Showing papers on "Critical theory published in 1981"

Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory

Abstract: Academic conventions divide up the seamless web of the real social world into separate spheres, each with its own theorising; this is a necessary and practical way of gaining understanding. Subdivisions of social knowledge thus may roughly correspond to the ways in which human affairs are organised in particular times and places. E. H. Carr and Eric Hobsbawm have both been sensitive to the continuities between social forces, the changing nature of the state and global relationships. Critical theory is directed to the social and political complex as a whole rather than to the separate parts. Critical theory allows for a normative choice in favour of a social and political order different from the prevailing order, but it limits the range of choice to alternative orders which are feasible transformations of the existing world. The "common rationality" of neo-realism arises from its polemic with liberal internationalism.

A Critical Theory of Adult Learning and Education

Abstract: Interpreting the ideas of Jurgen Habermas, the nature of three generic domains of adult learning is posited, each with its own interpretive categories, ways of determining which knowledge claims ar...

The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School

Abstract: Editors' introduction Preface List of abbreviations Introduction 1. Ideology 2. Interests 3. Critical theory Index.

Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas

Abstract: Foreword Anthony Giddens Preface Introduction Part I Thematic Exposition: 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy 2 Pual Ricoeur and hermeneutic phenomenology 3 Jurgen Habermas and critical social theory Part II Constructive Critique: 4 Problems in the analysis of action 5 Problems in the methodology of social science 6 Problems in the theory of reference and truth Conclusion Notes Select bibliography Index

Ideology, culture & the process of schooling

Abstract: Preface Introduction 1. Schooling and the Culture of Positivism: Notes on the Death of History 2. Beyond the Limits of Radical Educational Reform: Toward a Critical Theory of Education 3. Beyond the Correspondence Theory: Notes on the Dynamics of Educational Reproduction and Transformation 4. Dialects and the Development of Curriculum Theory 5. Paulo Freire's Approach to Radical Educational Theory and Practice 6. Teacher Education and the Ideology of Social Control Index

Immanent critique as the core of critical theory: its origins and developments in Hegel, Marx and contemporary thought*

Abstract: My goal is to explain the intellectual and historical basis of critical theory-a term with vague and imprecise meaning for sociologists. Confusion about the approach is more fundamental than that usually attributed to its difficult, philosophical terminology. The central issue is that critical theory is not a general theory, but is instead a method of analysis deriving from a nonpositivist epistemology. The focus will be upon the method of immanent critique, its Hegelian-Marxist roots and its development as the central mode of critical theoretic analysis. Immanent critique is a means of detecting the societal contradictions which offer the most determinate possibilities for emancipatory social change. The commentary on method cannot be separated from its historical application, since the content of immanent critque is the dialectic in htstory. Jayl suggests that critical theory is opposed to closed philosophical systems and that the precise shape of the approach is elusive because it is 'expressed through a series of critiques of other thinkers and philosophical traditions'. Jay's book describes the highly diverse works of critical theorists (in social theory, philosophical speculation, aesthetic critique, and historical description) and the broad variety of thinkers they address (e.g., Hegel, Marx, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Weber, Husserl and Heidegger). It is understandable why Susan BuckMorss concludes that critical theory is 'a term which lacks substantive precision'.2

Questioning and Organizing Attention: Toward a Critical Theory of Planning and Administrative Practice

Abstract: To understand what planning and administrative analysts do, and what they can yet do, we need a theory of planning and public administration that combines vision with practice, a theory neither solely utopian nor opportunistic. Jurgen Habermas's "critical communications theory of society" allows us to locate the planning analyst's questioning and shaping of attention, thus organizing and designing, within a political, institutional world of systematically but unnecessarily distorted (and so possibly alterable) communications. A critical theory of administration andplanning argues that the planning analysts' organizing of attention can and ought ethically to work to foster true political discourse, dialogue, and the possibilities of genuinely democratic politics.

Modernity and the Aporias of Critical Theory

Abstract: Since Weber's analysis of modernity through the category of rationalization, diagnosing the irrationality of this rationalization had been a central preoccupation of critical theory. Marcuse ended his “Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber” with the question: “Is there perhaps already in Max Weber's concept of reason that irony that understands but disavows? Does he by any chance mean to say: And this you call ‘reason’?” Marcuse's question was not unjustified, for it pointed to an unresolved ambivalence in Weber's own work on modernity. In diagnosing that societal rationalization processes would inevitably result in a loss of freedom (Freiheitsverlust), whereas Western cultural rationalism would lead to an irreversible loss of meaning (Sinnverlust), Weber provided a highly ambivalent evaluation of the significance of modernity in the West.

