Routledge History of Philosophy Volume VIII: Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy by Richard Kearney

Author:Richard Kearney
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: History, Philosophy, Politics & Social Sciences, Reference, Modern
ISBN: 0415308801
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-12-23T05:00:00+00:00

political groups. The revolutionary thrust of the proletariat has long since

Manifesto were the outcome of open oppression. Today they are instead motives

The living conditions of laborers and employees at the time of The Communist

transitional step to the reign of freedom, had for long periods become abstract

and illusory, and at least as out of date as the ideologies despised by the young.

for trade union organization and for discussion between dominant economic and

become realistic action within the framework of society. In the minds of men at

least, the proletariat has been integrated into society.

Horkheimer’s 1937 essay, ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, which attempted to systematically define critical theory, does not begin by underlining an association with the Marxist heritage which still distinguished the Institute and journal with which it was associated. Rather the essay begins by trying to answer the more general question regarding theory per se, ‘What is theory?’ (ibid., p. 188). In the traditional sense, theory is a kind of generalization based upon experience. From Descartes to Husserl theory has been so defined, argues Horkheimer. As such, however, theory traditionally defined has a peculiar kind of prejudice which favours the natural sciences. Horkheimer, reflecting the great Diltheyian distinction between Geisteswissenschaften (social sciences) and Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) makes the appropriate criticism. Social science imitates natural science in its self-definition as theory. Put simply, the study of society must 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 to certain 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 theoretical tradition following Lukács’s famous characterization in 1934, is ‘reification’. Horkheimer doesn’t hesitate to use it. Regarding the development of theory he states, ‘But the conception of theory was absolutized, as though it were grounded in the inner nature of knowledge as such, or justified in some other ahistorical way, and thus it became a reified ideological category’ (ibid., p. 194). Although various theoretical approaches would come close to breaking out of the ideological constraints which restricted them, theoretical approaches such as positivism, pragmatism, neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, Horkheimer would argue that they failed. Hence, all would be subject to the logicomathematical prejudice which separates theoretical activity from actual life. The appropriate 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 of nature which claims to be the eternal logos, but a critical theory of society as it is, a theory 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 radical reconsideration not of the scientist alone, but of the knowing individual as such’ (ibid.

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