Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory () in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", as a
social theory oriented toward
critiquing and changing
society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of
Marxist philosophy, Horkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by
logical positivism, and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert
positivism and
authoritarianism of
orthodox Marxism and
Communism. He described a theory as
critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them". Critical theory involves a
normative dimension, either by criticizing society in terms of some general theory of
values or norms (
oughts), or by criticizing society in terms of its own espoused values (i.e.
immanent critique). Significantly, critical theory not only conceptualizes and critiques societal power structures, but also establishes an empirically grounded model to link society to the human subject. It defends the universalist ambitions of the tradition, but does so within a specific context of social-scientific and historical research. In early works, including
The German Ideology, Marx developed his concepts of false consciousness and of ideology as the interests of one section of society masquerading as the interests of society as a whole.
Adorno and Horkheimer One of the distinguishing characteristics of critical theory, as
Theodor W. Adorno and
Max Horkheimer elaborated in their
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), is an ambivalence about the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence that gave rise to the "
pessimism" of the new critical theory about the possibility of
human emancipation and
freedom. This ambivalence was rooted in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, particularly the rise of
Nazism,
state capitalism, and
culture industry as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained in the terms of traditional
Marxist sociology. For Adorno and Horkheimer,
state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the traditional tension between Marxism's "
relations of production" and "material
productive forces" of society. The market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) had been replaced by
centralized planning. Contrary to Marx's prediction in the
Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, this shift did not lead to "an era of
social revolution" but to
fascism and
totalitarianism. As a result, critical theory was left, in Habermas's words, without "anything in reserve to which it might appeal, and when the forces of production enter into a baneful symbiosis with the relations of production that they were supposed to blow wide open, there is no longer any dynamism upon which critique could base its hope". For Adorno and Horkheimer, this posed the problem of how to account for the apparent persistence of domination in the absence of the very contradiction that, according to traditional critical theory, was the source of domination itself.
Habermas In the 1960s,
Habermas, a proponent of
critical social theory, raised the
epistemological discussion to a new level in his
Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), by identifying critical
knowledge as based on principles that differentiated it either from the
natural sciences or the
humanities, through its orientation to
self-reflection and emancipation. Although unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkheimer's thought in
Dialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas shares the view that, in the form of
instrumental rationality, the era of
modernity marks a move away from the liberation of enlightenment and toward a new form of enslavement. Jaeggi focuses on both critical theory's original intent and a more modern understanding that some argue has created a new foundation for modern usage of critical theory. Honneth established a theory that many use to understand critical theory, the
theory of recognition. In this theory, he asserts that in order for someone to be responsible for themselves and their own identity they must be also recognized by those around them: without recognition in this sense from peers and society, individuals can never become wholly responsible for themselves and others, nor experience true freedom and emancipation—i.e., without recognition, the individual cannot achieve
self-actualization. Like many others who put stock in critical theory, Jaeggi is vocal about capitalism's cost to society. Throughout her writings, she has remained doubtful about the necessity and use of capitalism in regard to critical theory. Most of Jaeggi's interpretations of critical theory seem to work against the foundations of Habermas and follow more along the lines of Honneth in terms of how to look at the economy through the theory's lens. She shares many of Honneth's beliefs, and many of her works try to defend them against criticism Honneth has received. Rosa uses this term to refer to moments when late modern subjects experience momentary feelings of
self-efficacy in society, bringing them into a temporary moment of relatedness with some aspect of the world. However his resonance theory has been questioned for moving too far beyond the Adornoian tradition of "looking coldly at society". ==Fields==