Max Weber, critical theory, and the administered world

Abstract: The sociological perspectives of Max Weber and the “Frankfurt School” have been viewed as polarities in much of the recent literature. The Frankfurt sociologists were advocates of a neo-Marxism that stressed dialectical reasoning and rejected the notion of value-neutrality. Weber adhered to the canons of causal logic and cultivated the ideal of objectivity in social research. Notwithstanding these theoretical and methodological differences, Weber and the advocates of critical theory arrived at surprisingly similar conclusions about the “fate” of the modern world. Weber saw the advent of a bureaucratic “iron cage” which would effectively negate the role of the individual, while the Frankfurt sociologists posited the onset of an “administered world” in which human activity would be smothered in an ever-expanding network of management and control. Given these commonalities, a revision of the standard evaluation of Weber and critical theory is suggested.

On the Possibility of Teachers as the Source of an Emancipatory Pedagogy: A Response to Henry Giroux

Abstract: In "Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education," Henry Giroux (1980) undermines his arguments for an emancipatory citizenship education by begging several fundamental questions. The first is the notion of a "better society." He asserts that a citizenship education is needed which will give students "civic courage" to learn about social inequalities of wealth and power and to act collectively to resist and overturn these inequalities. He interchanges the terms "better society" and "democratic society," elaborating neither. The obvious danger is that such slogans, while affiliative across a broad sector of the population, do not imply the same social processes, nor the same resulting society, for all individuals and groups. Even the presumption of a greater sharing of power is not specific enough to avoid the danger of trying to build emancipatory possibilities upon a false consensus. This vagueness is compounded by the second begged question, the source of teachers' awareness of and willingness to challenge social inequalities in their classroom relationships and in the realities students need to confront in the larger society. The first question (what constitutes a better, more demographic society?) could perhaps await grass roots consensus-that is, whatever "the people" decide-except that the processes needed to arrive at this better society are seen by Giroux as beginning with teachers. The first half of his article convincingly portrays teachers as a part of the overall institution of schooling, which appropriates the rationale of positivism and thereby embodies and reproduces basic societal inequalities. Then, in his model of emancipatory citizenship education, he posits a model which begins with teachers: ". . .conflicts and contradictions must be studied and analyzed by teachers as issues to be problematized and used as points for classroom discussion and vehicles for connecting classroom practices to larger political issues" [p. 357];

Recent Literature on Critical Theory

Abstract: After the discovery and translation of the major thinkers of the "Frankfurt School" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a multitude of books on critical theory have appeared in English.' Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination (1973) provided a comprehensive introduction to critical theory, displaying its defining features, central themes and a wealth of ideas on almost every conceivable topic of importance to contemporary social theory.2 Critical theory appeared to its audience in England and America as an attractive alternative to the empiricist social theories and analytical philosophies dominant in the Universities. Instead of the fragmentation of philosophy and the social sciences, critical theory offered a program of social theory which combined theory and empirical research and provided a sophisticated critique of the separation of these dimensions. Critical theory also stressed the importance of history for theory and research, conceiving of theory, at least in some of its versions, as an instrument of radical politics. Moreover, critical theory was rooted in

Habermas and the Politics of Discourse

Abstract: The attitude of critical theory toward tradition has been dictated by the understanding that theoretical knowledge in sociology, as distinct from ideology, must necessarily reflect the practical intention to effect social change. To anyone claiming to be radical, such an attitude appears to be beyond reproach . In one sense, it belongs to the Marxist heritage, where the critique of ideology was first elaborated as part of a larger programme of human emancipation. But the roots of this attitude also go deeper, tapping the intellectual resources of the Enlightenment, where reason was a weapon against unreasoning tradition and the institutions of the past were irredeemably discredited through a history of oppression and unjustifiable domination. Critical theory has since scrutinized the legacy of the Enlightenment and found in the ideological misrepresentation of science and technology as potent an obstacle to liberation as past tradition . Nevertheless, it has retained an abiding distrust of tradition in all of its guises . Similarly, an extensive critique of Marxism itself has identified elements of reification inherent in the Marxist vision . In this regard, the reconsolidation ofstate and civil society in both late capitalism and contemporary socialism, with the attendant problem of renewed politicization of the public realm, shares several features in common with traditional forms of domination . But a return to tradition has certainly never been suggested as a counter-weight to technocracy by critical theorists as it has, for instance, by conservative critics of technological society like Ellul, Illich, and Nisbet . ' As a political stance in the contemporary world, however, this view of tradition has several weaknesses . The destruction of traditional culture has become a rallyingpoint for much of the opposition to technocratic hegemony . In certain cases, tradition has come to symbolize such radical values as diversity and personal and group autonomy . Demands by groups for various kinds of cultural and political independence, minority rights, and decentralization of government, and the preservation of traditional means of livelihood have become commonplace . Such demands appeal in one way or another to tradition as a basis for community though obviously in a highly reconstructed form. These appeals are political realities . To write off movements of this kind as merely \"reactionary\", as Marxism often does, is to carry the modernist critique of tradition to the point where its very rigidity belies any remaining emancipatory scope . There are problems on the theoretical plane as well with the wholesale

