Showing papers on "Critical theory published in 1977"

Understanding and Social Inquiry

Abstract: Introduction: The crisis of understanding.--Max Weber on Verstehen: Weber, M. Objectivity in social science and social policy. Weber, M. Basic sociologica terms. Parsons, T. Value-freedom and objectivity. Habermas, J. Discussion.-- positivist reception: Abel, T. The operation called Verstehen. Rudner, R. On the objectivity of social science. Taylor, C. Interpretation and the science of man.--The Wittgensteinian reformulation: Winch, P. The idea of a social science. Winch, P. Understanding a primitive society. Jarvie, I. C. Understanding and explanation in sociology and social anthropology. Winch, P Comment.--Phenomenology and ethnomethodology: Schutz, A. Concept and theory formation in the social sciences. Garfinkel, H. What is ethnomethodology? Mayrl, W. Ethnomethodology: sociology without society?--Hermeneutics and critical theory: Apel, K.-O. The A priori of communication and the foundatio of the humanities. Ricoeur, P. The model of the text: meaningful action considered as a text. Habermas, J.A review of Gadamer's Truth and method.

Origin and Significance of the Frankfurt School, a Marxist Perspective

Abstract: The term 'Frankfurt School' is used widely, but sometimes loosely, to describe both a group of intellectuals and a specific social theory. Focusing on the formative and most radical years of the Frankfurt School, during the 1930s, this study concentrates on the Frankfurt School's most original contributions made to the work on a 'critical theory of society' by the philosophers Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, the psychologist Erich Fromm, and the aesthetician Theodor W. Adorno.Phil Slater traces the extent, and ultimate limits, of the Frankfurt School's professed relation to the Marxian critique of political economy. In considering the extent of the relation to revolutionary praxis, he discusses the socio-economic and political history of Weimar Germany in its descent into fascism, and considers the work of such people as Karl Korsch, Wilhelm Reich, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, which directs a great deal of critical light on the Frankfurt School.While pinpointing the ultimate limitations of the Frankfurt School's frame of reference, Phil Slater also looks at the role their work played (largely against their wishes) in the emergence of the student anti-authoritarian movement in the 1960s. He shows that, in particular, the analysis of psychic and cultural manipulation was central to the young rebels' theoretical armour, but that even here, the lack of economic class analysis seriously restricts the critical edge of the Frankfurt School's theory. His conclusion is that the only way forward is to rescue the most radical roots of the Frankfurt School's work, and to recast these in the context of a practical theory of economic and political emancipation.

Critical Theory and Film: Adorno and "The Culture Industry" Revisited

Abstract: What the statements above have in common is the use of a photographic or cinematic metaphor to assign a negative value to certain literary texts, particularly those of the "naturalist" or "socialist realist" schools. What interests me here is not the attitude toward those particular texts,4 but the metaphor itself and what it reveals about the assumptions and attitudes of these critics toward the film medium.

The Concept of Totality in Lukács and Adorno

Abstract: At a conference dedicated to the memory of George Lichtheim, it is a risky undertaking indeed to attempt an analysis of the relationship between Georg Lukacs and the Frankfurt School. For in so doing, one must traverse much of the same ground that Lichtheim crossed with such agility in From Marx to Hegel and elsewhere.1 Rather than try to match the integrative sweep and synthetic power which characterize the essays in that collection, I have set myself the more modest task of focusing on one facet of that relationship which seems central to an understanding of the development of Marxist Humanism in this century. The issue I have chosen is the different uses of the concept of totality in the work of Lukacs and Theodor W. Adorno, who represents the most radical antipode to Lukacs among the first generation of Frankfurt School theorists.2 More specifically, my concern will be with the implicit clash between History and Class Consciousness 3 and Negative Dialectics and the implications of that clash for Marxist theory today.4 Although many of the same questions were treated in the aesthetic writings of both men — Lukacs in fact first used totality in The Theory of the Novel 5 — limitations of space preclude an examination of the implications for Marxist aesthetics.

The Changing Function of Critical Theory

Abstract: To speak of "critical theory" as a systematically elaborated account of social reality entails such a distance from the subject as to blur all significant differences existing among the various members of the Frankfurt School and thus fall victim to that identity theory Adorno spent so much time attacking. In fact, a close examination reveals that there are at best only critical theorists confronting a common problematic within a more or less shared cultural tradition. Yet, discussions of "critical theory" need not become unwarranted wanderings into "the night in which all cows are black," if the focus is shifted from the particular theoretical tenets whose contradictory multiplicity resists systematization to the odyssey of the problematic itself. Such a trajectory begins with critical theory's emergence from the first generation of Hegelian Marxists (Lukics and Korsch), moves through the interpretations of Stalinism, fascism and the New Deal, the attempt to provide a theory of American society, and closes with its final inability to come to grips with the new state-regulated, capitalist social formation precisely because of key theoretical choices made earlier in the effort to alter as little as possible that tradition which they sought to revitalize and make historically relevant once again. Thus, to provide a general evaluation of critical theory that does not violate the very spirit of that tradition requires first and foremost, to grasp the particularity and specificity of its problematic by not forcefully reconciling internal contradictions, conflicts and shifts, while, secondly, critically locating its onesidedness from the privileged vantage point of the present, after history has clarified for us what was necessarily confused and ambiguous at the time of the theory's formulations and reformulations. Such an account must explain the theory's conscious esoteric thrust, its "planned" failure to have a broad lasting impact, and the reasons why a different social analysis must be derived from it which does not precipitate its popularization into the self-contradiction in which it would have fallen in its original formulations. Notwithstanding its surprisingly powerful conceptual content, critical theory has hitherto failed to receive anything close to the cultural reception that it would seem to deserve. This state of affairs is neither primarily the result of conspiratorial efforts on the part of traditional theorists to ignore its emancipatory content, nor of the administrative apparatus' attempt to repress its revolu-

