Critical theory
Encyclopedia
Critical theory is an examination and critique
of society
and culture
, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences
and humanities
. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology
and the other in literary criticism
. This has led to the very literal use of 'critical theory' as an umbrella term
to describe any theory founded upon critique.
In the sociological context, critical theory refers to a style of Marxist theory
with a tendency to engage with non-Marxist influences (for instance the work of Friedrich Nietzsche
and Sigmund Freud
). Modern critical theory arose from a trajectory extending from the antipositivist sociology of Max Weber
and Georg Simmel
, the Marxist theory of Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci
, toward the milieu associated with Frankfurt Institute of Social Research
.
Five "Frankfurt School
" theorists were chiefly responsible for establishing critical theory as a specific strand of thought: Herbert Marcuse
, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer
, Walter Benjamin
, and, slightly later, Jürgen Habermas
. With the latter, critical theory shed its roots in German idealism
and moved closer to American pragmatism
. The concern for a social "base and superstructure
" is one of the few remaining Marxist concepts in much contemporary critical theory. Whilst the critical theorists are usually defined as Marxist intellectuals, their tendency to denounce so many Marxian elements has been attacked as 'revisionism
' by stricter Marxists.
To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas
in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions—including the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts. Critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination.
From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normative
dimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values
, norms, or "oughts," or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values.
of the Frankfurt School
of sociology in his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory: Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society
as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. Horkheimer wanted to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxian theory, critiquing 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
.
Core concepts are: (1) That critical social theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time), and (2) That critical theory should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including geography
, economics
, sociology
, history
, political science
, anthropology
, and psychology
.
This version of "critical" theory derives from Kant
's (18th-century) and Marx's (19th Century) use of the term "critique
", as in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
and Marx's concept that his work Das Kapital
(Capital) forms a "critique of political economy." For Kant's transcendental idealism
, "critique" means examining and establishing the limits of the validity of a faculty, type, or body of knowledge, especially through accounting for the limitations imposed by the fundamental, irreducible concepts in use in that knowledge system. Early on, Kant's notion associated critique with the disestablishment of false, unprovable, or dogmatic philosophical, social, and political beliefs, because Kant's critique of reason involved the critique of dogmatic theological and metaphysical
ideas and was intertwined with the enhancement of ethical autonomy and the Enlightenment
critique of superstition and irrational authority, or, at least, this has been the ahistorical interpretation of his intentions commonly embraced in contemporary "critical theory" circles. In reality, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" was named such in reference to David Hume and Lord Berkeley, skeptic philosophers who had employed reason and logic to argue against the reality of concepts of the self, the knowability of the world, and ideas of cause and effect. Kant, by contrast, pushed the employment of apriori metaphysical claims as requisite, for if anything is to be said to be knowable, it would have to be established upon abstractions distinct from perceivable phenomena.
Alternately, Marx explicitly developed this notion into the critique of ideology and linked it with the practice of social revolution, as in the famous 11th of his Theses on Feuerbach
, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in certain ways; the point is to change it."
One of the distinguishing characteristics of critical theory, as Adorno and Horkheimer elaborated in their Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1947), is a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence which gave rise to the “pessimism” of the new critical theory over the possibility of human emancipation and freedom. This ambivalence was rooted, of course, in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, in particular, the rise of National Socialism, state capitalism
, and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional Marxist sociology.
For Adorno and Horkheimer state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production
" and "material productive forces
of society," a tension which, according to traditional critical theory, constituted the primary contradiction
within capitalism. The market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and private property
had been replaced by centralized planning and socialized ownership of the means of production
.
Yet, contrary to Marx’s famous 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 rather to fascism
and totalitarianism
. As such, critical theory was left, in Jürgen Habermas
’ 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.
In the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas
raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in his Knowledge and Human Interests, 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. Though unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkeimer's thought presented 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.
His ideas regarding the relationship between modernity and rationalization
are in this sense strongly influenced by Max Weber
. Habermas dissolved further the elements of critical theory derived from Hegelian German Idealism
, though his thought remains broadly Marxist in its epistemological approach. Perhaps his two most influential ideas are the concepts of the public sphere
and communicative action
; the latter arriving partly as a reaction to new post-structural or so-called "post-modern
" challenges to the discourse of modernity. Habermas engaged in regular correspondence with Richard Rorty
and a strong sense of philosophical pragmatism
may be felt in his theory; thought which frequently traverses the boundaries between sociology and philosophy.
