CRITICAL THEORY - THE VERY IDEA

to social and historical formation and determination. Conversely, if funda- 1

1 mental categories of human existence are historically formed, then representa-
tional construals of social science, directing themselves solely at social facts,
structures and patterns, inevitably suppress the self-reflective dimension of
CRITICAL THEORY- THE VERY both its object and its activity. The idea of joining a historically informed
IDEA philosophy with a reflectively self-aware and self-implicating social science was
meant to engender a body of knowledge that was both critical and practical,
both about society and immanently action-guiding. _. J
Reflections on nihilism and domination All the leading critical theorists deny subject-object dualism as an onto-
logical premise for all theory, and search for an alternative to the traditional
representational conception of knowledge that follows upon it; all equally cast
The name 'critical theory' was not used to define the theoretical programme doubt on the rigid duality between philosophy (which, at least in modernity, is
promoted by the lnstitut fii.r Sozialjorschung (Institute for Social Research), a coded term for the knowing subject) and social science (representing the
originally set up in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1923, until 1937 in an article object known), and thus intrigue an account of their entwinement or mutual-
appearing in the Institute's journal, the Zeitschnft for Sozialforschung, by its ity or interdependency; in denying, at least, the hegemonic legitimacy of
second director, Max Horkheimer. In his article 'Traditional and critical traditional theory, all are concerned to demonstrate how theory can be critical
theory', Horkheimer attempts to elaborate how the interdisciplinary research and, more tenuously, emancipatory and practical. Underwriting and driving
programme of the Institute is to be distinguished from the 'traditional' these abstract characterizations of critical theory lies a shared concern for
paradigm of scientific knowing as a theoretical representation of a wholly social justice, and a belief that contemporary industrialized societies all suffer
l· independent object domain - the paradigm then dominant in both the from pervasive injustice. Characterizing the source(s) and mechanisms
sciences and philosophy. 1 According to traditional theory, scientific reproducing this injustice is more difficult: in the first instance, Horkheimer
knowledge involves the subsumption of given facts under a conceptually views this question in classically Marxist terms as a matter of domination and
formulated scheme; this scheme can either be a hypothesis that is exploitation; yet, even before the focus on class struggle began to wane,
experimentally tested against the facts or a correlation of the facts themselves. critical theory drew upon conceptions of modern societies that figured them as
t· Overturning this paradigm requires denying that theory, the conceptual alienating, rationalized and reified. If we regard these last items as inter-
scheme, and fact, the world of objects, are fundamentally distinct existences related, then we might say that critical theorists typically fuse a concern for
_ belonging to forever diverse universes of discourse: 'The facts which our justice with a concern for 'meaning', or, said otherwise, following on from an
senses present to us are preformed in two ways: through the historical understanding of the young Marx or the Marx of Capital conjoined with
character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the Nietzsche (mediated through Weber), they perceive a connection between the
r perceiving organ. ' 2 Horkheimer regards the socio-historical preformation of problem of domination and the problem of nihilism, where the terms
subject and object as the consequence of social labour: the synthesizing, 'domination' and 'nihilism' themselves recall the dual provenance of critical
cooperative activity of all labouring subjects. theory in social science and philosophy. These broad concerns and orienta-
Even this minimal statement of the purpose of Horkheimer' s article tions certainly do not define a critical theory of society, but then neither would
provides us with some hints as to the meaning of the term 'critical theory'. It is any alternative accounting, say one that highlighted the themes of materialism
not just more or better knowledge of the world that critical theory seeks, rather (construed either in Marxist terms, or as an antidote to philosophical idealism,
it portends a different form of knowing, a different sense of what human or as referring to the significance of suffering and happiness as ground issues,
knowing is and does. Hence, at its most fundamental level, critical theory or as designating. the priority of the object over the knowing subject, etc.) or
requires an engagement with central problems in epistemology and the philo- the attempt to integrate psychoanalysis into social theory .
sophy of science. However, its treatment of this question, displacing the Critical theory is not a theory of society or a wholly homogeneous school of
synthetic activities of the knower by social labour, immediately displaces the thinkers or a method. Critical theory, rather, is a tradition of social thought -,
purity of the philosophical issue and submits it to historical accounting and that, in part at least, takes its cue from its opposition to the wrongs and ills of
reflection. Hence, a critical theory of society is one in which philosophical modern societies on the one hand, and the forms of theorizing that simply go
reflection and social scientific knowing are joined. This assumes that the most along with or seek to legitimate those societies on the other hand. The opposi- .)
fundamental categories which shape human existence are themselves subject . tional movement of critical theory is refined as it engages with its philosophical
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 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY - T H E VERY IDEA

(Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche) and social scientific (Marx, Weber and Freud) CRITIQUE AND PRAXIS
sources, finding and transforming a tradition of thought for itself, and then, at
There is a familiar Marxist flavour to the argumentative strategy of
a later stage, self-consciously transformatively reworking its own history. 3
Horkheimer's 'Traditional and critical theory'.
Critical theory makes the reflective self-understanding of the theorist a central
moment in theory; considering critical theory a contested tradition of social But the critical theory of society is, in its totality, the unfolding of a
thought underwrites and furthers this continuously reflective dimension of its single existential j udgment. To put it in broad terms, the theory says
activity. Tradition, as here conceived, is inseparable from critical and self- that the basic form of the historically given commodity economy on
critical elaboration; in forwarding a tradition, its guiding ideas and concerns which modern history rests contains in itself the internal and external
are historically re-counted and theoretically analysed . Through the continuous tensions of the modern era; it generates these tensions over and over
interplay of historical and critical reflection a tradition is sustained. Through- again in an increasingly heightened form ; and after a period of progress,
out his career, Jiirgen Habermas has sought to develop his own brand of development of human powers, and emancipation for the individual,
critical theory in just this way, consistently engaging with the history of after an enormous extension of human control over nature, it finally
modern philosophy, modern social theory, and the first generation of critical hinders fu rther development and drives humanity into a new bar-
theory itsel£.4 My essays on Habermas proceed in this same fashion, guided by barism.5
the belief that his critical engagements with, above all, the philosophies of
At first glance, it is difficult to distinguish the theoretical assumptions at work
Hegel and the leading exponent of first-generation critical theory, T. W.
her e from the account of the 'fettering' of the forces of production by the
Adorno, however timely, however necessary if critical theory was to survive in
relations of production in the Preface to M arx's A Contribution to the Critique of
changed political and cultural situation, are not decisive. A return to those
Political Economy (1859). This line of thought, reading domination wholly in
sources seems to me to be now necessary and philosophically justifiable. But a
terms of class domination, which is itself construed in economic terms, gains
return to those sources cannot be done directly, without, that is, going
fu rther support when Horkheimer claims that 'the theoretician and his. specific
through their displacement by Habermas, and even more important, making
object are seen as forming a dynamic unity with the oppressed class', which
that return necessary through a reading of Habermas' s version of critical
entails that 'his presentation of societal contradictions is not merely an
theory. That latter ambition defines the explicit aim of this volume.
expression of the concrete historical situation but also a force within it to
In saying this, there is a large presupposition, namely, that the tradition of
stimulate change . . . ' 6 From these and like lines, we might conclude that
critical theory itself possesses a theoretical depth that makes its project
'critical theory' is but another term for Marxist materialism: 'critical' theory
deserving of continuing reconstruction, which is itself to claim that there is
is the 'critique' of political economy.
more in the project and tradition of critical theory than what can be extracted
Against Horkheimer' s scheme a range of questions arise to which it would
from the inevitably flawed character of any one of its explicit elaborations.
be all but impossible for it to provide answers. Why should we believe that all
Traditions, of course, are more than their component parts; but making a
forms of domination are grounded in economic and class domination? Even if
claim for a tradition of thought without supporting some explicit version of it
we concede that relief from economic domination provides a necessary
must seem a peculiar undertaking. Nonetheless, such a risky venture is worth
condition for the joint overcoming of bureaucratic, sexual, racial and religious
doing both for its own sake, as a form of self-clarification, and because it will
forms of domination, why should changes in the relations of production be
provide a 'frame' of sorts for or a theoretical horizon within which my
conceived as providing the sufficient conditions fo r overcoming these latter
dialogue with Habermas can be placed. Persisting with a discussion of
since they each contain a specificity that is definitionally extra-economic?
Horkheimer for a moment, I want to attemptformal!J to outline the require-
How, without returning to the suspect Lukacsian idea that identification with
ments that a critical theory of society should satisfy, hoping to indicate thereby
the cause of the proletariat provides the theoretician with an epistemologically
the scope of its project , and then link that formal set of criteria to the more
privileged position, are we to conceive of the 'dynamic unity' between
substantive entwinement of the problem of domination and the problem of
theoretician and the oppressed class? H ow is the specialist knowledge achieved
nihilism, hence demonstrating how critical theory's formal structure and sub-
by the theoretician to be transformed into action-guiding norms?
stantive aims mesh and support one another. Along the way, I attempt to
While H orkheimer's early writings contain no answers to questions like
clarify critically what has been a constant sore point for critical theory, namely
these, they nonetheless do contain internal tensions that reveal a more
its apparent failure adequately to link theory and practice, and I signal some of
complex theoretical vision. One set of tensions relates to the role assigned to
the dominant themes to be interrogated in the essays that follow.
philosophy within the programme. Consider, first, the following:

