Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy: Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume VIII by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-136-79373-8
Publisher: Routledge

CHAPTER 8

Critical theory

Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas

David Rasmussen

HEGEL, MARX AND THE IDEA OF A CRITICAL THEORY

Critical theory1 is a metaphor for a certain kind of theoretical orientation which owes its origin to Hegel and Marx, its systematization to Horkheimer and his associates at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, and its development to successors, particularly to the group led by Jürgen Habermas, who have sustained it under various redefinitions to the present day. As a term, critical theory is both general and specific. In general it refers to 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 which found its twentieth-century expression in Frankfurt.

What is critical theory? The term bears the stamp of the nascent optimism of the nineteenth century; a critical theory can change society. Critical theory is a tool of reason which, when properly located in a historical group, can transform the world. ‘Philosophers have always interpreted the world, the point is to change it.‘ So states Marx’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, through the 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 such a manner that activity or action was a necessary moment in the process of reflection. This gave rise to one of the most significant discourses in German philosophy, that of the proper relationship between theory and practice. Human practical activity, praxis in the sense that classical Greek philosophy had defined it, could transform theory. There are two famous instances where Hegel attempted to demonstrate the interrelationship of thought and action in his Phenomenology of Spirit, namely, the master/slave dialectic and the struggle between virtue and the way of the world. In the former example, which attempts to demonstrate the proposition, ‘Self-Consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another: that is, it exists only in being acknowledged,’3 the slave transforms his or her identity by moulding and shaping the world and thus becomes something other than a slave. In the latter example, the modern way of the world (essentially Adam Smith’s concept of the political economy of civil society) triumphs over the ancient classical concept of virtue as a higher form of human self-knowledge oriented toward freedom. Historical development, as the institutionalization of human action, became an element in human rationality. Critical theory derives its basic insight from the idea that thought can transform itself through a process of self-reflection in history.

Marx, early on in his development in a text that has come down to us under the title On the Jewish Question,4 argued from Hegel’s critical insight into the context of modern society. Having already done an analysis a few months before of Hegel s Philosophy of Right, he turned his

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