Postmodern critical research is also characterized by what is called, the crisis of representation, which rejects the idea that a researcher’s work is considered an “objective depiction of a stable other” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 53). Instead, in their research and writing, many postmodern scholars have adopted “alternatives that encourage reflection about the ‘politics and poetics’ of their work. In these accounts, the embodied, collaborative, dialogic, and improvisational aspects of qualitative research are clarified” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 53).
Often, the term "critical theory" is appropriated when an author (perhaps most notably Michel Foucault
) works within sociological terms yet attacks the social or human sciences (thus attempting to remain "outside" those frames of enquiry). Jean Baudrillard
has also been described as a critical theorist to the extent that he was an unconventional and critical sociologist; this appropriation is similarly casual, holding little or no relation to the Frankfurt School.
. This form of critical theory is not necessarily oriented toward radical social change or even toward the analysis of society, but instead focuses on the analysis of texts. This term was first used by literary scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, and the term has only come into broad use since the 1980s, especially as theory used in literary studies has increasingly been influenced by European philosophy and social theory.
This version of "critical" theory derives from the notion of literary criticism as establishing and enhancing the understanding and evaluation of literature in the search for truth
. Some consider literary theory merely an aesthetic concern, as articulated, for example, in Joseph Addison
's notion of a critic
as one who helps understand and interpret literary works: "A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation." This notion of criticism ultimately goes back to Aristotle's Poetics as a theory of literature.
In the 1940s and 1950s, New Criticism
had tried to analyze literary texts purely internally. Starting in the 1960s, literary scholars, reacting against this, began to use analytical tools from critical social theory - initially semiotic, linguistic
, and interpretive theory, then structuralism
, Lacanian psychoanalysis, post-structuralism
, and deconstruction
as well as Continental philosophy
, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics, and various other forms of neo-Marxian theory.
Thus literary criticism became highly theoretical and some of those practicing it began referring to the theoretical dimension of their work as "critical theory" - a philosophically inspired theory of literary criticism. And thus incidentally critical theory in the sociological sense also became, especially among literary scholars of left-wing sympathies, one of a number of influences upon and streams within critical theory in the literary sense.
With the expansion of the mass media and mass/popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s and the blending of social and cultural criticism and literary criticism, the methods of both kinds of critical theory sometimes intertwined in the analysis of phenomena of popular culture, as in the emerging field of cultural studies
, in which concepts deriving from Marxian theory, post-structuralism
, semiology, psychoanalysis
and feminist theory
would be found in the same interpretive work. Both strands were often present in the various modalities of postmodern theory
.
, through the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein
, Ferdinand de Saussure
, George Herbert Mead
, Noam Chomsky
, Hans-Georg Gadamer
, Roland Barthes
, Jacques Derrida
and other thinkers in linguistic and analytic philosophy, structural linguistics
, symbolic interactionism
, hermeneutics, semiology, linguistically oriented psychoanalysis (Jacques Lacan
, Alfred Lorenzer
), and deconstruction
.
When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jürgen Habermas
redefined critical social theory as a theory of communication, i.e. communicative competence and communicative rationality on the one hand, distorted communication on the other, the two versions of critical theory began to overlap or intertwine to a much greater degree than before.
are created. This includes:
There is a common interest in the processes (often of a linguistic or symbolic kind) that give rise to observable phenomena and here there is some mutual influence among the different versions of critical theory.
Ultimately this emphasis on production and construction goes back to the revolution wrought by Kant
in philosophy, namely his focus in the Critique of Pure Reason
on synthesis according to rules as the fundamental activity of the mind that creates the order of our experience.
Critique
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse. Critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgement, but it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt...
of society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
and humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and the other in literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
. This has led to the very literal use of 'critical theory' as an umbrella term
Umbrella term
An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of concepts that all fall under a single common category. Umbrella term is also called a hypernym. For example, cryptology is an umbrella term that encompasses cryptography and cryptanalysis, among other fields...
to describe any theory founded upon critique.
In the sociological context, critical theory refers to a style of Marxist theory
Marxist sociology
Marxist sociology refers to the conduct of sociology from a Marxist perspective. Marxism itself can be recognized as both a political philosophy and a sociology, particularly to the extent it attempts to remain scientific, systematic and objective rather than purely normative and prescriptive....
with a tendency to engage with non-Marxist influences (for instance the work of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
). Modern critical theory arose from a trajectory extending from the antipositivist sociology of Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
and Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel was a major German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, asking 'What is society?' in a direct allusion to Kant's question 'What is nature?',...