12 13
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY- THE VERY IDEA

The fruitfulness of knowledge indeed plays a role in its claim to truth, and cannot be. Making good in materialist terms this Kantian inversion of the I
but the fruitfulness in question is to be understood as intrinsic to the relation between theoretical and practical reason, which is to say, giving
science and not as usefulness for ulterior purposes. The test of the truth Kant's Copernican turn a materialist twist by replacing the transcendental
of a judgment is something different from the test of its importance for unity of apperception by collective social labour, hence forms an essential
human life.7 ingredient in the contrast between traditional and critical theory since unless
the Kantian inversion is accomplished theory remains caught in the toils of
Why, one might naturally ask, should a Marxist wish to distinguish truth from unreflective objectivism and metaphysical realism. J
'importance to human life' since it is, at least in part, traditional theory's Horkheimer' s distinguishing of traditional and critical theory is as much
conception of the indifference of truth to its 'importance to human life' that inspired by and beholden to Kant's 'critical' separation of understanding from
forms a central plank in critical theory's critique of it? In hearing what reason as it is by the 'critique' of political economy. Indeed, it is not a mistake
Horkheimer is saying here, one must hear in his criticism of pragmatism the to regard Horkheimer' s original idea as just the entwining of these two notions
Kantian, 'critical' distinction between Verstand (understanding) and Vernunft of 'critique'. Although construed from the Hegelian perspective in which
(reason). Kantian reason is falsely tied to the demands and subjective outlook of the
For Kant the understanding provides us with causal knowledge of the understanding, reason has an analogous role in Herbert Marcuse's comple-
world; this is the very same subsumptive knowledge that Horkheimer identi- mentary essay 'Philosophy and critical theory': 'Reason is the fundamental
fies as 'traditional'. The sort of knowledge delivered by the understanding is category of philosophical thought, the only one by means of which it has
instrumentally useful, providing the means for human control over nature bound itself to human destiny. ' 6 Of course, Horkheimer makes the Kantian ....,
that permits us to satisfy our wants and needs. Hence, it is the understanding transition from part to whole, conditioned to unconditioned and means to
that secures knowledge that possesses 'importance to human life'. Central to ends through immersion of science's instrumental knowing in the historically
the Kantian project is deciphering a form of reasoning different from this, a productive social labour of the species: society, figured as socially cooperative
form that concerns the whole of human life rather than contingent 'parts', and human labouring, is the transcendental subject and so the source of the powers
that informs us about ends as well as means, hence challenging the hegemony of reason. 9 This way of accomplishing the materialist appropriation of the _j
of the understanding's instrumental knowing which both classical empiricism Copernican turn, derived from the Marxist reading of Hegel, is clearly
and rationalism embraced as the whole of reason. Reason, as opposed to the inadequate since the cognitive dimension of social labour is not obviously or
understanding, is assigned both tasks: it is holistic, seeking the unconditioned, unproblematically formally different from causal reasoning. On the contrary,
and normative, specifying the ends of human action. one very natural way of reading the cognitive dimension of social labour is to
Kant hence inverts our usual comprehension of theoretical knowing: pure, see its primitive forms as directly adumbrating the abstractive achievements of
representational cognition, with its correspondence theory of truth, is in fact modern science. Hence, insofar as it is the paradigm of social labour that l
not 'pure' but subjective and instrumental, bound to the project of mastery forms the unity of Kantian understanding and reason for Horkheimer, then
over nature within and without; while only a reason relieved of the task of the movement from understanding to reason, from subjective to objective
control can attain to unconditioned or disinterested truth. Our natural reason, is reversed back into the understanding through the very gesture by
outlook, inherited from Descartes and Hobbes, is that the end-indifference of means of which the priority of reason was to be established. .j
scientific knowing mirrors nature's own indifference to human ends; hence The second tension in Horkheimer's early writings relates to the role of
human ends can only be of subjective significance, while causal knowing is culture . 10 In his .inaugural lecture, 'The state of contemporary social philo-
I objective. This judgment, Kant avers, suppresses the fact that causal
reasoning is still reasoning, hence reflective of the immersion of the human
sophy and the tasks of an institute for social research', Horkheimer begins
specifying how it is that multidisciplinary research can relate to the basic
subject in the natural world, and hence bound to a necessary, which is to say questions of social philosophy.
non-optional, anthropologically grounded interest in the natural world.
r Causal reasoning itself is blind to its own conditioning, and as a consequence It is not a fashionable question, but one which presents an actualized
all the more subjective, lacking as it does a reflective self-comprehension. To version of some of the most ancient and important philosophical
reflectively comprehend causal reasoning involves revealing its conditioning problems: the question of the connection between the economic life of
and specifying its role in relation to human reasoning as a whole. But these society, the psychological development of its individuals and the changes
reflective accomplishments are themselves unavailable to the understanding. within specific areas of culture to which belong not only the intellectual
Practical cognition is thereby objective in a way that scientific knowing is not legacy of the sciences, art and religion, but also law, customs, fashion,
14 15
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY- THE VERY IDEA

