding, i.e., the role of critical theory. ‘What recommends itself, then,is the idea that art may be the only remaining medium of truth in an age ofincomprehensible terror and suffering’ (
ibid., p. 27). In other words, art can anticipateemancipation, but only on the basis of a solidarity with the current state of humanexistence. ‘By cathecting the repressed, art internalizes the repressing principle, i.e. theunredeemed condition of the world, instead of merely airing futile protests against it. Artidentifies and expresses that condition, thus anticipating its overcoming’ (
ibid., p. 26).For Benjamin it was this view of and solidarity with suffering experienced by others inthe past which has not been redeemed. For him then, happiness is not simply an emptyEnlightenment term. It has a slightly messianic, theological twist. His fundamental thesiswas ‘Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image ofredemption’ (
ibid., p. 254).Finally, if it is possible to look at Adorno’s later work on aesthetics from theperspective of the position worked out with Horkheimer in
Dialectic of Enlightenment, itappears that a case can be made for the retrieval of the earlier emancipatory claims ofcritical theory on the basis of the non-identical character of the work of art. To be sure,Adorno, along with Horkheimer, had left little room to retrieve a critical theory in thewake of their devastating critique of the claims of reason. Indeed, the claims for artwould have to be measured against this very critique. Yet, in a peculiar way, Adorno wasconsistent with the prior analysis. If reason would always lead to domination, then artwould have to base its claim on its ability to express the non-identical. However, the taskremained to articulate those claims precisely. In order to do so Adorno would often findhimself falling back on a philosophy of history which, by the standards articulated in hisearlier critique, he had already invalidated.
HABERMAS AND THE RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF CRITICAL THEORYWith Jürgen Habermas, Adorno’s one-time student, the discourse over the rehabilitationof critical theory was taken to a higher level. Habermas’s initial strategy was torehabilitate the notion of critique in critical theory. Clearly, Habermas has long-helddoubts about the way in which his philosophical mentors in Frankfurt failed to ground acritical theory in a theory of rationality which would harbour an adequate notion ofcritique. On this he has written eloquently in both
The Theory of Communicative Action(1981, [8.85]) and
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985, [8.88]). What I havefound interesting in studying the works of Habermas is the manner in which the argumentfor a critical theory of rationality began to take shape as an alternative argument to theone which Horkheimer and Adorno put forth. In this context, Habermas would availhimself of certain resources within the tradition of contemporary German philosophywhich his mentors overlooked. I suggested earlier that German philosophy since Kant hasbeen shaped by the interaction between the themes of constitution and transformation. Ifmodern critical theory began with a relatively firm belief that the grounds for theemancipatory assumptions regarding critique were clear and given in a certain orientationtoward theory, in retrospect that foundation became ever less secure. Eventually, critique,as in
Dialectic of Enlightenment, became caught in a never-ending circle of internalrepression and external domination. Hence, the promise of critical theory had beenundermined. It was the great merit of Habermas’s early work to have seen the dilemmaand to have addressed it in terms of turning not to the transformative but to theconstitutive element in the German philosophical tradition. Critical theory was forHabermas, at least originally, the problem of ‘valid knowledge’, i.e., an epistemologicalproblem.It should come as no surprise then that when Habermas first juxtaposes traditional andcritical theory, following in the footsteps of Horkheimer’s 1937 article, he engagesEdmund Husserl not only on the status of theory but also on the nature of science. By sodoing, he appropriates two of the themes that were germane and of a piece in latetranscendental phenomenology, namely, the association of the concept of theory with amore or less political notion of liberation or emancipation and the preoccupation ofphenomenology with the status of science.As early as the writing of
Knowledge and Human Interests (1969, [8.82]), Habermassustained the thesis that critical theory could be legitimated on the basis of makingapparent the undisclosed association between knowledge and interest. This association,however, could be specified only on the basis of the clarification of theory in its moreclassical form. According to Habermas