, the Marxist theory of Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
, toward the milieu associated with Frankfurt Institute of Social Research
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory....
.
Five "Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
" theorists were chiefly responsible for establishing critical theory as a specific strand of thought: Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...
, Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
, and, slightly later, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
. With the latter, critical theory shed its roots in German idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
and moved closer to American pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
. The concern for a social "base and superstructure
Base and superstructure
In Marxist theory, human society consists of two parts: the base and superstructure; the base comprehends the forces and relations of production — employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labour, and property relations — into which people enter to produce the necessities and...
" is one of the few remaining Marxist concepts in much contemporary critical theory. Whilst the critical theorists are usually defined as Marxist intellectuals, their tendency to denounce so many Marxian elements has been attacked as 'revisionism
Revisionism
Revisionism may refer to:*Historical revisionism, the critical re-examination of presumed historical facts and existing historiography** The "revisionists" school of thought in Soviet and Communist studies, as opposed to the Cold War "traditionalists" school....
' by stricter Marxists.
Two primary definitions
The two meanings of critical theory—from different intellectual traditions associated with the meaning of criticism and critique—derive ultimately from the Greek word kritikos meaning judgment or discernment, and in their present forms go back to the 18th century. While they can be considered completely independent intellectual pursuits, increasingly scholars are interested in the areas of critique where the two overlap.To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions—including the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts. Critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination.
From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normative
Norm (sociology)
Social norms are the accepted behaviors within a society or group. This sociological and social psychological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit...
dimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values
Value (personal and cultural)
A personal or cultural value is an absolute or relative ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based...
, norms, or "oughts," or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values.
In social theory
Critical theory was first defined by Max HorkheimerMax Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...
of the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
of sociology in his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory: Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. Horkheimer wanted to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxian theory, critiquing both the model of science put forward by logical positivism
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...
and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
Core concepts are: (1) That critical social theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time), and (2) That critical theory should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
.
This version of "critical" theory derives from Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
's (18th-century) and Marx's (19th Century) use of the term "critique
Critique
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse. Critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgement, but it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt...
", as in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
and Marx's concept that his work Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
(Capital) forms a "critique of political economy." For Kant's transcendental idealism
Transcendental idealism
Transcendental idealism is a doctrine founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Kant's doctrine maintains that human experience of things is similar to the way they appear to us — implying a fundamentally subject-based component, rather than being an activity that...
, "critique" means examining and establishing the limits of the validity of a faculty, type, or body of knowledge, especially through accounting for the limitations imposed by the fundamental, irreducible concepts in use in that knowledge system. Early on, Kant's notion associated critique with the disestablishment of false, unprovable, or dogmatic philosophical, social, and political beliefs, because Kant's critique of reason involved the critique of dogmatic theological and metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
ideas and was intertwined with the enhancement of ethical autonomy and the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
critique of superstition and irrational authority, or, at least, this has been the ahistorical interpretation of his intentions commonly embraced in contemporary "critical theory" circles. In reality, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" was named such in reference to David Hume and Lord Berkeley, skeptic philosophers who had employed reason and logic to argue against the reality of concepts of the self, the knowability of the world, and ideas of cause and effect. Kant, by contrast, pushed the employment of apriori metaphysical claims as requisite, for if anything is to be said to be knowable, it would have to be established upon abstractions distinct from perceivable phenomena.
Alternately, Marx explicitly developed this notion into the critique of ideology and linked it with the practice of social revolution, as in the famous 11th of his Theses on Feuerbach
Theses on Feuerbach
The "Theses on Feuerbach" are eleven short philosophical notes written by Karl Marx in 1845. They outline a critique of the ideas of Marx's fellow Young Hegelian philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach...
, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in certain ways; the point is to change it."
One of the distinguishing characteristics of critical theory, as Adorno and Horkheimer elaborated in their Dialectic of Enlightenment
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Dialectic of Enlightenment , is one of the core texts of Critical Theory explaining the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Enlightenment...
(1947), is a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence which gave rise to the “pessimism” of the new critical theory over the possibility of human emancipation and freedom. This ambivalence was rooted, of course, in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, in particular, the rise of National Socialism, state capitalism
State capitalism
The term State capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or...
, and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional Marxist sociology.
For Adorno and Horkheimer state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production
Relations of production
Relations of production is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism, and in Das Kapital...
