Showing papers on "Critical theory published in 1980"

Introduction to critical theory : Horkheimer to Habermas

Abstract: Acknowledgements. Introduction. Part I: Critical Theory: The Frankfurt School:. 1. The formation of the Institute of Social Research. 2. Class, Class Conflict and the Development of Capitalism:. Critical theory and political economy. 3. The Culture Industry:. Critical theory and aesthetics. 4. The Changing Structure of the Family and the Individual:. Critical theory and psychoanalysis. 5. The Critique of Instrumental Reason:. Critical theory and philosophy of history. 6. Horkheimera s Formulation of Critical Theory:. Epistemology and method 1. 7. Adornoa s Conception of Negative Dialectics:. Epistemology and method 2. 8. Marcusea s Notions of Theory and Practice:. Epistemology and method 3. Part II: Critical Theory: Habermas:. 9. Introduction to Habermas. 10. Discourse, Science and Society. 11. Interests, Knowledge and Action. 12. The Reformulation of the Foundations of Critical Theory. Part III: The Importance and Limitations of Critical Theory:. 13. An Assessment of the Frankfurt School and Habermas. 14. The concept of critical theory.

The socio-spatial dialectic

Abstract: An increasingly rigidifying orthodoxy has begun to emerge within Marxist spatial analysis that threatens to choke off the development of a critical theory of space in its infancy. The concept of a socio-spatial dialectic is introduced as a means of reopening the debate and calling for the explicit incorporation of the social production of space in Marxist analysis as something more than an epiphenomenon. Building upon the works of Henri Lefebvre, Ernest Mandel, and others, a general spatial problematic is identified and discussed within the context of both urban and regional political economy. The spatial problematic is not a substitute for class analysis but it can be an integral and increasingly salient element in class consciousness and class struggle within contemporary capitalism. Space is not a scientific object removed from ideology and politics; it has always been political and strategic. If space has an air of neutrality and indifference with regard to its contents and thus seems to be “...

Philosophical Foundations of Adult Education

Abstract: The Third Edition of Philosophical Foundations of Adult Education presents seven theoretical approaches to adult education: liberal, progressive, behaviorist, humanist, radical/critical, analytic, and postmodern. The book gives the historical grounding as well as the basic principles for each approach. In this edition each chapter has been revised and brought up to date. The chapter on radical adult education incorporates recent developments in radical education, phenomenology, feminist educational theory, and critical social theory. The book contains an entirely new chapter on postmodern adult education.

Critical Theory and Planning Practice

Abstract: In planning practice, communication is political. When a community organization or a developer obtains information can be as important as what information is obtained. What planners do not say can be as important as what they do say. Planners shape not only documents or information, then, but also citizens' access to information, their understanding and interpretation of such information, and their ability to participate effectively in political processes affecting their lives. The structure of the planning process reflects a systematic patterning of communication that thus influences levels of community organization, citizen participation, and autonomous, responsible citizen action. This paper applies Jurgen Habermas' critical communications theory of society to planning practice in order to clarify (1) how planning practice works as communicative action, (2) how planning action and broader political-economic forces may work to thwart or foster a democratic planning process, and (3) how, then, a...

After the new criticism

Abstract: This work is the first history and evaluation of contemporary American critical theory within its European philosophical contexts. In the first part, Frank Lentricchia analyzes the impact on our critical thought of Frye, Stevens, Kermode, Sartre, Poulet, Heidegger, Sussure, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Derrida, and Foucault, among other, less central figures. In a second part, Lentricchia turns to four exemplary theorists on the American scene-Murray Krieger, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom-and an analysis of their careers within the lineage established in part one. Lentricchia's critical intention is in evidence in his sustained attack on the more or less hidden formalist premises inherited from the New Critical fathers. Even in the name of historical consciousness, he contends, contemporary theorists have often cut literature off from social and temporal processes. By so doing he believes that they have deprived literature of its relevant values and turned the teaching of both literature and theory into a rarefied activity. All along the way, with the help of such diverse thinkers as Saussure, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Bloom, Lentricchia indicates a strategy by which future critical theorists may resist the mandarin attitudes of their fathers."

Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education

Abstract: (1980). Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education. Curriculum Inquiry: Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 329-366.