theoria was a kind of mimesis in the sense that inthe contemplation of the cosmos one reproduces internally what one perceives externally.Theory then, even in its traditional form, is conceived to be related to the ‘conduct ofone’s life’. In fact, in this interpretation of the traditional view, the appropriation of atheoretical attitude creates a certain ethos among its practitioners. Husserl is said to havesustained this ‘traditional’ notion of theory. Hence, when Husserl approached thequestion of science he approached it on the basis of his prior commitment to the classicalunderstanding of theory.In Habermas’s view, it is this commitment to theory in the classical sense whichdetermines Husserl’s critique of science. Husserl’s attack on the objectivism of thesciences led to the claim that knowledge of the objective world has a ‘transcendental’basis in the pre-scientific world, that sciences, because of their prior commitment tomundane knowledge of the world, are unable to free themselves from interest, and thatphenomenology, through its method of transcendental self-reflection, can free thisassociation of knowledge and mundane interest through a commitment to a theoreticalattitude which has been defined traditionally. In this view, the classical conception oftheory, which phenomenology borrows, frees one from interest in the ordinary world withthe result that a certain ‘therapeutic power’, as well as a ‘practical efficacy’, is claimedfor phenomenology.Habermas endorses Husserl’s procedure, while at the same time pointing out its error.Husserl is said to be correct in his critique of science, which, because of its ‘objectivistillusion’, embedded in a belief in a ‘reality-in-itself’, leaves the matter of the constitutionof these facts undisclosed with the result that it is unaware of the connection betweenknowledge and interest. In Husserl’s view, phenomenology, which makes this clear, canrightfully claim for itself, against the pretensions of the sciences, the designation ‘puretheory’. Precisely here Husserl would bring the practical efficacy of phenomenology tobear. Phenomenology would be said to free one from the ordinary scientific attitude. Butphenomenology is in error because of its blind acceptance of the implicit ontologypresent in the classical definition of theory. Theory in its classical form was thought tofind in the structure of the ‘ideal world’ a prototype for the order of the human world.Habermas says in a rather insightful manner, ‘Only as cosmology was
theoria alsocapable of orienting human action’ ([8.82], 306). If that is the case, then thephenomenological method which relied on the classical concept of theory was to have acertain ‘practical efficacy’, which was interpreted to mean that a certain‘pseudonormative power’ could be derived from the ‘concealment of its actual interest’.In the end, phenomenology, which sought to justify itself on the basis of its freedomfrom interest, has instead an undisclosed interest which it derived from a classicalontology. Habermas believes classical ontology in turn can be characterized historically.In fact, the concept of theory is said to be derived from a particular stage in humanemancipation where
catharsis, which had been engendered heretofore by the ‘mysterycults’, was now taken into the realm of human action by means of ‘theory’. This in turnwould mark a new stage, but certainly not the last stage, in the development of human‘identity’. At this stage, individual identity could be achieved only through theindentification with the ‘abstract laws of cosmic order’. Hence, theory represents theachievements of a consciousness that is emancipated, but not totally. It is emancipatedfrom certain ‘archaic powers’, but it still requires a certain relationship to the cosmos inorder to achieve its identity. Equally, although pure theory could be characterized as an‘illusion’, it was conceived as a ‘protection’ from ‘regression to an earlier stage’. Andhere we encounter the major point of Habermas’s critique, namely, the association of thecontemplative attitude, which portends to dissociate itself from any interest, and thecontradictory assumption that the quest for pure knowledge is conducted in the name of acertain practical interest, namely, the emancipation from an earlier stage of humandevelopment.The conclusion is that both Husserl and the sciences he critiques are wrong. Husserl iswrong because he believes that the move to pure theory is a step which frees knowledgefrom interest. In fact, as we have seen, the redeeming aspect of Husserl’s phenomenologyis that it does in fact have a practical intent. The sciences are wrong because althoughthey assume the purely contemplative attitude, they use that aspect of the classicalconcept of theory for their own purposes. In other words, the sciences use the classicalconcept of pure theory to sustain an insular form of positivism while they cast off the‘practical content’ of that pure theory. As a consequence, they assume that their interestremains undisclosed.Significantly, when Habermas turns to his critique of science, he sides with Husserl.This means that Husserl has rightly critiqued the false scientific assumption that‘theoretical propositions’ are to be correlated with ‘matters of fact’, an ‘attitude’ whichassumes the ‘self-existence’ of ‘empirical variables’ as they are represented in‘theoretical propositions’. But not only has Husserl made the proper distinction betweenthe theoretical and the empirical, he has appropriately shown that the scientific attitude‘suppresses the transcendental framework that is the precondition of the meaning of thevalidity of such propositions’ (