Marxism and the Good Society

Abstract: List of contributors Preface Introduction John P. Burke, Lawrence Crocker and Lyman H. Letgers 1. Marxism and the good society Richard T. de George 2. Marx, liberty, and democracy Lawrence Crocker 3. Marx's early concept of democracy and the ethical bases of socialism Norman Fischer 4. The necessity of revolution John P. Burke 5. Marx and Engels on the future communist society David McLellan 6. Alienation and justice in the market Arthur Diquattro 7. Markovic on critical social theory and human nature David A. Crocker 8. Marxism and dissent in the Soviet Union Lyman H. Letgers 9. Science, Soviet socialism, and the good society Loren R. Graham Theory and practice in the Mao period Paul M. Sweezy.

The Warring Subject

Abstract: This special double issue celebrates the fifth anniversary of publication of the Journal. A moment of self-reflection on the intellectual project of the review, on what are really the editorial principles which have guided the theoretical development of the Journal, is not inappropriate . I would think that the intellectual vitality of the review is a sign, and a hopeful one at that, of the refusal of the creative imagination to succumb to the dour pronouncements of positive reason . Ironically, in this the most demoralizing of times, when economic crisis and hostile political pressures threaten intellectual work as a whole, there occurs now a regeneration, almost a rebirth, of critical reason . It is as if the forced reduction of life to the particular, to the grim necessities of economy, stimulates the intellectual imagination to break once and for all with positive discourse, and to come over to the side of culture, of the artistic and theoretical imagination . Certainly, at no point in the history of the Journal have we received such a large volume of exceptional manuscripts or experienced such a close sense of intellectual fraternity with the community of readers which has formed around the review . Ifthe character of an intellectual review is demonstrated by the readership which it attracts, then we are fortunate in having subscribers who demand integrity of theoretical critique and who insist on critical appreciation for contending perspectives . The active support of readers is welcomed by the editors and, in fact, the knowledge that the Journal has crystallized a working alliance among theoreticians, poets, artists, historians and others makes the task of editing the review a creative one . As a journal which encourages the announcement of critical tensions among opposing viewpoints, it may well be that the sheer existence of the review serves as a pressure-point against the bad conscience of the bourgeois personality . The editorial of the very first issue of the Journal noted that the review was intended to defend the intellectual imagination, against not only the threatening force of public life but as well against the demoralizing indifference of the surrounding population . I think now, in modesty, that the Journal has held true to this project, serving faithfully and well as a refuge for the creative imagination and for serious and critical scholarly work . In addition to a series of critical and, in some instances, now classic articles in theoretical domains stretching from cultural analysis to dependency theory, the Journal has published a provocative number of theme issues . Beginning with such thematisations as \"Emancipatory Theory\" and \"Marx and Marxism Reconsidered\" and continuing with \"Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Language\", \"Hollywood, Hollywood\", in \"Marginality and Mexican Thought\", the Journal has both addressed central theoretical debates and typically helped create the trajectory of these debates . It is gratifying that

The Contemporary Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas

Abstract: The work of Jurgen Habermas is not easy to read or review. Always dense and sometimes opaque, it concerns itself with, and presupposes extensive knowledge of, philosophy, sociology, history, political science, psychology, linguistics, economics, and socialist political strategy. Knowledge and Human Interests (KI) is a history and critique of the concept of knowledge from Kant to Freud, with extended treatments of Hegel, Marx, Comte, Mach, Peirce, Dilthey, Fichte, and Nietzsche. Theory and Practice (TP) combines separate essays on the history of political theory from the seventeenth century to Marx with discussions of the general relation between theory and practice and the role of technology and science in modern society. Legitimation Crisis (LC) analyzes theories, from several different disciplines, concerning the likelihood of crisis in advanced capitalist societies. Communication and the Evolution of Society (CE), Habermas's latest volume, is a collection of related but distinct essays which clarify and expand Habermas's earlier treatment of communication theory, ethics, and social theory. A detailed description of these highly important and original works is beyond the scope of this review. Instead, I will focus on Habermas's account of the relations among knowledge, human emancipation, and the rational grounding of ethical principles and social norms. I will first describe some of Habermas's successes and failures in these areas in his earlier works and then offer a brief account of the new contributions of Communication and the Evolution of Society.