Lukács, Marx, and the sources of critical theory

Abstract: This acclaimed book is the first comparative evaluation of two primary sources of the Western Marxist tradition: Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and History and Class Consciousness by Georg Lukacs. Andrew Feenberg offers a new interpretation of the theories of alienation and reification as the basis of a Marxist approach to the cultural contradictions of contemporary society."

Antonio gramsci's marxism: class, state and work*

Abstract: Three things are attempted in this paper: to locate (briefly) Gramsci's Marxism in its historical context; to describe Gramsci's Marxism as an attempt at the creation of a theory of advanced capitalist society, especially in his treatment of the central concepts and/or realities of class, state and work; and to evaluate the limitations of his Marxism as a critical theory of society, specifically his discussion of work, sexuality and technology. The paper develops Gramsci's concepts of the historical bloc, his use of historicism, the importance of organic intellectuals and his concept of hegemony and its relation to the modalities of class rule, and suggests that these are aspects of a stunning and new critical theory of society. His analysis of work, however, was ultimately based on a Taylorist conception of productive technology and of the social relations and organization which necessitated the “regulation” of human (sexual) instincts in the divorce of mind from body, object from subject and, ultimately, theory from practice. This reintroduced through the back door the Hegelian duality between thought and being. I stress the conservative implications of these formulations and conclude that Gramsci's analysis lacked both an holistic discussion of work and a critical analysis of production-as-technique. The totality is the territory of the dialectic Georg Lukacs

Metacritique: The Philosophical Argument of Jürgen Habermas

Abstract: From an analytical perspective Charles Taylor and Alan Montefiore Introduction 1. The problem 2. Hegel and the speculative structure of critical theory 3. Habermas and Enlightenment 4. Knowledge and interest 5. The practical perspective of critical theory and its aporias.

Lessons of the Holocaust

Abstract: The recent impact of the American television drama "Holocaust" in the Federal Republic of Germany provides the occasion to discuss a theme that has always if not explicitly been present in this journal. Although we have not dealt extensively with the Nazi genocide, or with the problem of historic relations between Germans and Jews, they have often provided a touchstone for many of our discussions, and certainly have informed the work of many of our contributors. For this reason we have chosen to devote this and the following issue to the Holocaust and its consequences. The present issue is largely concerned with the West German response to the tv film "Holocaust," while the next will investigate the impact of the real event for Jewish selfconsciousness in the post-Holocaust epoch. This has resulted in two distinct approaches. While this issue emphasizes sociological analysis and criticism of the broad response to a single cultural phenomenon, the next issue is more subjective, relying on personal commentary, interviews and autobiography to analyze the way that Jewish intellectuals of different generations have come to terms with a collective tragedy. Of course, Jewish concerns have been evident in NGC in another regard. This is the unmistakably Jewish element in Critical Theory which is apparent, not only in the Frankfurt School's concern with anti-Semitism, discussed by Martin Jay in this issue, but in the essence of its concept of social theory. The idea that dialectics is secularized hope, the translation of the desire for transcendence into history, and the identification with the suffering of past generations that are characteristic motifs of Critical Theory owe a great deal to the Jewish Messianic idea. The Messianic impulse, with its emphasis on redemption, utopia, and the radical negation of the existing order was, as Gershom Scholem points out, the "anarchic breeze" in Jewish orthodoxy. It is no less true that Critical Theory, with its similar emphasis, was the "anarchic breeze" in Marxist orthodoxy as well. In his appreciation of Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse provided a cogent characterization of the

Critical theory and public policy

Abstract: In the confines of the study of politics, public policy analysis involves a shift from pure to applied research, a shift which intensifies the problem of the fact-value split inherited from positivist behavioralism. While early public policy literature concentrated on empirical policy-making processes bypassing moral criteria, some recent writings have elaborated on policymaking and policy evaluation as a type of normative inquiry; significant steps in this direction have been undertaken by Duncan MacRae and especially by Jurgen Habermas in the context of “critical theory.” According to Habermas, policy evaluation requires a critically reflective “practical discourse” open not only to experts or policy analysts but to the public at large. The paper argues that such discourse is a valuable remedy against the technical-instrumental bent of applied science, but that recovery of a fully non-instrumental “practical” judgement presupposes an evaluation not only of concrete policies but of the status of “policy” itself.