ibid., p. 307). It would follow, then, that if the properdistinction were made between the empirical and the theoretical and if the transcendentalframework were made manifest, which would expose the meaning of such propositions,then the ‘objectivist illusion’ would ‘dissolve’ and ‘knowledge constitutive’ interestswould be made ‘visible’. It would follow that there is nothing wrong with the theoreticalattitude as long as it is united with its practical intent and there is nothing wrong with theintroduction of a transcendental framework, as long as it makes apparent the heretoforeundisclosed unity of knowledge and interest.What is interesting about this analysis is that the framework for the notion of critique isnot to be derived from dialectical reason as Horkheimer originally thought but fromtranscendental phenomenology. One must be careful here. I do not wish to claim thatHabermas identifies his position with Husserl. Rather, it can be demonstrated that hederives his position on critique from a critique of transcendental phenomenology. Assuch, he borrows both the transcendental frame-work for critique and the emphasis ontheory as distinguished from empirical fact that was established by Husserl. Therefore, atthat point he argues for a ‘critical social science’ which relies on a ‘concept of selfreflection’which can ‘determine the meaning of the validity of critical propositions’.Such a conception of critical theory borrows from the critique of traditional theory theidea of an ‘emancipatory cognitive interest’ which, when properly demythologized, isbased not on an emancipation from a mystical notion of universal powers of control butrather from a more modern interest in ‘autonomy and responsibility’. This latter interestwill appear later in his thought as the basis for moral theory.On the basis of this analysis, one might make some observations. Clearly, from thepoint of view of the development of critical theory, Habermas rightfully saw the necessityof rescuing the concept of critique. Implicit in that attempt is not only the rejection of
Dialectic of Enlightenment but also Adorno’s attempt to rehabilitate critical theory on thebasis of aesthetics. However—and there is considerable evidence to support thisassumption—the concept of critical theory which had informed Horkheimer’s early essayon that topic had fallen on hard times. As the members of the Institute for SocialResearch gradually withdrew from the Marxism that had originally informed theirconcept of critique, so the foundations upon which critical theory was built began tocrumble. Habermas’s reconceptualization of the notion of critique was obviously bothinnovative and original. It was also controversial. Critique would not be derived from aphilosophy of history based on struggle but from a moment of self-reflection based on atheory of rationality. As Habermas’s position developed it is that self-reflective momentwhich would prove to be interesting.
HABERMAS: CRITIQUE AND VALIDITYCritique, which was rendered through the unmasking of an emancipatory interest
vis-àvisthe introduction of a transcendentalized moment of self-reflection, re-emerges in thelater, as opposed to the earlier, works of Habermas at the level of validity. The linkbetween validity and critique can be established through the transcendentalized momentof self-reflection which was associated with making apparent an interest in autonomy andresponsibility. Later, that moment was transformed through a theory of communicativerationality to be directed to issues of consensus. Validity refers to a certain backgroundconsensus which can be attained through a process of idealization. As critique wasoriginally intended to dissociate truth from ideology, validity distinguished between thatwhich can be justified and that which cannot. Hence, it readdresses the claims forautonomy and responsibility at the level of communication. It could be said that the questfor validity is superimposed upon the quest for emancipation. There are those who wouldargue that moral theory which finds its basis in communicative action has replaced theolder critical theory with which Habermas was preoccupied in
Knowledge and HumanInterests. I would argue somewhat differently that Habermas’s more recent discoursetheory of ethics and law is based on the reconstructed claims of a certain version ofcritical theory.However, before justifying this claim, I will turn to the basic paradigm shift inHabermas’s work from the philosophy of the subject to the philosophy of languageinvolving construction of a theory of communicative action on the one hand and thejustification of a philosophical postion anchored in modernity on the other. Both movescan be referenced to the debate between earlier and later critical theory.If Horkheimer’s, and later Adorno’s, concept of ‘instrumental rationality’ is but areconstruction of Max Weber’s concept of purposiverational action, it would follow thata comprehensive critique of that view could be directed to Weber’s theory ofrationalization. In Habermas’s book,