" and "material productive forces
Productive forces
Productive forces, "productive powers" or "forces of production" [in German, Produktivkräfte] is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism....
of society," a tension which, according to traditional critical theory, constituted the primary contradiction
Contradiction
In classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical, usually opposite inversions of each other...
within capitalism. The market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
had been replaced by centralized planning and socialized ownership of the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
.
Yet, contrary to Marx’s famous prediction in the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, this shift did not lead to "an era of social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
," but rather to fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
. As such, critical theory was left, in Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
’ 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.
In the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in his Knowledge and Human Interests, by identifying critical knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
as based on principles that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
, through its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation. Though unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkeimer's thought presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas shares the view that, in the form of instrumental rationality
Instrumental rationality
Two views of instrumental rationality can be discerned in modern philosophy: one view comes from social philosophy, sociology and critical theory, whereas another comes from natural philosophy.-The view from critical theory and social philosophy:...
, the era of modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
marks a move away from the liberation of enlightenment
Enlightenment (spiritual)
Enlightenment in a secular context often means the "full comprehension of a situation", but in spiritual terms the word alludes to a spiritual revelation or deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things, communication with or understanding of the mind of God, profound spiritual...
and toward a new form of enslavement.
His ideas regarding the relationship between modernity and rationalization
Rationalization (sociology)
Rationalization is a term used in sociology to refer to a process in which an increasing number of social actions become based on considerations of teleological efficiency or calculation rather than on motivations derived from morality, emotion, custom, or tradition...
are in this sense strongly influenced by Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
. Habermas dissolved further the elements of critical theory derived from Hegelian German Idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
, though his thought remains broadly Marxist in its epistemological approach. Perhaps his two most influential ideas are the concepts of the public sphere
Public sphere
The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action...
and communicative action
Communicative action
Communicative action is a concept associated with the German philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas. Habermas uses this concept to describe cooperative action undertaken by individuals based upon mutual deliberation and argumentation...
; the latter arriving partly as a reaction to new post-structural or so-called "post-modern
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
" challenges to the discourse of modernity. Habermas engaged in regular correspondence with Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
and a strong sense of philosophical pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
may be felt in his theory; thought which frequently traverses the boundaries between sociology and philosophy.
Postmodern critical theory
While modernist critical theory (as described above) concerns itself with “forms of authority and injustice that accompanied the evolution of industrial and corporate capitalism as a political-economic system,” postmodern critical theory politicizes social problems “by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 52). Meaning itself is seen as unstable due to the rapid transformation in social structures and as a result the focus of research is centered on local manifestations rather than broad generalizations.Postmodern critical research is also characterized by what is called, the crisis of representation, which rejects the idea that a researcher’s work is considered an “objective depiction of a stable other” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 53). Instead, in their research and writing, many postmodern scholars have adopted “alternatives that encourage reflection about the ‘politics and poetics’ of their work. In these accounts, the embodied, collaborative, dialogic, and improvisational aspects of qualitative research are clarified” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 53).
Often, the term "critical theory" is appropriated when an author (perhaps most notably Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
) works within sociological terms yet attacks the social or human sciences (thus attempting to remain "outside" those frames of enquiry). Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
has also been described as a critical theorist to the extent that he was an unconventional and critical sociologist; this appropriation is similarly casual, holding little or no relation to the Frankfurt School.
In literary criticism
The second meaning of critical theory is the theory used in literary criticism and in the analysis and understanding of literature. This is discussed in greater detail under literary theoryLiterary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
. This form of critical theory is not necessarily oriented toward radical social change or even toward the analysis of society, but instead focuses on the analysis of texts. This term was first used by literary scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, and the term has only come into broad use since the 1980s, especially as theory used in literary studies has increasingly been influenced by European philosophy and social theory.
This version of "critical" theory derives from the notion of literary criticism as establishing and enhancing the understanding and evaluation of literature in the search for truth
Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
. Some consider literary theory merely an aesthetic concern, as articulated, for example, in Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
's notion of a critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
as one who helps understand and interpret literary works: "A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation." This notion of criticism ultimately goes back to Aristotle's Poetics as a theory of literature.
In the 1940s and 1950s, New Criticism
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
had tried to analyze literary texts purely internally. Starting in the 1960s, literary scholars, reacting against this, began to use analytical tools from critical social theory - initially semiotic, linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, and interpretive theory, then structuralism
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
, Lacanian psychoanalysis, post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
, and deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
as well as Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics, and various other forms of neo-Marxian theory.