New French Theory in New German Critique

Abstract: Rainer N~igele ["The Provocation of Lacan" in New German Critique, No. 16 (Winter, 1979)] has launched a project which could lead to significant advances in the practice of critical theory. He attempts to combine critical theory with what he calls the "New French Theory," more specifically, with the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida and with the structural psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan. He gives indications of future plans to add the historical institutional analysis of Michel Foucault and the Marxism of Louis Althusser to this list. There is much in these theories

Science, Hermeneutics, and the Utopian Content of the Liberal-Democratic Tradition on Habermas' Recent Work. A Reply to Mendelson

Abstract: Jack Mendelson's careful review of the Gadamer/Habermas debate (in NGC, 18 (1979) attempts to make a case for a hermeneutically enlightened version of critical theory. Its central objective is to argue for a version of critical theory which can be understood as a "theoretically informed immanent critique" of the "living traditions which prevail in the societies in which critique arises and which it seeks to transform" (1979. p. 44). He mentions Habermas' early work as an example and states correctly that the earlier concept of the democratic public realm "feeds into his later formulations concerning communication free from domination" (ibid. p. 71). Mendelson believes (and he thinks Habermas would agree) that democratic ideals still persist under conditions of late capitalism. He states therefore: "the entire apparatus of constitutions, elections, parties and parliaments which embodies democratic ideals still has a living presence in late capitalist societies. This tradition or set of traditions can therefore still serve as a

Hannah Arendt and Critical Theory: A Critical Response

Abstract: G ERARD P. HEATHER and Matthew Stolz's article, "Hannah Arendt and the Problem of Critical Theory," appearing in this journal in February, 1979, celebrates the brilliance of Arendt's theorizing, but it makes important and instructive mistakes as it does. 1 The authors' enthusiasm for Arendt's work is unfortunately marred in its substantive expression by a superficial analysis of the "critical theory" to which they allude, and more seriously, by a severe misinterpretation of the recent work of the most prolific of contemporary "critical theorists," Jurgen Habermas. Rather than re-outlining their argument and fully re-assessing their analysis, the following critical remarks follow the development of their essay and attempt to correct the substantive misrepresentations of Habermas's widely read and vigorously debated work on "a critical theory of society." The relevant page number will precede the commentary on Heather and Stolz's claims. (Page 3) To begin, Heather and Stolz identify "Critical Theory" largely with Habermas's work. Then, after they quote Herbert Marcuse to the effect that, "Practice follows truth, and not vice versa," their generalizations begin. Contrary to their implication, Habermas does not take such a one-sided position, nor do the several volumes of his work published in English over the past decade lead one to such an awkward stance. His analyses of speech, political discourse, and symbolic action more generally are closely tied to a

Absolute and Relational Theories of Space

Abstract: Most philosophers agree that before Kant wrote Regions in Space he was committed to a version of Leibnizian thought, including the relational theory of space. They also agree that in this first incongruent counterparts essay Kant broke abruptly with the relational theory and argued for Newton’s theory of absolute space. From there on, however, the picture becomes rather murky. Norman Kemp Smith claims, for instance, that although the 1768 argument was important for Kant’s Critical philosophy, he could not retain this Newtonian position because of its many difficulties, and that the Critical philosophy is a synthesis of all that Kant thought essential in these opposing theories. [39, pp. 162–63] Robert Wolff sees no continuity between Kant’s argument in Regions in Space and his Critical theory; he believes that in the Inaugural Dissertation of 1770 Kant “struck out in a radically new direction” which eventually culminated in the Critique of Pure Reason. [66, pp. 9–11] Max Jammer thinks that Kant’s later theory addresses questions beyond those raised by the analysis of space, but also that this analysis, like Kant’s philosophy in general, “was greatly influenced by the English empiricists Locke, Berkeley and Hume, and their analytical investigations into the formation of ideas”. [38, p. 135] Probably the least popular thesis is Gottfried Martin’s in Kant’s Metaphysics and Theory of Science, in which he stresses the continuing influence of Leibniz.