The Theory of Communicative Action, it is thistheory that is under investigation as seen through the paradigm of the philosophy ofconsciousness. Weber’s thesis can be stated quite simply: if western rationality has beenreduced to its instrumental core, then it has no further prospects for regenerating itself.Habermas wants to argue that the failure of Weber’s analysis, and by implication thefailure of those like Horkheimer and Adorno who accepted Weber’s thesis, was toconceive of processes of rationalization in terms of subject-object relations. In otherwords, Weber’s analysis cannot be dissociated from Weber’s theory of rationality.According to this analysis, his theory of rationality caused him to conceive of things interms of subject-object relations. Habermas’s thesis, against Weber, Horkheimer andAdorno, is that a theory of rationality which conceives of things in terms of subjectobjectrelations cannot conceive of those phenomena in other than instrumental terms. Inother words, all subject-object formulations are instrumental. Hence, if one were toconstruct a theory of rationalization in non-instrumental terms, it would be necessary toconstruct an alternative theory of rationality. The construction of a theory ofcommunicative action based on a philosophy of language rests on this assumption.In Habermas’s view, the way out of the dilemma of instrumentality into which earliercritical theory led us is through a philosophy of language which, through a reconstructedunderstanding of speech-act theory, can make a distinction between strategic andcommunicative action. Communicative action can be understood to be non-instrumen-talin this sense: ‘A communicatively achieved agreement has a rational basis; it cannot beimposed by either party, whether instrumentally through intervention in the situationdirectly or strategically through influencing decisions of the opponents’ ([8.85], p. 287).It is important to note that the question of validity, which I argued a moment ago was theplace where the emancipatory interest would be sustained, emerges. A communicativeaction has within it a claim to validity which is in principle criticizable, meaning that theperson to whom such a claim is addressed can respond with either a yes or a no based, inturn, on reasons. Beyond that, if Habermas is to sustain his claim to overcoming thedilemma of instrumental reason he must agree that communicative actions arefoundational. They cannot be reducible to instrumental or strategic actions. Ifcommunicative actions were reducible to instrumental or strategic actions, one would beback in the philosophy of consciousness where it was claimed by Habermas, and a certainform of earlier critical theory as well, that all action was reducible to strategic orinstrumental action.10It is Habermas’s conviction that one can preserve the emancipatory thrust of modernityby appropriating the discursive structure of language at the level of communication.Hence, the failure of
Dialectic of Enlightenment was to misread modernity in anoversimplified way influenced by those who had given up on it. Here is represented adebate between a position anchored in a philosophy of history which can no longersustain an emancipatory hypothesis on the basis of historical interpretation, and a positionwhich finds emancipatory claims redeemable, but on a transcendental level. Ultimately,the rehabilitation of critical theory concerns the nature and definition of philosophy. If theclaims of critical theory can be rehabilitated on a transcendental level as the claims of aphilosophy of language, then it would appear that philosophy as such can be defined
visà-vis a theory of communicative action. Habermas’s claim that the originary mode oflanguage is communicative presupposes a contrafactual communicative communitywhich is by nature predisposed to refrain from instrumental forms of domination. Hence,the assertion of communicative over strategic forms of discursive interaction assumes apolitical form of association which is written into the nature of language as such as theguarantor of a form of progressive emancipation. In other words, if one can claim that theoriginal form of discourse is emancipatory, then the dilemma posed by instrumentalreason has been overcome and one is secure from the seductive temptation of thedialectic of enlightenment.
NOTESSELECT BIBLIOGRAPHYJournals of the Institute of Social Research8.1
Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, I–XV, 1910–30.8.2
Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, vols 1–8, 2, Leipzig, Paris, New York, 1932–9.8.3
Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, New York, 1940–1.8.4
Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, Frankfurt, 1955–74.
AdornoPrimary textsFor Adorno’s collected works, see
Gesammelte Schriften [GS] (23 volumes), ed.R.Tiedemann, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970–. See also
Akte: Theodor Adorno 1924–1968,in the archives of the former philosophy faculty at the University of Frankfurt.For a bibliography of Adorno’s work, see René Görtzen’s ‘Theodor W. Adorno:Vorläufige Bibliographie seiner Schriften und der Sekundärliteratur’, in
Adorno1 There are three excellent works on the origin and development of critical theory. The mostcomprehensive is the monumental work by R.Wiggershaus [8.140]. M.Jay’s historical work[8.131] introduced a whole generation of Americans to critical theory. Helmut Dubiel [8.128]presents the development of critical theory against the backdrop of German and internationalpolitics.2 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.3 Ibid., p. 111.4 K.Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. R.Tucker, New York:Norton, 1972.5 Ibid., pp. 110–65.6 Ibid., pp. 83–103.7 M.Horkheimer, ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, in Critical Theory, New York: Herder &Herder, 1972.8 W.Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Illuminations[8.36].9 Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 5:1 (1936).10 For a more comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in this distinction, see mydiscussion in [8.96].