Critical phenomenology and the dialectical foundations of social change

Abstract: Marx's view of industrialization as the cul? mination of the social process of modern capitalism (especially the division of labor and its hierarchical control) has been strengthened and clarified by the critical Marxists' (Lukacs, Gramsci, the Frankfurt school) dialectical anal? yses of the deep cultural dimensions of that process. Technological development to aug? ment the hierarchical control of production for profit is formed by and in turn further shapes this sociocultural process. American mainstream politics, its mediating structures institutionally set in the corporate capitalist economy and allegedly rooted in a "pragmatic realist" tradition, is bounded, in reality, by the technological world-view. Activities undertaken within this horizon ultimately are aimed at domination, "mastery", or "control" inasmuch as the "outside world" is pictured as a field of resource objects to be exploited by calculative/ manipulative approaches. The Frankfurt "critique of instrumental rationality" is integral to a dialectical theory of this system which, in certain transfigured forms, overshadows the so-called "anti-capitalist" bloc as well. The Frankfurt critique should be understood as broadening, not replacing, the general Marxist critique of industrial capitalism. Perhaps what has yet to be thoroughly under? stood is the achievement of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse in helping to show that a self-critical socialism worthy of the name must slip the cultural yoke of the technological world-picture wherever the latter is projected. In confronting the cultural roots of the modern capitalist world system, along with the new sociocultural formations of the technological world-view, the Frankfurt school paved the way for insights into the recent anti-socialist politics of technocratic elites in the era of "detente" (e.g. Brezhnev vs. Brzezinski). Here I shall attempt to assess the relevance of (1) the Frankfurt school critique of instru? mental rationality and cultural reification, and (2) the critical phenomenology of the life world and the "material apriori" for (3) a post-modern perspective on the New Left, and the radical theory of social change (especially at the "metatheoretical" level) in the United States. A "post-modern" critical theory, con? cerned as it is with reconstituting social totality and cultural temporality as dimensions of modern political life, focuses not only on in? dustrial capitalism as its primary institutional setting but also on the technological world view as the predominant cultural horizon of contemporary elites. Such a theory must link critique and praxis in order dialectically to transform the time structures of human historical life as well as its social spatial condi? tions. Dialectic of Enlightenment by Hork? heimer and Adorno is a major work of critical marxism especially because it illuminates the Herbert G. Reid is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky.

Dialectical Sensibility II: Towards a New Intellectuality

Abstract: In the preceding article, , I called for a new concept ofradicalism, appropriate to late capitalist society . I returned to Marx's and Marcuse's concept of the advisory role of critical theory in its relation to existing alienation and to efforts to overcome alienation . In this article, I want to develop further the concept of \"dialectical sensibility\" as it might inform the activity ofradical intellectuals . Instead of submerging theory in the tactics of revolutionary preparation, I will argue for a theory which does not pretend that it is value-neutral in its orientation to the possibility of change . The dialectical sensibility, as I conceive of it, democratizes critical intellectuality as a way of creating social change \"from within\", countering what Weber so perceptively called bureaucratic \"imperative coordination\" . In this regard I do not wish to imply that changing bourgeois concepts ofscholarship is a sufficient form of practice today : we must still produce a theory which explains utopian possibilities contained in the empirical present .

On Social Justice

Abstract: Robert Paul Wolff, Understanding Rawls: A Reconstruction and Critique of a Theory of Justice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Marcuse and the problem of instrumental rationality

Abstract: This paper examines Marcuse's approach to the major problem of capitalism—the domination of subjective reason over objective reason. It is argued that Marcuse's approach to this problem differs from the approach of Critical Theory. It is further argued that there is a contradiction in Marcuse's argument, namely, the contradiction between revolutionary change and the change suggested by Marcuse's aesthetic perspective. Herbert Marcuse, along with other critical theorists, has found the major problem of capitalism, especially in its modern stage, manifested in the way that instrumental rationality has been employed. For him, the present stage of history can be singled out as a period in which the process of rationalization has become entirely one-sided and limited only to the rationality of methods and means. The reason for such one-sidedness and limitation, according to Marcuse and the Critical School, can be found in the domination of "subjective reason" over "objective reason". Rationality, which in its totality aims at the emancipation of man, has turned out to be the main source of alienation and self-imprisonment for mankind. The manifestation of one-sided rationality (instrumental rationality) and alienated man can be seen in the dialectical relationships among man, society, and nature. In order to explain the dialectical relationships among man, society, and nature in the contemporary system of domination, Marcuse argues that a new approach to social phenomenon must be adopted because the traditional perspectives, including the instrumental perspective, have not been able to predict the developments of the present stage of history. According to Marcuse, a new perspective is needed to understand and guide the