Thus literary criticism became highly theoretical and some of those practicing it began referring to the theoretical dimension of their work as "critical theory" - a philosophically inspired theory of literary criticism. And thus incidentally critical theory in the sociological sense also became, especially among literary scholars of left-wing sympathies, one of a number of influences upon and streams within critical theory in the literary sense.
With the expansion of the mass media and mass/popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s and the blending of social and cultural criticism and literary criticism, the methods of both kinds of critical theory sometimes intertwined in the analysis of phenomena of popular culture, as in the emerging field of cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
, in which concepts deriving from Marxian theory, post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
, semiology, psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
would be found in the same interpretive work. Both strands were often present in the various modalities of postmodern theory
Postmodern philosophy
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical direction which is critical of the foundational assumptions and structures of philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily influenced by phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism, including writings of Georg Wilhelm...
.
Language and construction
The two points at which there is the greatest overlap or mutual impingement of the two versions of critical theory are in their interrelated foci on language, symbolism, and communication and in their focus on social construction.Language and communication
From the 1960s and 1970s onward, language, symbolism, text, and meaning came to be seen as the theoretical foundation for the humanitiesHumanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
, through the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
, George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.-...
, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
, Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
and other thinkers in linguistic and analytic philosophy, structural linguistics
Structural Linguistics
Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. De Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a static system of interconnected units...
, symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism
Symbolic Interaction, also known as interactionism, is a sociological theory that places emphasis on micro-scale social interaction to provide subjective meaning in human behavior, the social process and pragmatism.-History:...
, hermeneutics, semiology, linguistically oriented psychoanalysis (Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, Alfred Lorenzer
Alfred Lorenzer
Alfred Lorenzer was a German therapist and sociologist regarded as a pioneer of interdisciplinary psychoanalysis. He integrated the psychological, the biological and the sociological dimension in the science of man, especially with regard to psychoanalytic theory.-External links:*...
), and deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
.
When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
redefined critical social theory as a theory of communication, i.e. communicative competence and communicative rationality on the one hand, distorted communication on the other, the two versions of critical theory began to overlap or intertwine to a much greater degree than before.
Construction
Both versions of critical theory have focused on the processes by which human communication, culture, and political consciousnessPolitical consciousness
Following the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx outlined the workings of a political consciousness.-The politics of consciousness:...
are created. This includes:
- Whether it is through universal pragmatic principles through which mutual understanding is achieved (HabermasHabermasPeople with the surname Habermas include:*German sociologist and philosopher, Jürgen Habermas*American philosophical theologian, Gary Habermas...
). - The semiotic rules by which objects obtain symbolic meanings (Barthes).
- The psychological processes by which the phenomena of everyday consciousness are generated (psychoanalytic thinkers).
- The epistemeEpistemeEpisteme, as distinguished from techne, is etymologically derived from the Greek word ἐπιστήμη for knowledge or science, which comes from the verb ἐπίσταμαι, "to know".- The Concept of an "Episteme" in Michel Foucault :...
that underlies our cognitive formations (FoucaultFoucaultFoucault can refer to:People:*Jean-Pierre Foucault , French television host*Léon Foucault , French physicist*Michel Foucault , French philosopher and historian...
),
There is a common interest in the processes (often of a linguistic or symbolic kind) that give rise to observable phenomena and here there is some mutual influence among the different versions of critical theory.
Ultimately this emphasis on production and construction goes back to the revolution wrought by Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
in philosophy, namely his focus in the Critique of Pure Reason
Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
on synthesis according to rules as the fundamental activity of the mind that creates the order of our experience.
Lists
- Information criticismInformation criticismInformation criticism is by Lash understood as a transformation of critical theory to contend that today there is no longer any transcendental, objective, or privileged position from which critique or socialanalysis can be undertaken...
- List of major critical theorists
- List of works in critical theory
Related subjects
- American Studies in BritainAmerican Studies in BritainAmerican Studies as an academic discipline is taught at some British universities and incorporated in several school subjects, such as history, politics and literature. While the United States of America is the focus of most study, American Studies can also include the study of all the Americas,...
- Black feminismBlack feminismBlack feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together. Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression. The Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would...
- Comparative LiteratureComparative literatureComparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
- Continental philosophyContinental philosophyContinental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
- Critical ethnographyCritical EthnographyCritical ethnography applies a critical theory based approach to ethnography. It focuses on the implicit values expressed within ethnographic studies and, therefore, on the unacknowledged biases that may result from such implicit values. It has been called critical theory in practice...