public opinion, sports, entertainments, lifestyles, and so on. The over by Horkheimer in favour of 'th e socializing function of formative institu-
intention to study these three processes presents merely an updated tions, the institutions of culture' . 13
version by way of contemporary methodologies and the present state of Horkheimer's attempts to forge an alternative to the instrumental reasoning
our knowledge, of the ancient question as to the relation of particular of the understanding and to fmd within culture a materialist locale for that
existence and universal reason, of the real and the ideal, of life and spirit reason remain fateful for the tradition of critical theory. While the former goal
- adapted to a new problematic. 11 binds critical theory into an ongoing debate with 'great philosophy', the latter
goal keeps that debate within the ambit of a materialist problematic that would
Horkheimer's scheme for research depends upon relating three distinct locate the potentialities for radical social transformation within the unfolding
domains of social life: the economic, the psychological, and culture. Even if we dynamic interactions of individuals in existing societies, thus making a (non-
accept the dubious separation of the economy from its legal social form functionalist) 'cultural Maxism' the true successor to both classical Marxism
(private 'ownership' over the means of production) on the grounds that we can and traditional sociology. The philosophical and sociological ambitions of
analytically distinguish power relations from their normative legitimation, critical theory are separately both demanding and compelling; add to those
Horkheimer urges the domain of culture as both functionally and normatively ambitions the requirement that they be harmonized, and the full extent and
significant: culture mediates between the economic structure of society and the scope of what is involved in a critical theory of society begin to come into
psyche of the individual who must reproduce it, and, moreover, takes up the VIeW.
burden of explicating the normative content of the philosophical ideas of My suggestion is hence that these three demands- for a non-instrumental .,
human fulfilment - competing conceptions of reason, meaning, the good for conception of cognition and reason, for a cultural Marxism, and for an
man, and the like - as practices that interpretively install the meaning of social internal connection between those two items - are individually necessary and
labour within a wider system of accounting for the individuals concerned. jointly sufficient for a critical theory of society. Of course, a theoretical .J
Because a functional conception of culture as securing adequate socialization tradition is as free to re-describe its goals as it is to propose different means of
of the psyche for the purposes of social reproduction - including the all- satisfying an agreed-upon end. The point of considering the thesis that a
important task of normalizing libidinal renunciation - could find a role for critical th eory of society would need to satisfy these three distinct demands is
itself even within a traditional theory of society, only the latter conception in to acknowledge the weight each demand might possess independently of the
which culture is understood as the social locus of non-functional ideas connects other two, a fact tacitly operative in the debates over and within critical
multidisciplinary research to the 'ancient' questions of social philosophy as to theory. For example, on my reading of Horkheimer's original idea, his theory -·
the relation between life and spirit. Conversely, without the relocation of of social labour might permit him to satisfy the second and third requirements
reason and spirit in culture, Horkheimer could not accomplish his materialist but not the first. It was only against the background of his failure to contrive a
critique of idealism. Horkheimer' s hopes for a critical theory thus involves the plausible non-instrumentalist conception of reason compatible with material-
simultaneous Marxist radicalization of social science and, through a double- ism that led us to query whether, in fact, he had satisfied the requirement of
accented conception of culture, making those same social sciences 'capable of propounding a materialist theory of culture. Looking at the matter this way
bearing the burden of the strong theoretical demands in which the intentions reveals that the debate over the role of culture is not strictly between an action-
of great philosophy were to live on' . 12 Clearly, without a non-functional theoretic concept of culture and a functionalist concept, since one might easily
conception of culture critical theory would collapse back into traditional construe the functionalist concept as requiring an action-theoretic moment
theory. without that addition entailing any new cognitive forms . Only the separate
Agaip, despite the indication of seeking in culture a new home for classically demand for cognition beyond instrumentality pushes critical theory toward a
conceived ideas of reason and the good, giving them a materialist twist and cultural materialism distinctly different from both the Lukacsian and neo-
making them accessible to 'scientific', i.e. critical, investigation, Horkheimer's functionalist variety.
unequivocal support for the paradigm of social labour together with the philo- More generally, it is easy to perceive that these are three distinct demands
sophy of history it enjoins undermines his critical gesture in the course of its since there are ways in which each of the first two requirements can be
performance. As Axe! Honneth has clearly demonstrated, the option of per- satisfied without th(' other being satisfied. So, for example, a general
ceiving in culture the ftlter through which collective norms of action are fixed hermeneutical theory of meaning could provide for a non-instrumental
'in the group specific interpretations of " law" and "morality" and that are account of cognition while denying a materialist theory of culture. And a
symbolically represented in the habitualized forms of "fashion" and "life- sophisticated form of neo-functionalism might reasonably consider itself as
style, '' ' which would give to culture an action-theoretic orientation, is passed providing a form of cultural materialism without that implying any form of
16 17
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY- THE VERY IDEA
I
cognition beyond the empirical and instrumental. It may be logically possible particular critical theory is free from defects or that some of those defects
for these three requirements to be met by a theory that is conservative rather pertain to the theory's relation to praxis.
than critical. Which is to concede that critical theory's substantive commit- Two objections are decisive against the requirement that a critical theory be -,
ment to social justice cannot be deduced from its formal structure. Nonethe- immanently praxial in a manner stronger than the one outlined. First,
less, critical theory's dual origin in philosophy and sociology is not further whether or not, at any given time, the contradictions, suppressions and forms
reducible; on the contrary, it is the combination of its theoretical complexity, of domination in a society entail macro~potentialities for collective action is
which views philosophy and social theory as dirempted halves of an integral itself a historically contingent matter. To be sure, the logic and language of .J
freedom and reason, in tandem with a commitment to social justice that Marx' s conception of burgeoning forces of production fettered by relations of
provides critical theory with its unique shape and trajectory. production, when construed as a general historical logic, entail that at some
At this juncture, one might complain against my proposal concerning what moment in the history of every society, when the existing forces of production
requirements a critical theory of society should satisfy that it illegitimately have been developed, such a moment for collective action will occur. Once this
abstracts from the political and praxial demands that ushered critical theory model of history is given up, as I have already suggested it should be since it
into existence in the first instance and remain the pretheoretical touchstone for implies both a reductionist conception of the unity of social formations and
· evaluating its adequacy. Lying behind this complaint is, I believe, a suspect thereby of the social causes of human misery, and hence the implausible belief
assumption, namely, that a critical theory of society must not only provide the that there is a unique historical solution to the problem of human misery, then
terms for a critique of modern societies, but that the satisfaction of those terms the grounds for thinking that there must be internal connections among
must yield knowledge which in principle could be action-guiding for the structural contradictions in the society as a whole, crisis tendencies affecting
suppressed and dominated groups within those societies. One simple reason its members' self-understanding as an expression of those structural contra-
why one might believe this to be a formal requirement for a critical theory of dictions, and macro-potentialities for collective action collapse as well.
society would be through consideration of its negation: would not a theory that Further, once a simplified logic of history is surrendered, then the very idea of
lacked an immanently praxial dimension necessarily be 'traditional' in the a 'macro-potentiality' for collective action must lapse as well. In classical
condemned sense? And hence is not the praxial dimension, the connecting of Marxism the macro-potentiality related to growing forces of production
theory and praxis, the primary requirement for a critical theory of society? subject to a reductive either/or: either privately owned and controlled or
And was it not this requirement that formed the ultimate motivation behind collectively owned or controlled, with the dysfunctionality of the former
t Horkheimer's contrast of traditional and critical theory? engendering the transition to the latter. Without the notion of class
- One might even make this objection stronger. 'Does not your formal functioning as a kind of hermeneutical key to both the definitive structure of
account of the requirements for a critical theory of society accurately demon- society and the practical collective identity of the groups within it, providing
strate that the reiterated failure by Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas to thereby the idea of a perfect mapping of economic structure onto social
provide it with a dynamic praxial dimension is not contingent but an identity, then the idea of a praxial repetition of an unfolding historical logic
inevitable and intrinsic feature of the programme? Insofar as the formal disappears, and with it the logical linking of theory and practice.
features and concerns of the project of critical theory are as you have outlined Second, and more important given the familiar slant of the first line of I
them, isn't it prohibited from attaining to the political significance it imagined objection, there is an equivocation in the very idea that theory must have a
r for itself? Isn't the very fact that you could propose a formal account that 'praxial dimension'. One way of taking that phrase is to read it as requiring
lacked an unequivocal praxial dimension a tacit concession of defeat on this that theoretical knowledge must be translatable, by means of a series of
issue?' My formal outline, it is contended, gives point to and supports the conceptually simple and necessary steps, into imperatives for action. What I
most persistent and damaging objection to the programme. have called the 'praxial repetition of an unfolding historical logic' conforms to
r Needless to say, I am unconvinced by this line of thought. My counter- such a pattern. The notion of 'repetition' , however, eliminates rather than ..J
. thesis is that in locating a form of reasoning that is not instrumental, and furthers praxis since within this outlook it is the philosophy of history at work
which, remember, includes a cognition of ends, and a materialist conception and not action itself that is central. Action here appears to be relegated to the
of culture which is compatible with such a practical reason, we exhaust the task of discovering sufficient means for bringing into being predetermined
demand that theory be practical, that there be a unity between theory and ends. This would make significant action and the form of reasoning appro-
practice; and further, any more demanding and stronger requirement for a priate to it instrumental in the very sense fostered by traditional theory. Nor is
praxial dimension to theory will necessarily collapse the resultant back into this surprising since it is unclear why we should not conceive of a richly articu-
\ traditional theory. In making this argument, I do not wish to claim that any lated philosophy of history as itself another version of traditional theory. In its J
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 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY - THE VERY IDEA