Konferenze 1983, ed. L.Friedeburg and J.Habermas, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983.8.5
Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des ästhetischen, Tübingen, 1933.8.6
Philosophie der neuen Musik, Tübingen: Mohr, 1949.8.7
The Authoritarian Personality, co-authored with E.Frenkel-Brunswick, D. Levinson,and R.Sanford, New York: Harper, 1950 (2nd edn, New York: Norton, 1969).8.8
Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, Berlin and Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1980.8.9
Prismen: Kulturkritik und Gesellchaft, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1955.8.10
Noten zur Literatur I, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974.8.11
Jargon der Eigentlichkeit, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1964.8.12
Negativ Dialektik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1966.8.13
The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, introduction and two essays byAdorno, London: Heinemann, 1969.8.14
Ästhetische Theorie, in
GS, vol. 7, 1970.8.15
Noten zur Literatur, ed. R.Tiedemann, in
GS, vol. 11, 1974.8.16
Hegel: Three Studies, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993.Translations8.17
Philosophy of Modern Music, London: Sheed & Ward, 1973.8.18
Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, London: New Left Books, 1974.8.19
Prisms, London: Neville Spearman, 1967.8.20
Jargon of Authenticity, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.8.21
Negative Dialectics, New York: Seabury Press, 1973.8.22
Against Epistemology: A Metacritique, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982.8.23
Aesthetic Theory, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.8.24
Notes to Literature, 2 vols, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.Criticisms8.25 Brunkhorst, H.
Theodor W.Adorno, Dialektik der Moderne, München: Piper, 1990.8.26 Früchtl, J. and Calloni, M.,
Geist gegen den Zeitgeist: Erinnern an Adorno,Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991.8.27 Jay, M.
Adorno, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.8.28 Lindner, B. and Ludke, M. (eds)
Materialien zur ästhetischen Theorie Theodor W.Adorno’s: Konstruktion der Moderne, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980.8.29 Wellmer, A.
Zur Dialektik von Moderne und Postmoderne: Vernunftkritik nachAdorno, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985.
Adorno and Horkheimer8.30
Dialektik der Aufklärung, Amsterdam: Querido, 1947.8.31
Sociologia, Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1962.
BenjaminPrimary textsFor Benjamin’s collected works, see
Gesammelte Schriften (7 vols), ed. R.Tiedemannand H.Schweppenhäuser, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972–89. See also
Briefe (2 vols), ed.G.Scholem and T.Adorno, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1966;
Schriften (2 vols), ed. T.Adornoand G.Scholem, Frankfurt 1955. See also
Habilitationakte Walter Benjamins in thearchive of the former philosophy faculty at the University of Frankfurt. For abibliography see R.Tiedemann, ‘Bibliographie der Erstdrucke von Benjamins Schriften’,in
Zur Aktualität Walter Benjamins, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972, pp. 227–97.8.32
Deutsche Menschen: Eine Folge von Briefen, written under pseudonym Detlef Holz,Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977.8.33
Zur Kritik der Gewalt and andere Aufsätze, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965.8.34
Berliner Chronik, ed. G.Scholem, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970.8.35
Moskauer Tagebuch, ed. G.Smith, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980.Translations8.36
Illuminations, Essays and Reflections, ed. and introduced by H.Arendt, New York:Schocken, 1968.8.37
Charles Baudelaire; A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, London: New LeftBooks, 1973.8.38
Understanding Brecht, London: New Left Books, 1973.8.39
Communication and the Evolution of Society, Boston: Beacon Press, 1979.Criticism8.40 Buck-Morss, S.
The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project,Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989.8.41 Roberts, J.
Walter Benjamin, London: Macmillan Press, 1982.8.42 Scheurmann, I. and Scheurmann, K.
Für Walter Benjamin: Dokumente, Essays undein Entwurf, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992.8.43 Scholem, G.
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gerschom Scholem:Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Frankfurt, 1975.8.44 Tiedemann, R.
Studien zur Walter Benjamins, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973.