Approaching Walter Benjamin: Retrieval,Translation and Reconstruction

Abstract: The work of Walter Benjamin has been discussed many times, but infrequently taken as the basis for conducting social theory or as the point of departure for social analysis . There are a few examples of work which might be said to derive from Benjamin's influence : John Berger's TV documentary on Art, \"Ways of Seeing,\" which is an elaboration on Benjamin's \"The Work of Art in an Age ofMechanical Reproduction,\" as is Hans Magnus Enzensberger's \"Towards a Democratic Theory of the Media\" ; Tim Clarke's two-volume study of Art in mid nineteenth-century France, which derives its interpretation from Benjamin's \"Arcades\" project ; Eric Hobsbawm's study TheJaxx Scene (written under the alias \"Francis Newton\") which operates on the dialectical tension between Benjamin's positive response to jazz and Adorno's negative one; Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, which in part takes its cues from Benjamin's concept of the flaneur ; and several of George Steiner's books but most notably The Death ofTragedy (apparently influenced by The Origins of German Tragic Drama), After Babel (influenced by several works of Benjamin, including the essay on Karl Kraus and \"The Task of the Translator\") and In Bluebeard's Castle (owing more, perhaps to Benjamin's Judaic sensibilities than his Marxist ones) . 1 Each of these is an impressive testimony to the influence of Benjamin, as is Adorno's later work, notably Minima Moralia and Negative Dialecticsbut the impact is either oblique, or in the cases ofBerger and Hobsbawm, perhaps too specific . The reasons for this curious influence are not far to seek . Among critical theorists, Benjamin is marginal man in extremis . His work appears to reflect no total certainties, there is no major work on aesthetics or philosophy (ifwe except The Origins ofGerman Tragic Drama as an early work written to expose the fraudulence of German scholarship), and the various audiences to whom he addressed his work seem extremely contradictory at first viewing yet, on reflection, all of them are marginal to their professional colleagues . Gershom Scholem has noted, in a fine essay on the changing meanings read by Benjamin into Klee's Angelus Novus, that his sensibility required a fixed centre which would always be re-worked into another totality . 2

Of Sexism in Political Theory

Abstract: Lorenne M .C. Clark and Lynda Lange, eds., The Sexism of Social and Political Theory; Women and Reproduction from Plato to Nietzsche , Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1979.

A Christian approach to literary criticism : A non- moralistic view

Abstract: The common question: “ Is a Christian approach to literary criticism feasible?” may be more profitably reformulated as: “ How should a Christian approach to literary criticism be?”. It is clearly not a matter of the possibility of such an approach, but a challenge of formulating a new critical theory.

The Disunity of Theory and Practice

Abstract: What is the `Marxist sense' of the unity of theory and practice?" Professor Stanley asks in his generous review of my Commitment and Change.' I admire the skeptical spirit in which this question is raised, and confess that I have no ready answer . Some of the principal candidates, however, would appear to be the following : (1) a view that the tasks once ascribed to theory must be taken up by practice (i. e ., change not interpretation will liberate us) ; (2) a view that the conclusions of theory coincide with the practical demands of a movement (i .e ., its particular needs and interests match and embody the universal requirements ofphilosophy) ; (3) a view that theory ought to reach practical conclusions (i.e., it is idle if it fails to connect with the real situations and problems of its day) ; (4) a view that theory does embody "practical' '2 interests, implicitly taking a stand on political matters by virtue of the assumptions which it makes and the categories which it adopts, whether it seeks to do so or not ; (5) a view that practice proves or disproves the truth of theoretical speculation ("Man must prove the truth . . . of his thinking in practice") ; (6) a view that practical effectiveness constitutes the truth of theory ; (7) a view that theory and practice ought to interact, each continually enriching the other ; (8) a view that the same people ought to theorize and practice (i.e ., no division of manual and intellectual labour) . None of these senses of the phrase is logically related to any other, i.e ., one can accept or reject any one without being committed to the acceptance or rejection of any of the rest, though some may be hard to square with others . Not surprisingly, then, the question of Sorel's relation to Marx (and Marxism) on this topic is one ofgreat complexity . There may be something to be said for beginning with the quite elementary manner in which Sorel introduces the topic in his earliest writings, drawing not at all upon Marx (or Hegel) but upon the ancient question of the philosopher's relation to the city . In Le Proces de Socrate (1889) Sorel makes the following rather heavy-handed remark :

Philosophy in Mexico: The Opium of the Intellectuals or a Prophetic Insight?