original incarnation, critical theory and the empirical research projects of the DOMINATION AND NIHILISM
Institute were in fact bound to an elaborated version of Marx's philosophy of One way of capturing how the dual origin of critical theory in philosophy and
history - witness Horkheimer's 'existential judgement' - with the question sociology makes distinct but interrelated demands upon its theorizing is to
facing it of understanding the societal mechanisms then blocking the transla- examine how it relates to the substantive equivalents of those sources, namely,
tion of social contradictions ·(the historical logic unfolding) into progressive the problems of nihilism (hereafter: reason) and domination. Adorno's 1963
political action (the praxial repetition of that logic). 14 Significantly, however, article 'Society' is revealing in this regard.
atry attempt to forge internal connections between social structures and social If any member of the Frankfurt School is routinely accused of surrendering
identities that can secure macro-potentialities for action will possess the same its Marxist heritage for the sake of a philosophical engagement with
logical form as the classical Marxist analysis. So the replacing of the modernity's suppression of a conception of reason other than the instru-
proletariat by another dispossessed group will still involve reducing the possi- mental, it is Adorno. 'Society' belies this accusation. In its broad import,
bilities for social meaning (as borne by social identities) to the projective 'Society' contests what might be thought to be the neutral presupposition of
demands of social structure. Insofar as the possibilities for social action are to social theory generally, namely, that it is the study of 'society'. According to
be read off the possibilities projected from social structure, then the ends of Adorno, there is no such neutrally defineable object domain; rather, society
action are bound by the combinatorial possibilities thrown up by structure. It needs to be understood in historical terms, terms which would contrast, for
is just this fact that reduces political action to instrumental action. Non- example, what ~t is to be a member of a society with what it might have meant
instrumental action must hence possess an irreducibly creative dimension. If to be a member of a clan, tribe, polis, or principality. For Adorno, the concept
this is correct, then the demand for a strong linkage between theory and of society necessarily involves a certain 'inhumanity' ; so, from the outset, he
practice necessarily undermines praxis and makes theory traditional, what- maintains that the 'specifically social' consists 'precisely in the imbalance of
l ever its ends, rather than critical. institutions over men, the latter coming little by little to be the incapacitated
One could, and in the course of the 1930s research in the Institute did, products of the former' . 15 Interestingly, this thought would bracket Honneth' s
question the empirical validity of Marx' s essentially contemplative philosophy contention that Horkheimer erroneously follows an institutional conceptual-
of history. In questioning the very idea of macro-potentialities for collective ization of culture rather than an action-theoretic orientation through its tacit
action and placing that philosophy of history on the side of traditional theory, implication that those two orientations are not theoretical options but end-
my point has been to question whether the notion of a praxial dimension to points along a spectrum along which we are travelling from the latter to the
theory, and hence whatever might be meant by the general desideratum of former . Indeed, characterizing and underlining this movement is the leitmotif
linking theory and practice, formally requires more than what is encapsulated of Adorno's article.
in the three requirements for a critical theory already noted. That nothing In elaborating the cause of this continuous rationalization process, Adorno
more is required, as I have suggested, entails that at least one very common unequivocally points to the 'universal development of the exchange system',
objection to the development of critical theory from the late 1930s on lapses, which, he contends, 'happens independently of the qualitative attitudes of
namely, that its pessimistic construction of the opportunities for significant producer and consumer, of the mode of production, even of need, which the
social change drew it back into the arms of traditional theory. Adorno, social mechanism tends to satisfy as a kind of by-product' . 16 Adorno's
Horkheimer and Marcuse may have been wrong in their diagnosis of postwar theoretical gesture here is meant to begin the substantiation of two theses.
societies, and no one would deny that Adorno's sociological outlook in particu- Firstly, the expansion of exchange relations has a source in the dynamic
lar lacked nuance and a sense for the cultural complexities ofliberal states, their structure of capital independently of the aims or intentions of those - which is
cultural potentialities, but those faults in and of themselves are not sufficient to e•!eryone- who live and die in accordance with its machinations. Secondly, as
alter the status of their theories. On the contrary, it is more plausible to regard a consequence, tendentially the notion of class domination, which presumed a
their theories as overburdened by a latent attachment to and nostalgia for the mesh between the structural (economic) and cultural (sociological) senses of
false Marxist notion of praxis despite the theoretical alterations which their class, is being displaced into 'institutional' domination, hence making the idea
differing conceptions of reason, each of which pursues the task of providing of class position increasingly less sociologically significant as a marker for the
microfountkztions for radical social action, make to the paradigm of social labour potentiality for political change - at least within particular nation states. Class
and the philosophy of history it enjoins. This general thesis could be strength- situation remains, only now 'transposed onto the relationship between
ened if one could discover a domain or problem of social meaning that could nations, between the technically developed and underdeveloped countries' Y
not be attached to social structure. In tracking the connection and difference Nothing in this brief sketch should lead us to think that Adorno is doing
between domination and nihilism we can uncover just such a domain.
20 21
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RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY -THE VERY IDEA

anything other than providing a conception of society from a Marxist point of and individuation, that they scarcely seem capable of the spontaneity
view. Nonetheless, the common notions of domination and exploitation are necessary to do so' . 18 Clearly, a range of Foucauldian emphases would have
not the ones most applicable to the phenomena Adorno analyses. According to been congenial to Adorno. His conception of the rationalization of culture, as
the standard argument, the transition from feudalism to capitalism involves distinct from societal rationalization, tracks a tendential loss of meaning, a
the replacement of direct forms of domination by the indirect form of class as becoming meaningless of traditional ideals, norms and values. Adorno is not
defined by ownership or non-ownership over the means of production. saying that as individuals we lack awareness of traditional values and ideals;
Questions of who has power over whom hence become fully answerable only rather, as the previous quote testifies, he considers meaninglessness to be
when we turn away from the individual case as mediated through social role announced in individuals' relation to norms and values: they lose their
and analyse the logic of class relations and its consequences for class member- binding character and thereby, or equivalently, their power to motivate.
ship. While Adorno does not deny that domination and exploitation occur in Yet Adorno recognizes, in a manner in which Foucault arguably did not,
this way, he believes that class domination itself is mediated through and that the very nature of this changed state of affairs makes a non-ironic or non-
dynamically sustained by the 'domination' of exchange value over use-value. hyperbolic statement of it impossible since insofar as the experience it refers to
But this is not domination in any direct morally or politically significant sense; can be critically described, it is neither complete nor definitive. Acknowledg-
rather it is a mechanism whereby any item's ultimate sense, meaning or value ing this point does not remove but rather intensifies the point of Adorno's
is gauged against a common standard which is qualitatively distinct from those rhetoric. First, and most obviously, because as human beings, and this side of
of the item itself. With the expansion of the dominion of exchange value into despair, we naturally invest our lives and environment with sense and
all domains of society (the culture industry. is Adorno's favourite example), meaning, considering the 'situations' in which we act as constituted at least in
not only do things become increasingly there for the sake of capital accumula- part by our perspective on them; hence, we must consider our sayings and
tion, and so increasingly fungible, but social practices themselves become doings as our 'own' , as things said and done by us because we believe what we
. increasingly subject to compliance with the demands of this process. By this say to be true and our actions a product of desire and belief. To think other-
route, the mechanism that sustained class domination, which, however wise would involve collapsing the distinction between saying and repeating,
mediated, was still the domination of some individuals by others, little by little speaking for oneself and being spoken for, acting freely and being coerced. T o
becomes the domination of society over individuals. have a conception of oneself is to be able to distinguish oneself from society, to
This tendential alteration in the form of capital domination generates a consider oneself a locus of speech and action rather than a mere conduit
bifurcation in the 'wrong' of capital. On the one hand, there remain straight- through which societal demands are channelled. As a consequence, we
forward questions of social justice, questions of exploitation, of freedom and naturally perceive meaninglessness and constraint as 'out there' , as external
unfreedom, and of poverty and wealth. Yet as the patterns of ownership and and at a distance. Hyperbole and irony permit us to see our lives ' from the
power shift, ownership becoming more spread and the role of the state and outside', from the very distance subjective life necessarily refuses. Because the
bureaucracy more central to maintaining the market system, class structures contestation of perspective between agent and spectator, inside and outside, is
become increasingly variegated and complex, and less directly a clue to power not further unifiable, one can only refer to the outside perspective ironically
relations and life possibilities; further, with the connection between the struc- since the very act of announcing it suppresses the subjective conditions of
tural and cultural notions of class become increasingly irrelevant, class struggle announcement. Second, then, Adorno means to contrast the illusion of sub-
becomes less and less plausible as the form in which contestation over power jective freedom and m eaning with objective unfreedom and meaninglessness
can take place, while power itself becomes more anonymous and pervasive as just as Marx had contrasted the illusions of the sphere of circulation as the
abstract, procedural demands come to be constitutive of the micro-practices of 'very Eden of the innate rights of man', the 'exclusive realm of Freedom,
everyday life. So, on the other hand, a new set of deformations of individual Equality, Property and Bentham' with the reality of class structures and
and united life come on the scene: the dissolution of the living bonds of sense domination. Ironic statement, then, rehearses a logic of illusion. Third, while
and meaning between the individual and his or her culture, the disappearance not denying what freedom and meaning remain, Adorno wants to contend, as
of the autonomous personality and so the possibility of freedom irrespective of a component of a logic of illusion, that because these items are embedded in
the opportunity of exercising such freedom, the disintegration of notions of processes indifferent to them, then they must substantively partake of their
worth, value and meaning not sanctioned by the demands and needs of the opposite, making them real and illusory at the same time. Irony hence
market. Adorno ruefully comments that now although ' men must act in order involves the holding together of these opposites. Finally, all this together is
to change the present petrified conditions of existence . . . the latter have left meant to disabuse us of the idea that historical change can intelligibly occur
their mark so deeply on people, have deprived them of so much of their life through the direct and political acquisition of centres of power, since while