- Critical management studiesCritical management studiesCritical management studies is a loose but extensive grouping of politically left wing and theoretically informed critiques of management, business and organisation, grounded originally in a critical theory perspective...
- Critical pedagogyCritical pedagogyCritical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive...
- Critical philosophyCritical philosophyAttributed to Immanuel Kant, the critical philosophy movement sees the primary task of philosophy as criticism rather than justification of knowledge; criticism, for Kant, meant judging as to the possibilities of knowledge before advancing to knowledge itself...
- Critical legal studiesCritical legal studiesCritical legal studies is a movement in legal thought that applied methods similar to those of critical theory to law. The abbreviations "CLS" and "Crit" are sometimes used to refer to the movement and its adherents....
- Critical race theoryCritical race theoryCritical Race Theory is an academic discipline focused upon the intersection of race, law and power.Although no set of canonical doctrines or methodologies defines CRT, the movement is loosely unified by two common areas of inquiry...
- Critique of technologyCritique of technologyCritique of technology is an analysis of the negative impacts of technologies. It is argued that, in all advanced industrial societies , technology becomes a means of domination, control and exploitation, or more generally something which threatens the survival of humanity.Prominent authors...
- Cultural MarxismCultural MarxismCultural Marxism is a term referring to a group of Marxists who have sought to apply critical theory to matters of family composition, gender, race, and cultural identity within Western society.-Explanation of the "Cultural Marxism" theory:...
- Cultural studiesCultural studiesCultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
- Culture theoryCulture theoryCulture theory is the branch of anthropology and semiotics that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms....
- Feminist theoryFeminist theoryFeminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
- Foucault–Habermas debate
- Hermeneutics
- Literary theoryLiterary theoryLiterary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
- Perestroika Movement (political science)Perestroika Movement (political science)The Perestroika Movement in political science is a faction that works towards methodological pluralism and to heighten relevance of political science to people outside the discipline. The movement is against what it sees as dominance for quantitative and mathematical methodology in political science...
- Phronetic social sciencePhronetic social sciencePhronetic social science is an approach to the study of social – including political and economic – phenomena based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, variously translated as practical judgment, common sense, or prudence. Phronesis is the intellectual virtue...
- Political philosophyPolitical philosophyPolitical philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
- Rule according to higher lawRule according to higher lawThe rule according to a higher law means that no written law may be enforced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principles of fairness, morality, and justice...
- Social criticismSocial criticismThe term social criticism locates the reasons for malicious conditions of the society in flawed social structures. People adhering to a social critics aim at practical solutions by specific measures, often consensual reform but sometimes also by powerful revolution.- European roots :Religious...
- Tartu-Moscow Semiotics School
Journals related and/or dedicated to critical theory or critical sociology
- Critical Sociology
- Constellations
- RepresentationsRepresentationsRepresentations is an interdisciplinary journal in the humanities published quarterly by the University of California Press. The journals was established in 1983 and is the founding publication of the New Historicism movement of the 1980s. It covers topics including literary, historical, and...
- Critical InquiryCritical InquiryCritical Inquiry is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by the University of Chicago Press. It is considered a leading journal within literary studies, and particularly in the field of critical theory....
- TelosTELOS (journal)Telos is an academic journal published in the United States. It was founded in May 1968 to provide the New Left with a coherent theoretical perspective. It sought to expand the Husserlian diagnosis of "the crisis of European sciences" to prefigure a particular program of social reconstruction...
- Theory and Society
- Law & CritiqueLaw & CritiqueLaw and Critique is a triannual law journal closely involved with the critical legal studies community. It was established in 1990 and is associated with the Critical Legal Conference...
External links
- Critical Theory, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyStanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...
- "Death is Not the End" N+1N+1n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published three times each year, and content is published on several times each week...
magazine's short history of academic critical theory. - Critical Legal Thinking A Critical Legal StudiesCritical legal studiesCritical legal studies is a movement in legal thought that applied methods similar to those of critical theory to law. The abbreviations "CLS" and "Crit" are sometimes used to refer to the movement and its adherents....
website which uses critical theory in an analysis of law and politics. - L. Corchia, Jürgen Habermas. A Bibliography: works and studies (1952-2010), Pisa, Edizioni Il Campano – Arnus University Books, 2010, 344 pp.