Conflict and Consensus in the History of Recent Criticism

Abstract: [ THINK FEW would quarrel with the assertion that since the decline of the New Criticism, literary criticism has become progressively more concerned with the description, interpretation, and explanation of literary works and progressively more suspicious of value judgments about them. One of the curious effects of this change has been to make the history of recent criticism very different from what appears in either critical theory or critical practice. For surely a discussion of this history would have to deal with what seem like fundamental changes in values: for example, the inclusion of popular culture, ethnic literature, Third World literature, women's literature, film, the teaching of reading, and the teaching of English as a second language within English departments and within literary study. It would deal with what sound like important value conflicts: between a concentration on selected texts and an evenhanded concern for the

Habermas's Retreat from Hermeneutics: Systems Integration, Social Integration and the Crisis of Legitimation

Abstract: ion against theories which refuse to recognize such a rule . Thus, what is said here is that discourse takes an interest in discourse . The interest rational agents can have, once they recognize an ideal situation of discourse as a norm, is only an interest in the continuation of that situation . Our problem here is that Habermas has formulated a norm which is not applicable to action as such . We can never judge the principle in terms of its consequences for action . I have already argued that critical theory cannot simply be a reconstructionist theory reconstructing anonymous rule systems . Yet in the consideration of the advocacy role ofcritical theory, the model is outlined in terms of the criteria developedfor the reconstruction of anonymous rules. Instead of inspecting cases where social norms are rendered problematic by demands for participation in the determination of those social norms, Habermas invents an abstract formula applicable to all such demands but not reflecting any one of them in particular . Again, Habermas is trapped in an objectivist form of reflection, the very thing against which he argues, when he argues against strategic action on the basis of a reflexive theory . He does protect himself sufficiently against an objectivist use of his theory in strategic action, I believe . But he does not prevent or, rather, he provokes an objectivist understanding of his theory . Such an understanding can hardly be avoided because Habermas does not provide one instance of actual reflecting on a particular social norm . This objection applies although Habermas does in fact speak of instances where presently operative norms may crumble, e.g ., when he refers to a possible breakdown of performance or achievement ideology,b4 or when he points to the relation between political-administrative planning and demands for participation . But all these matters, as well as the issue of a class structure which is kept latent, are approached indirectly, objectivistically-inorder toindicate crisis zones, not to justify these demands or breakdowns morally or morallypolitically . Thus Habermas does not provide an ethical or a practical-political argument against class structure . This omission is damaging in his case, because his theory creates the expectation of such an argument. Rather, he reformulates some classical Marxist arguments . He refines one or the other criterion for the existence of class and takes classical criteria for granted . But he does not give a critique of class society, although he sounds as if he does. He would be better off, I believe, were he to argue in terms of principles, of an ethical kind on the one hand, or in terms of an historical analysis of crisis tendencies on the other . At the moment, his work is ambiguous and the introduction of the idea of linguistic ethics or communication ethicsbs confuses matters further . The idea gives the illusion of a hermeneutical approach where there is none . For such an approach would require that one

Rejoinder to Flax

Abstract: T HERE IS MUCH in this essay which I would applaud; more, indeed, than that from which I would dissent. In fact, Professor Flax's argument with me seems to turn less upon my criticism of epistemological obsessions than upon her belief that I chose "bad" or misconceived epistemologies as my target. Writing from the general perspective of Critical Theory (with a leavening of psychoanalysis, femininism, and Kuhnian historiography), she proposes to vindicate the epistemological enterprise on broader, presumably more secure grounds. I will consider first her three general arguments for epistemology, and then comment briefly on her more specific view of that activity, but an initial disclaimer or clarification is in order. My original essay emphatically did not reject the pursuit of epistemological inquiry in general, but rather questioned two characteristic moves of modern philosophy: first, the abstraction of "principles of knowing" from their substantive context and their subsequent enshrinement in a distinct "field" of study; second, the assignment of a priority to such study superseding the ontologies of all particular subject matters. In a recent reply to Eugene Miller (this Journal, November, 1980) I conceded that my argument ran more pointedly against modern than classical epistemologies; to Professor Flax I should add that my remarks were directed more specifically to the Anglo-American tradition than the Continental, but insofar as my comments sought to characterize the use of philosophy by social scientists, I believe them justified. (More extended outlines of my critique may be found in John Gunnell, Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation, and Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.)