22 23
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RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL T HEORY- THE VERY IDEA

there remain power and domination, power has no straightforwardly identi- what the fulfilment of those ideals would look like or mean. For them the
fiable locus. Nor can there be a simple matching of collectivities to macro- fulfilling of the promises of modernity is possible only through their processual
potentialities since, again, there are no unequivocal potentialites for either transfiguration; fulfilment and transfiguration operating as complementary I
justice or meaning stored-up but actual in our world. According to Adorno, features of human activity rather than belonging to opposing historical logics. 20 i
the very ideas of justice, of freedom and equality, only appear emphatically Given what has preceded it, this last suggestion is bound to appear some-
through their absence. Ironic reflection seeks to attain to a perspective we what opaque. Mter all, it is not obvious that the impersonal and anonymous
cannot have while refusing the seducements of a perspective we cannot avoid. forms of domination that go under the heading of cultural rationalization, the
'The dialectical critic of culture', Adorno avers, ' must both participate in 'domination' of institutions over people, bring in their train new logical and
culture and not participate. Only then does he do justice to his object and to epistemological issues. On the contrary, when Lukacs firs t introduced the
himself.' 19 problems of cultural rationalization under the heading of societal 'reification',
Cultural rationalization tokens a crisis of reason and meaning in that as he apparently believed that de-reifying activity would be at one with the
traditional norms and values lose their cultural place, they simultaneously lose collective capture of control over the forces of production, that the overcoming
' their critical force. From the agent's perspective, however, this process always of societal domination (the problem of justice) and the overcoming of cultural
appears as something occurring elsewhere and to others; to conceive of it as domination (the problem of meaning) would occur through the same political
happening to oneself would be to devalue the worth of one's own life, the value gesture, a gesture fully bound to the conception of praxis that has been the
of one's own actions, the significance of one's own pursuits. This we cannot do focus of concern here. 21 While my description of the differentiated character of
without losing a sense of ourselves as agents and as meaningful presences in these two forms of domination makes Lucacs's optimism suspect, it does not
the world. Hence, again, short of despair, nothing could count for me as show it to be false.
evidence that my life has become meaningless. Adorno's intransigent It is precisely the questions of cultural rationalization, praxis and cognitionj
negativity, like that of other first-generation theorists, in the first instance that force critical theory away from social theory and into philosophy. In this
should be gauged against this resistance to their conception of the collapse of respect, the famous opening sentence of Adorno's Negative Dialectics is mis-
an objective culture. leading if read in isolation: 'Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on
Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse all share a picture of the world having because the moment to realize it was missed' (ND, 3). If the last phrase of this
negative shape. However, ifl am right, we should not read them (the very late sentence is understood as affirming a model of historical change through the
writings of Horkheimer are, perhaps, an exception) as meaning to contrast a fulfilling of macro-potentialities, then the sentence as a whole would entail that
fallen present with a utopian future forever beyond intelligible reach or the 'living on' of philosophy involves only the search for a new philosophy of
description, and as hence departing utterly from a materialist conception of history that would, at the appropriate moment, become historically fulfillable
history. Rather, what their analyses all call into question is a unilinear, in the same manner that Marxist theory had originally assumed. The
developmental conception of history in which the future would emerge directly Lukacsian formation of theory would remain, only now with a new content. In

lj
out of a pregnant, conflicted actuality with people acting only as midwives in fact, the point of Adorno's text is to deny just this. Rather, philosophy's
the creation of their own future selves. Which is to say, the relentless 'living on' is meant to invoke the necessity of a comprehensive reconsideration
negativity of much critical theory is best conceived as opposed to the philo- of the ontological and epistemological presuppositions determining Marxism
sophy of history of classical Marxism, and thereby the conceptions of reason, and critical theory.
meaning, knowing and action which are presupposed by that philosophy of The premise underlying this necessity is that capital expansion can only be
history. These thinkers nonetheless remain materialists insofar as they view understood from the perspective of the expansion of the domination of
history and historical practices as the sole locus for human meaning, and the exchange value over use-value, hence as a process of societal and cultural
expansion of capitalism as the driving force of modern societies. It is some- rationalization, and that the process of rationalization is not itself derivable
times claimed that what separates materialism from idealism is the former's from the dialectic between the forces and relations of production or the class
conviction that historical change results from the fulfilment of potentialities theory of society that attends that dialectic. Lukacs had perfectly understood
latent in the present rather than from the pursuit of abstract ideals. This, I that the development of capital depended upon cultural rationalization, and
have suggested, operates with a reductiv~ conception of reason and action, hence that a Weberian analysis of th'e disenchantment of society and culture
denying any role to human creativity, and thereby tacitly making all knowing was a necessary ingredient in an adequate social theory. However, for him
and reason instrum-e ntal. Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse never deny the rationalization was a mechanism through which class domination was secured,
force of the ideals of the Enlightenment; what they deny is that we know now thus subtending rationalization processes under the aegis of the older dialectic.
24 25
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY - THE VERY IDEA
That is why Lukcics could remain loyal to the model of class praxis despite his than the understanding, an end is properly relative or intrinsic, either good as
significant alterations to the theory underlying it. Further, from this angle it a means to some further end or good in itself. It is sometimes believed that
now appears evident that both Horkheimer's and Marcuse's classic statements intrinsic goods are necessary objects of volition, but this is mistaken. An end
of the project for a critical theory of society are equivocal because they contain can be good in itself, say playing the violin well, without it being obligatory for
a systematic ambiguity between conceiving of rationalization as a function of any individual or group of individuals to pursue it. Hobbes and Kant have
class relations and conceiving of class domination as a component of societal created massive confusion by conflating causal and moral discourse; for them,
rationalization. Without departing from a concern for class and the questions ends that are universally good as means - order or minimal cooperative
of social justice it entails, critical theory has developed fundamentally through arrangements - become thereby obligatory ends of action. But there are no
its diagnosis of the meaning and consequences of rationalization. obligatory ends, only actions are obligatory, and they are so or not only in
From a philosophical rather than sociological perspective, rationalization context. 22
processes possess three logically discriminable features that captured the Instrumental rationality is in fact cognitively and rationally opaque because
attention of the critical theorists: proceduralism (formalism or methodologism it limits reasoning to items that are good only as means, including the
as applied to social actions), substitutability, and end-indifference. A move 'universal' means of profit, power and order, thereby throwing into perpetual
from, say, judgment or decision to a (formal) procedure can be regarded as an darkness the goodness or not of the actual ends of human action. Without a
advance in rationality because it works against arbitrariness, enjoining like cognition of ends, judging the non-causal goodness of means is rendered
results from like cases, and thereby unburdening social interactions from impossible; since we cannot otherwise judge means except through their
demands, subjective or social, extraneous to the endeavour in question. internally constituted terms of reference, then the order of means becomes
Successful procedures effectively 'liken' the objects and persons falling within cognitively unbounded. The reflective unbinding of instrumental rationality
their scope by taking into consideration only those features which permit such represents the destructive force of Enlightenment thought, while societal and
objects and persons to be candidates for their operation in the first instance. cultural rationalization turns this same unbounded instrumentality into a
Proceduralism hence makes the rational principle of treating like cases alike historical actuality. Because instrumental reasoning is, at bottom, causal
causally efficacious by taking unlike cases as alike, thereby, over time, making reasoning, with only causally bound criteria acceptable for determining what
the unlike alike . Insofar as anything is only an individual or qualitatively is rational, then any distinction between rational meaning and causal ordering
1
unique it is a mere contingency, and hence from the perspective of rationality collapses, with non-causal meaning sunk in the mire of preference and taste.
arbitrary. Proceduralism is generative of substitutability, with non- This logical fate of meaning is materially realized in the 'domination' of
substitutability appearing as recalcitrance to the demands of reason. Finally, a society over people. It is this dual - logical and historical - fate that is diag-
procedure bound to one unique end would fall below the level of procedural nosed and challenged, however differently, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Critique
rationality itself by partaking in the contingency and arbitrariness of the end it of Instrumental Reason, Negative Dialectics, One-Dimensional Man, Eros and Civiliza-
\ served. Procedures proper are thus end-indifferent. tion, Knowledge and Human Interests, and The Theory of Communicative Action.
Collectively, proceduralism, substitutability and end-indifference form the ' The logical and material advance of instrumental reason is nihilism, the
logical infrastructure of the instrumental rationality constitutive of and for path of the continuous devaluation of the highest values. Processual devalua-
·traditional theory. Yet, the actual opacity of instrumental reason is hidden by tion as analysed by the critical theorists is not austerely Nietzschean since for
the presumptive 'ends' it secures, namely, the unholy trinity of profit, power them it is not the highest values that devalue themselves; rather, they perceive
and order, or, as the last is now denominated for liberal purposes, coopera- a part of reason or meaning (instrumental rationality) as devaluing, by
tion. Since power and order (or cooperation) are necessary ends for any social becoming logically and actually hegemonic, some other portion of reason or
formation, and profit becomes a necessary end under market-dominated meaning. Adorno contrasts an identitarian logic with a logic of nonidentity;
forms of production, then the end-indifference of instrumental rationality is Marcuse seeks to recharge the utopian dimension of reason, re-fusing eros and
refuted. The good of instrumental rationality is at one with the goodness of a logos, through the redemptive function of memory; while Habermas seeks to
social order organized on universalistic, non-hierarchical principles. This is install the centrality of a communicative reason against the ravages of the
the core of the ongoing appeal of traditional theory. It rests on a hermit-like subject-centred monologicality of instrumental rationality. Each of these
modal conflation: to say an end is 'necessary' is to subsume it under a causal proposals accurately targets an aspect of instrumentality, diagnoses its
discourse which is itself indifferent to the language of ends. To claim an end is hegemony in terms of that aspect, and offers the obverse of the aspect in
· necessary is shorthand for 'necessary for such-and-such purposes', and hence question as the key to its overcoming. Adorno targets the subsumptive charac-
:· not necessary as an end but only as a means. In the language of reason, rather ter of instrumentality and its indifference to individuality (unlikeness) as the
26 27
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY- THE VERY IDEA