Abstract: Taking philosophy in twentieth century Mexico as a case in point, this paper will describe the process through which the intellectual labor of Mexican intellectuals was appropriated in order to minimize its material impact on society . It is often argued that the works of Mexican intellectuals manifests a critical gap between theory and practice, between the expressed desire to solve national problems and the meager impact on the material realities of the nation . One might conclude, then, that philosophy was in effect an opium for Mexican intellectuals . But, on the contrary, recent research indicates that Mexican philosophers have made a significant contribution to the discussion of problems faced by post-industrial societies . , Dreamers or prophets? This is a question that must be resolved in order to fully appreciate the intellectual production of Mexican thinkers and to gain an understanding of the process by which language, as a material condition, affects the will, nay, the consciousness of man. A principal assumption underlying the following discussion is that language is viewed as a material entity, a material condition . In effect, the property of discourse is defined as the ability to understand statements, to elicit an immediate access to the body of already formulated statements and as the capacity to invest discourse on decisions, institutions and practices . If language is material and it can be turned into property, then it is also subject to a political economy of discourse . In every society discourse is controlled, selected, organized and redistributed in order to avert the power inherent in its materiality . To illustrate this notion it is pertinent to consider what happened to the Friar Francisco de la Cruz after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire : he was burned at the stake in 1578 for expounding the idea that Mexican Indians were God's chosen people . There is also the nunphilosopher-poet Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, one of the great minds of colonial Mexico . This woman who has been credited with saving the colonial period from silence, died in 1695, shortly after church authorities forbade her to write anymore . Taken at random from Mexican history these examples reveal that

Ideology and the Question of the Subject

Abstract: The essence of Marx's project was the development of a critical method capable of unmasking the opacity ofsocial relations under capitalism . Critical thought faces the task, in Marx's words, of \"deciphering the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secrets of our social products.\" Nowhere is the opacity ofsocial relations so dense, its secrets so deep, than in the shrouded relationship ofthe subject to the social formation . Marx situates the starting point for an understanding of human agency in his insistence that social and subjective existence must be seen as indissolubly connected elements of historical-material processes . Both the social and the subjective are materially constituted entities of multiple determination, inseparably wedded, yet with relatively distinguishable characteristics . This position challenges that idealism which seeks to place individuals beyond the ken of social processes, proclaiming for them a secular egoism, and divorcing \"human essence\" from history and the material world . Yet a theorisation of subjectivity remained in the shadows of Marx's thought. Aware of this, Marx left cryptic notes in the Grundrisse of topics for future investigation, including the following speculative title : \"Forms of the state and forms of consciousness in relation to the relations of production and circulation, legal relations, family relations .\" Unfortunately, the burden of the economics prevented him from embarking on such explorations . If dialectical materialism situates the terrain of subjectivity, it has as yet failed to map this terrain, a failure that has produced some unfortunate consequences in Marxist theory and practice . Instead of working through with Marx a basis for a theory of subjectivity, many subsequent thinkers not least the doomed interpreters of the Second International vulgarised Marx's conception of social relations, obliterating the problematic of the subject by means of economic reductionism . The tragic failure of the communes in 1919, along with the cataclysm of fascist triumphs, indicted Marxist theory and practice, demanding among other things an explanation of the constitution of the

Feminist Explorations: Life Under Patriarchy

Abstract: New French Feminisms embodies a long awaited attempt to introduce to the English-speaking world the spirit of the current French feminist endeavours . It is an assembly of poems, essays, sentences and fragments meandering over its chosen terrain -the analysis ofwomen's oppression, and the way to liberation . The pieces reiterate and condemn, conflict with and support, one another . It should not come as a surprise that the editors, Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, have made no attempt to make a logical tour deforce, to present a unified (and thus simplified) statement ; in short, to recapitulate a phallocentric intellect . The collection is presented as a literary jouissance,l a fact that is explicitly acknowledged .