FrommFor his collected works, see
Gesamtausgabe (10 vols), ed. R.Funk, Stuttgart: DeutscheVerlags-Anstalt, 1980–1. A bibliography is found in vol. 10.8.45 ‘Die Entwicklung des Christusdogmas: Eine psychoanalytische Studie zursozialpsychologischen Funktion der Religion’,
Imago, 3:4 (1930).8.46
Escape From Freedom, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1941.8.47
Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, New York: Rinehart,1947.8.48
The Sane Society, New York: Rinehart, 1955.8.49
The Art of Loving, New York: Rinehart, 1956.8.50
Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud, New York:Simon & Schuster, 1962.8.51
The Heart of Man, New York: Harper & Row, 1964.8.52
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1973.8.53
To Have or To Be? New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Grünberg8.54 ‘Festrede gehalten zur Einweihung des Instituts für Sozialforschung an derUniversität Frankfurt a.M. am 22 Juni 1924’,
Frankfurter Universitätsreden, 20(1924).
HabermasPrimary texts8.55
Das Absolute und die Geschichte: van der Zweispaltigkeit in Schellings Denken,dissertation, Universität Bonn, 1954.8.56
Strukturwandel der Öffenlichkeit, Berlin: Luchterland, 1962.8.57
Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968.8.58
Erkenntnis und Interesse, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969.8.59
Theorie und Praxis, (2nd edn) Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971.8.60
Kultur und Kritik: Verstreute Aufsätze, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973.8.61
Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973.8.62
Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976.8.63
Communication and the Evolution of Society, Boston: Beacon Press, 1979.8.64
Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 2 vols, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981.8.65
Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 5th edn, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982.8.66
Moralbewuβtsein und kommunikatives Handeln, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983.8.67
Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1984.8.68
Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985.8.69
Eine Art Schadensabwicklung, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1987.8.70
Nachmetaphysisches Denken, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988.8.71
Texte und Kontexte, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990.8.72
Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991.8.73
Vergangenheit als Zukunft, Zürich: Pendo Interview, 1991.8.74
Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und desdemokratischen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992.Translations8.75
Structural Change of the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989.8.76
Toward a Rational Society, London: Heinemann, 1971.8.77
Knowledge and Human Interests, Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.8.78
Theory and Practice, London: Heinemann, 1974.8.79
Legitimation Crisis, Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.8.80
The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols, Boston: Beacon Press, 1984, 1987.8.81
On the Logic of the Social Sciences, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1988.8.82
Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1989.8.83
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.8.84
The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1989.8.85
Post-Metaphysical Thinking, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.Criticism8.86 Arato, A. and Cohen J. (eds)
Civil Society and Political Theory, Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1992.8.87 Bernstein, R. (ed.)
Habermas and Modernity, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.8.88 Calhoun, C. (ed.)
Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1992.8.89 Dallmayr, W. (ed.)
Materialen zu Habermas ‘Erkenntnis und Interesse’, Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1974.8.90 Flynn, B.
Political Philosophy at the Closure of Metaphysics, London: HumanitiesPress, 1992.8.91 Held, D. and Thompson, J. (eds)
Habermas: Critical Debates, Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1982.8.92 Honneth, A.
Kritik der Macht, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985.8.93 Honneth, A. and Joas, H. (eds)
Communicative Action: Essays on JürgenHabermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.8.94 Honneth, A.
et al. (eds)
Zwischenbetrachtungen im Prozess der Aufklärung,Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989.8.95 McCarthy, T.
The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, Cambridge, Mass.: MITPress, 1978.8.96 Rasmussen, D.
Reading Habermas, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Rasmussen, D.(ed.)
Universalism and Communitarianism, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988.8.97 Schnädelbach, H.
Reflexion und Diskurs, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977.8.98 Thompson, J.
Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur andJürgen Habermas, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
HorkheimerFor Horkheimer’s collected works, see
Gesammelte Schriften (18 vols), ed. G. Noerr andA.Schmidt, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1987–. Most of Horkheimer’s essays in the
Zeitschrift fürSozialforschung are found in
Kritische Theorie: Eine Dokumentation (2 vols), ed.A.Schmidt, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1968. See also
Akte Max Horkheimer, 1922–65 in thearchives of the former philosophy faculty at the University of Frankfurt. For abibliography, see
Horkheimer Heute, ed. A. Schmidt and N.Altwicker, Frankfurt:Fischer, 1986, pp. 372–99.8.99 ‘Die Gegenwärtige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und die Aufgaben eines Instituts fürSozialforschung’,
Frankfurter Universitätsreden, 37 (1931).8.100
Dämmerung, written under the pseudonym Heinrich Regius, Zürich: Oprecht andHelbling, 1934.8.101
Eclipse of Reason, New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.8.102 ‘Zum Begriff der Vernunft’,
Frankfurter Universitätsreden, 7 (1953).8.103
Kritische Theorie: Eine Dokumentation, 2 vols, ed. A.Schmidt, Frankfurt: Fischer,1968.8.104
Critical Theory, New York: Herder & Herder, 1972.8.105
Critique of Instrumental Reason, New York: Seabury Press, 1974.Criticism8.106 Gumnior, H. and Ringguth, R.
Horkheimer, Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt,1973.8.107 Tar, Z.
The Frankfurt School: The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer andTheodor Adorno, New York: Wiley, 1977.
LowenthalFor his collected works, see
Schriften (4 vols), ed. H.Dubiel, Frankfurt, 1980.8.108
Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator, Palo Alto:Pacific Books, 1970.8.109
Literature and the Image of Man, Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.8.110
Literature, Popular Culture, and Society, Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1968.8.111
Critical Theory and Frankfurt Theorists: Lectures, Correspondence,Conversations, New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1989.
MarcuseFor Marcuse’s collected works, see
Gesammelte Schriften (9 vols), Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1978–87. For a complete bibliography of Marcuse’s works, see
The Critical Spirit:Essays in Honor of Herbert Marcuse, ed. K.Wolff and B.Moore, Boston: Beacon Press,1967.8.112
Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1941.8.113
Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud, Boston: Beacon Press,1955.8.114
Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, 2nd edn, Boston:Beacon Press, 1960.8.115
Eros and Civilization, 2nd edn, with preface, ‘Political Preface, 1966’, Boston:Beacon Press, 1966.8.116
Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.8.117
Counterrevolution and Revolt, Boston: Beacon Press, 1972.8.118
The Aesthetic Dimension: Towards a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics, Boston:Beacon Press, 1978.Criticism8.119 Görlich, B.
Die Wette mit Freud: Drei Studien zu Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt:Nexus, 1991.8.120 Institut für Sozialforschung (eds)
Kritik und Utopie im Werk von Herbert Marcuse,Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992.8.121 Pippin, R. (ed.)
Marcuse: A Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, SouthHadley: Bergin & Garvey, 1988.
Pollock8.122
The Economic and Social Consequences of Automation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell,1957.
General criticism8.123 Benhabib, S.
Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of CriticalTheory, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.8.124 Benhabib, S. and Dallmayr, F. (eds)
The Communicative Ethics Controversy,Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.8.125 Bubner, R.
Essays in Hermeneutics and Critical Theory, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1988.8.126 Dallmayr. F.
Between Freiberg and Frankfurt: Toward a Critical Ontology,Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991.8.127 Dubiel, H.
Kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft, München: Juventa, 1988.8.128 Dubiel, H.
Theory and Politics, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.8.129 Guess, R.
The Idea of Critical Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1981.8.130 Held, D.
An Introduction to Critical Theory, London: Hutchinson, 1980.8.131 Jay, M.
The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and theInstitute of Social Research, 1923–1950, Boston: Little Brown, 1973.8.132 Kearney, R.
Modern Movements in European Philosophy, Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1987.8.133 Kellner, D.
Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity, Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1989.8.134 McCarthy, T.
Ideal and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Reconstruction inContemporary Critical Theory, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.8.135 Marcus, J. and Tar, Z. (eds)
Foundations of the Frankfurt School of SocialResearch, London: Transaction Books, 1984.8.136 Norris, C.
What’s Wrong with Postmodernism: Critical Theory and the Ends ofPhilosophy, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.8.137 O’Neill, J. (ed.)
On Critical Theory, New York: Seabury Press, 1976.8.138 Schmidt, A.
Zur Idee der Kritischen Theorie, München: Hanser, 1974.8.139 Wellmer, A.
Critical Theory of Society, New York: Seabury Press, 1974.8.140 Wiggershaus, R.
Die Frankfurter Schule, Mun_chen: Hanser, 1986.I wish to thank James Swindal for his assistance in the preparation of the bibliography.