key; Marcuse focuses on the neutrality (end-indifference) of instrumentality, tradition of critical theory to be multifaceted: critical theory is necessarily in
and thus its detachment from the order of desire; while Habermas perceives in debate with empirical sociology over the analysis of modern societies, with
the causal character of instrumental reasoning the reduction of cognition to a contemporary moral theory over the analysis of normative claims, and with
subject-object structure. Finally, then, each of these analyses entails a modi- contemporary continental philosophy over the issue of meaning. Yet if Marx
. fied conception of the rationalization process: the impositional homogeneity of and Weber are only approximately correct in their accounts of modernity,
an administered society, the ahistorical continuum of a de-eroticized society, then modern social theory and contemporary philosophy cannot attempt less
and the colonization of the lifeworld. than what constitutes the basic outlines of the tradition and project of critical
Without entering into the evaluation of these proposals, what nonetheless theory. The measure of Habermas's achievement is that he has fully taken on
marks them out as belonging to a unified tradition is their perception of how this complex and multifaceted project without losing sight of the demands it
nihilism and domination are entwined, and how the resolution of the problem imposes.
~f nihilism cannot be detached from the resolution of the problems of social From our present vantage point, it is not difficult to identify the nature of
justice. This, we might say, is the source of critical theory's philosophical bias, the debate between first- and second-generation critical theory. Funda-
its apparent return to traditional theory. Yet, if my reconstruction to here is mentally, they differ with the respect to the weight and focus they offer to the
even only approximately correct, the move back into philosophy has its justice and meaning questions: Habermas believes that Adorno slights the
proximate cause in each case in a W eberian reinscription of the Marxist question of justice in his engagement with the nihilism question, hence giving
analysis of capitalism. That Weberian inscription, however, is precisely what undue significance to the role of art in his theory and, by implication,
provides critical theory with its dual perspective: from traditional Marxism espousing a position which could only be satisfied through a utopian re-
critical theory inherits its concern for the problem of justice, while from enchantment of the social and natural worlds. From an Adornoesque
Weber's appropriation of Nietzsche critical theory inherits its concern for the perspective, Habermas's focus on the justice problem entails surrender over
problem of nihilism and the question of meaning. Further, all the critical the question of nihilism, falsely assuming that total disenchantment would not
1 theorists explain the dual dilemmas of modernity, injustice and nihilism as be extentionally equivalent to total reification.
· having a common root, directly or indirectly, in the abstractive achievements Habermas's complaint about his predecessors was their inability to provide
! of instrumental reason. adequate foundations for critique; implied in this criticism is a concern for
Traditional Marxism tends to focus on the question of injustice (with rationality as defined by the problem of relativism. His theory of communi-
alienation, reification and fetishism as symptoms or consequences of capital's cative reason hence emerges, primarily, as an answer to the problem of
system of domination and exploitation), making its trajectory at one with the justice. Habermas, then, uses his normative theory of communicative reason
most advanced moments of liberal political theory. Conversely, the tradition to generate a sociological analysis and explanation of the problem of meaning in
of existentialism and phenomenology, with Nietzsche and H eidegger as flag- which functionally oriented subsystems of society invade and take over the
bearers, directs itself toward the problem of nihilism. Just as traditional heretofore communicatively governed interactions of the lifeworld:
Marxism and contemporary political liberalism remain insensitive to the
problem of meaning, so the tradition of existentialism remains indifferent to
the question of justice. Adorno's original insight, which I want to claim as '*- Everyday consciousness sees itself thrown back on traditions whose
claims to validity have already been suspended; where it does escape the
fateful for the tradition of critical theory, was the identification of the common spell of traditionalism, it is hopelessly splintered. In place of 'false
root of the dilemmas of modernity, and hence the demand for a theory that consciousness' we today have 'fragmented consciousness' that blocks
would address each dilemma without losing sight of the other. If we now enlightenment by the mechanism of reification. It is only with this that
reflect back on what I contended were the formal criteria for an adequate the conditions for a colonization of the lifeworld are met. When stripped of
critical theory of society - a non-instrumentalist conception of reason and their ideological veils, the imperative of autonomous subsystems [e.g. the
cognition, a non-functionalist conception of culture, and the harmonization of economy and political administration as abstract systems dependent on
both of these - it becomes evident that the first criterion initially addresses the monetary and power relations respectively] make their way into the life-
justice problem and the second the nihilism problem; but the harmonization world from the outside - like colonial masters coming into a tribal society
requirement constrains the satisfaction of the first criterion such that it - and force a process of assimilation upon it. The diffused perspectives of
becomes answerable to the demands of the second. In this way, the substantive the local culture cannot be sufficiently coordinated to permit the play of
issues driving critical theory are at one with its formal ambitions. the metropolis and the world market to be grasped from the periphery.
Adorno's original insight, as I have called it, is what presses the project and (TCA, II, 355)
28 29
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY- THE VERY IDEA