The Ethics of Charity: Antonio Caso's Defense of Civilization

Abstract: The myth of the philosopher as permanent resident of the ivory tower serves a dual purpose in society . It preserves the philosopher's autonomy of inquiry from the powers that be and it allows the powers that be to exercise their control unencumbered by philosophy . That the tower is a myth seems clear from various perspectives . Outside the tower, in the social world, is both the source of the philosopher's problematics and the philosopher's raison d'etre (or raison dWrire) . The independence of the ivory tower is also questionable when one notes the profusion and profundity of philosophical analyses at times of rapid and unsettling societal and civilizational changes, such as those in fifth century Athens or in Mexico at the turn of the present century . At no time as much as in the twentieth century have the barriers between the ivory tower and the other social institutions been so permeable . The problem of the relationship between philosophy and a deep concern for the future of civilization engendered a corpus of work which may be termed crisis philosophy and is exemplified in such writings as Karl Jaspers' Man in the Modern Age, Gabriel Marcel's Man Against Mass Society, and Georg Simmel's The Conflict in Modern Culture, among many others . I Crisis philosophy,emerging throughout the world in the first two decades of this century, appeared in Mexico as the criticism against the positivistic ideology which was sustaining the waning Porfirian dictatorship . Mexican positivism was based on the principle that both political and ideological diversity could be eliminated by scientific methods, by technocratic administration and an educational system founded on Comte's positive philosophy .z The attempt to dispense with both politics and metaphysics (questions ofwhat is ofvalue and what is real) began to be attacked by the very children of those who had instituted the system . A group of the more brilliant sudents educated in the positivistic mode decided to enrich what they judged to be their deficient education with independent study of the philosophical classics, which they undertook by forming their own school, the Ateneo de Juventud . Among these students were Jose Vasconcelos and Antonio Caso, who were to become the founders of contemporary Mexican philosophy . Neither Vasconcelos nor Caso ever severed the bond between philosophy and politics which was at the root of their original criticism . The formation of the Ateneo was a selfconsciously political, as well as an intellectual, enterprise, although it was not explicitly a challenge to the regime's right to rule . The positivists had already

Marginality and the Recovery of History: On Leopoldo Zea

Abstract: Leopoldo Zea is one of Mexico's most prolific and influential social philosophers . I While almost unknown in North American intellectual circles, Zea's philosophical work includes more than thirty books, consisting, in part, of a two-volume analysis of representative thinkers in Western philosophy and two classic treatises on positivism in Mexico The Rise and Fall of Positivism in Mexico and Positivism in Mexico .2 Over a long and distinguished intellectual career, Zea's thought has been motivated by the belief that the most appropriate task of Mexican philosophy is to provide a new, and more evocative, interpretation of the human condition in Latin America . Put specifically but eloquently, Zea's work represents a continuing and sustained response to the question : \"What is the relationship among philosophy, history and America\"? Zea's reflections on the dynamic tensions which characterize the relationship of philosophy to its historical circumstance represent a reconciliation of two traditions of thought . On the one hand, Zea's ontology and epistemology reflect an important European influence from Ortega's historicism is derived an appreciation of philosophy in its historical circumstance ; from Mannheim's sociology of knowledge is adopted a dialectic of ideas and concrete interests ; and from Sartre, there is taken a preoccupation with the values of responsibility and freedom . 3 On the other hand, Zea has been most influenced by that tradition of Latin American thinkers who break with Europe in order to develop an authentic Latin American image of history Jose Marti, Jose Enrique Rodo, Jose Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, Manuel Ugarte, Manuel Prada, Samuel Ramos and Antonio Caso . Together with the early influence of Jose Gaos, Caso's is a haunting presence in Zea's thought . It is from Caso that Zea adopts the basic axiological principle of la persona, the integrity and dignity of whom is to be the normative standard by which the historical circumstance may be judged . Over and again, Zea returns in his writing to the problem of establishing an active mediation between philosophy and history, a mediation which is aimed at the liberation of la persona, at the emancipation, that is, of Latin America from colonial domination .