Habermas images lifeworld practices, in very broad terms, along the same sort the lifeworld is invaded by particular subsystems of society that have them-
~ of lines that Wittgenstein offers to linguistic meaning in terms of public selves become rationalized in accordance with the generalized ' media' of
practices, language games and a shared form of life in his late writings, or as exchange (money and power) that the loss of meaning and related pathologies
analogous to Heideggerian being-in-the-world as thrown projection, or, (withdrawal of legitimation, anomie, alienation, demotivation, and so on)
finally, as akin to what Hegel thought under the rubric of Sittlichkeit. The occur. 24
horizon of the lifeworld is 'formed from more or less diffuse, always unprob- Now it may appear perverse to claim that Habermas's diagnosis of nihilism
lematic, background convictions. This lifeworld background serves as a source is purely sociological rather than philosophical since his notion of communica-
of situation definitions that are presupposed by participants as unproblematic' tive rationality is explicitly set against the claims of instrumental rationality
(TCA, I, 70). In ordinary actions, under conditions of modernity, Habermas and its invasion, colonization, of lifeworld practices heretofore constituted
thinks three formal dimensions or 'structural components' of the lifeworld are through communicative action and understanding. H ence, communicative
interwoven: action picks up the requirement for an alternative mode of reasoning and
cognition, and its relation to lifeworld practices permits a non-functionalist
Action ... presents itself as a circular process in which the actor is at the
account of the lifeworld and culture. Yet this simplifies what is at issue. Notice
same time both the initiator of his accountable actions [ = the structure of
in the quoted passage that Habermas speaks of the 'spell of traditionalism',
personality] and the product of traditions in which he stands, of solidary
and of how traditional values' claim to validity has already been suspended.
groups to which he belongs [ = the cultural level coextensive with
Tradition, for Habermas, is still the enchantment of societal practices; only
tradition], of socialization and learning processes to which he is exposed
norms vindicated through communicative interactions procedurally governed
[ =the order of society].
are not for him heteronomous. If we thus ask, 'Who (what) has suspended
(TCA, II, 135)
tradition's claims to validity?', at least part of the answer will have to be:
In part, the rationalization of the lifeworld is equivalent to just this fracturing communicative reason.
of the lifeworld into the three dimensions of personality (picking up For Habermas, communicative reason is itself formal and Q!._O~durali for
modernity's conception of individuals as autonomous, accountable and self- hit:n_on_!x COIP.l!l.ll.Oica!!Y~.~~~o~ ~~~-~ --~~.PE9~edu!.~·£O!J.~tr~-~~t!.,O_!l_~ommuni­
determining beings), culture and society. Society is figured here in terms of cative in.teractio~-ill:l~CL~Mg\lms:.nt.~t.lqn,.,_ sll.rv!y~ .IE.oQdernity' s .~!~:~~hantment
the abstraction of social norms and the procedural institutionalization of what of the social ~£!.1d. If understood aright, Habermas believes, cultural rational-
were the interpretive accomplishments of individuals, e.g. the developmental ization is progressive in revealing the rational core of Enlightenment progress:
elaboration of legal systems and the juridification of ever more domains of we are autonomous and self-legislating beings who are dependent on nothing
experience, and the growth in the administrative handling of recurrent aspects else but the rationality constitutive of communj£~i_y0nt~~tio.!!J.t.~~lfi_J!S
of social reproduction (like welfare systems). Along with this process of ratjonal speake~~~g~g~9.J!!... C,9.!lll_ll!:IE~~ye_ .interactions we think for
differentiation there occurs a growing reflexivity about the contents of the our_!lelve~rath~!:._ than permi~ng priests, monarchs_and, where inappropriate,
cultural tradition - items losing their taken-for-granted character - and the fu!1_0j~~g~bsystems of society to do our thinking for us. The modern claim
consequent emergence of 'expert cultures' (science, law, technology, art to the autonomy of reason is thus satishea in the constraints governing
criticism, etc.) cut off from everyday life. Growing reflexivity in its turn pre- communicative interaction. As a consequence, Habermas considers the
supposes a systematic disentangling of the forms of social and cultural life from decontextualization of beliefs and the demotivation that occurs when norms
particular contents, for only under this presupposition can individual are no longer empirically derived, no longer traditionally enchanted, as part of
autonomy be respected on the one hand, and self-conscious innovation be the price to be paid for the undoubted cognitive achievements of modernity.
given space within which to operate on the other. What makes Habermas's account compelling is that it both appears to be
1 In itself, Habermas conceives of the rationalization of the lifeworld as descriptively accurate and plausibly accounts for the new space given over to
1progressive: ' What is central to this notion is not, as for Weber, the expansion of individual autonomy without relinquishing the fundamentally social
formal or instrumental reason to more and more dimensions of social life, but constitution of rationality. Some version of the distinctions among personal-
an opening up of the processes of symbolic reproduction to consensual agree- ity, culture and society is necessary for us. Habermas appears to suppose that
ment among autonomous individuals in light of criticizable validity claims. ' 23 this decentring of society itself is logically incompatible with concepts of
Nihilistic disintegration of meaning for Habermas is a process that occurs on rationality that remain enmeshed 'with the substantive contents of a particular
top of or as a deformation of the rationalization of the lifeworld. As the above form of life, with a particular vision of the good life' (R, 219). So:
quoted passage testifies, it is only when the communicative infrastructure of
~0 31
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE CRITICAL THEORY- THE VERY IDEA

As a mechanism of socialization, the first act of reaching understanding Uneasiness about Habermas's general schema need not translate into a
itself set a dialectic of universalization, particularization and individual- denial of the phenomena he wishes rightly to support: reflexivity, autonomy
ization into motion, a dialectic which leaves on(y the differentiated and decentration. Rationalization of the lifeworld, of Sittlichkeit, might then be
particular in the position of an individual totality [a closed form of life]. conceived of as indeed implying growing possibilities for communicative
General structures of the lifeworld [society], collective forms of life action; however, communicative rationality, as realized in processes of
[culture], and individual life histories [personality] arise within the rational argumentation, need not be theorized as a newly discovered, if
structures of the diffracted intersubjectivity of possible understanding already implicitly present, formal property of communicative actions, but
and are at the same time differentiated. The ego is formed equi- coitld equally well be analysed substantively as, for example, a value orienta-
primoridally as a subject in general, as a typical member of a social tion tied to the development of particular institutional practices (science,
collective, and as a unique individual. The universal, particular and education, democratic decision-making) which, as a consequence, would
individual constitute themselves radially, as it were - and no longer as require interpretive study in order to be appreciated. For example, one way of
moments bound within a totality. reading Thomas Kuhn's critique of Karl Popper's methodology of conjecture
(R, 219-20) and refutation, Popper's particular employment of the criterion of falsifica-
tion, is to have Kuhn saying that being dogmatic, not accepting defeat because
Let us ignore the metaphysical hyperbole invoked in the claim that the 'first of experimental failures or logical inconsistencies in a theory, can be rationally
act of reaching understanding' sets in motion the dialectic of differentiation necessary if theories are to be given the opportunity to develop. 25 What would
and, by extension, communicative rationality, as if Adam agreeing to eat the count as a rational action would then have less to do with 'the force of better
apple already contained universal history within it. Is Habermas correct in his argument', which is what Habermas's constraint on communicative inter-
contention that decentration and ethical substantiality are logically incom- action is meant to allow to emerge, and more to. do with the very precise
patible, that once decentration is acknowledged then nothing like, say, a neo- features of a practice itself. Dogmatism, the employment of rhetoric, tight
Aristotelian conception of sociality is possible? strictures on the sorts of question that can legitimately be raised, refusal to
Even an apparently anti-modernist like Heidegger has space in his theory for move to higher levels of argumentation, and all the other phenomena that
the sorts of distinctions Habermas wants to draw: we are products as thrown Habermas tends to lump together under 'strategic' uses of language, may in
from the past into a world of practices not of our own making and essentially particular contexts be part of the rationality of a practice without which it could
shared with others (culture); insofar as we merely accommodate our perform- not successfully function.
ances to those around us, tradition becomes sedimented into a series of anony- With these acknowledgements and swerves around H abermas's theory, we
mous societal repetitions (the they-self as a prefiguring of society); while in ack- can legitimately return to Weber's worries about cultural rationalization.
nowledging the groundless ground of existence in facing death as the horizon of After all, what H abermas ranges against the proceduralism of instrumental
our actions, we become authentic initiators of action. Or, somewhat differently, reason and the purposive-rational frameworks of the functional subsystems of
one could think of these three elements as equivalents of what Hegel analyses in society is another form of procedural rationality. Habermas's romantic critics,
terms of abstract right, the state (or ethical life generally), and the system of following Adorno, believe that formalism and proceduralism are themselves
needs respectively. Both such accounts tell against Habermas. Consider the primary criteria that make a form of reasoning instrumental, and hence
Hegel's version; for him the overarching whole which would span the believe communicative reason is a component of the very disintegrative
decentred and differentiated complex would not be communicative rationality process it means to remedy. Hence they take Habermas's acceptance of the
as a moment standing apart from social life but regulative of it, but the modern demotivating consequences of cultural rationalization as a sign that his theory
democratic state as itself a form of ethical life, the most complete embodiment capitulates to the nihilistic, meaning-destroying processes of modernity.
of the tradition of modernity, which was presupposed by our conception of This is a large and wholly philosophical claim incapable of being prosecuted
individual autonomy (and the social spaces given over to it) and the market directly. It can only be vindicated by a careful tracking of Habermas' s thought
system as an abstract form of mutual interdependence. To be sure, Hegel also through a range of topics. Two factors make this tracking difficult. Firstly,
believes that our appreciation of the worth and rationality of the ethical life of Habermas conceives the advance communicative rationality makes over
modernity is not directly figured in participation in the state; modern reflexiv- Kantian moral reason as its salvaging of Hegel's intersubjective turn,
ity requires that such participation be reflectively comprehended. But the act of entailing thereby that his proceduralism is already bound to social practice in a
comprehension, the work of philosophy and the other forms of absolute spirit, way that Kant's moral theory is not. What does or does not count as a fully
cannot be conceptually detached from the life of objective spirit. intersubjective conception of self and reason thus becomes a recurrent
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 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE

question, with Habermas insisting that all that could be wanted from sociality
without the enchanting dogmatism of tradition is provided by the linguistic 2
turn into communicative interaction and rationality. Secondly, Habermas is
forever awake to the type of Adornoesque and Hegelian criticisms that will be
made in what follows ; as a consequence, he has consistently attempted to LIBERTY AND THE IDEAL SPEECH
accommodate his reconstruction (from the intuitive knowledge of speakers) of
communicative reason to the demands that flow from his romantic critics SITUATION
without surrendering what he regards as the core of his theory. It can thus
appear as if only a hair' s breadth separates Habermas from his critics. Such
appearances need to be undermined if the real differences are to become
manifest .
No single argument, like the one just given concerning scientific rationality,
can refute Habermas' s theory of communicative reason; only the acceptability For Marxists the problem of liberty is centred upon those impersonal forms of
of his theory as it ramifies into particular topics and engages with particular coercion and constraint which restrict agents' opportunities to act upon given
challenges permits critical evaluation. Because with respect to each sub-topic desires or choices among possible alternatives, as well as their capacity to
(self-knowledge, ethical identity, judgment, etc.) , Habermas is offering a conceive of and explore possibilities which, but for those impersonal forces,
communication's theoretic analysis, then inevitably in a purely philosophical they could or would desire to pursue. Constraints may operate on either
reading of his theory the same type of counter-arguments are bound to recur. agents' given desires or actions or upon their understanding of what the
Nonetheless, what is at stake is not a flat yes or no to the idea of com- available options truly are. The unhappy slave is prevented from pursuing
municative reason, but Habermas's conceptual scheme as a whole in which particular goals, while the happy slave is prevented from even conceiving of
communicative reason plays a controlling role versus the kind of conceptual pursuing what the unhappy slave overtly desires. In order to comprehend the
framework implied by his critic. At the end of the day, sufficient reason to unfreedom of the happy slave his position must be viewed counterfactually,
depart from Habermas's programme will not be provided until a worthy that is, in terms of what he would (or, at least, could) desire were certain
alternative to it becomes available. Adequately motivating the search for such features of his situation different. What licenses the counterfactual construal of
an alternative and adumbrating its salient features thus become the first steps the happy slave' s situation is its intuitive similarity with the situation of the
in the transfiguring of critical theory. unhappy slave. Since it is not at all obvious that the beliefs of all happy slaves
are the result of deliberate manipulation, we must be prepared to accept the
thesis that institutional structures via social roles can themselves induce
illusory patterns of belief.
These considerations point to the two major respects in which Marxist
accounts of liberty diverge from the traditional liberal understanding of
liberty: firstly, not only actions but persons may be subject to coercion; and
secondly, an agent's lack of freedom need not be the outcome of another
agent's deliberate actions, but may equally be the outcome of the operation of
impersonal social forces . In order to comprehend these two facets of the
problem of freedom Marxists have fashioned a variety of theoretical concepts
which attempt to capture the peculiarly social, but not necessarily intentional
or deliberate, ways in which persons are deprived of their liberty: for example,
alienation, reification, fetishism, ideology, and rationalization. Now each of
these conceptions of the want of liberty has that characteristic which Berlin
attributes to positive conceptions of liberty generally, namely, the employ-
ment of some distinction between a real, true, or autonomous self, and an
empirical, heteronomous self, a self ruled by forces beyond its immediate
1
control. The defence of the Marxist conception of liberty must perforce
34 35
 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE

distant, independence and dependence explicitly coming to form irreducible

but unreconcilable moments of subjectivity. Once the moment of independ-
ence is recognized, the normative authority of the intersubjective whole
becomes answerable to the individual, and the individual forever answerable
to the whole which gives her a life and without whose allegiance it would dis- NOTES
integrate. The demand that validity claims find argumentative justification is
the linguistic re-presentation of mutual dependency and answerability. The
force of validity claims and the requirement for justification, all too frighten-
ingly misrepresented by Rousseau in his Confessions, derives not from the
formal pragmatics of speech but from the ethical constitution of the self as out-
lined in the aporetic dialectic of independence and dependence. The combina-
tion of the elements in this scenario is equally the mechanism through which
the force of constitutive negativity in the form of the practice of meaning 1 CRITICAL THEORY - THE VERY IDEA
destruction and renewal, now hibernating in the sphere of art and aesthetics,
finally appears in human history - the historicity of human experience coming See Max Horkheimer, Critical Tkory: Selected Essays, trans . Matthew J. O'Connell
to self-consciousness. This is the picture of modernity offered by Hegel and and others (New York: Continuum, 1986), pp. 188-252.
2 Ibid .• p. 200.
recounted in the opening lectures of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. In 3 So, for example, begin with the first history of critical theory: Martin Jay, Tk
Chapter 4 I argued that the interpretation of civic citizenship and democracy ; Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research,
offered by Rousseau represented the institutional embodiment of this ethical 1923-1950 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1973). Douglas Kellner in his
ideal. review of Jay, 'The Frankfurt School revisited: a critique of Martin Jay's Tk
This is not the place to attempt to vindicate Adorno' s analysis of modernity, Dialectical Imagination', New German Critique 4 (1973), pp. 131-52, convincingly
argues that the original idea for critical theory was more Marxist than jay allows.
Hegel's account of intersubjectivity or the ethical ideals of democratic civic Rolf Wiggershaus, in his The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Sig-
citizenship, the synthesis of which would provide a critical theory for the nificance, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994; the original
future. Instead, we should note how often and how closely the central argu- German edition appeared in 1986) offers an Adornoian construal of its history that
ments in these pages have rehearsed that strange ur-text of the aesthetic works against Habermas's version; while Seyla Benhabib's Critique, Norm, and
critique of modernity, the so-called 'Oldest System Programme of German Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986) makes Habermas's accession the inevitable outcome of the theoretical
Idealism' of 1796. Whether its two pages were penned by Hegel, Holderlin or difficulties of both the tradition of critique (Marx and Hegel) and the original
Schelling, or all three working together, remains undecided. What is unavoid- programme. I contest Benhabib's history in Chapter 5.
able is its analysis of the ills of modernity as a consequence of the trisection of 4 As a reminder: Habermas sets up his analysis in KHI against the background of
reason, with its optimistic belief that a unification of reason was possible Hegel's critique of Kant (Ch. 1) and Marx' s critique of Hegel (Ch. 2); the core of
the argument of the first volume of TCA turns on an analysis of Weber (pp.
without forsaking modernity's commitments to either reason or negativity.
143-272), which then permits a reconsideration of Adorno's and Horkheimer's
'Before we make the ideas aesthetical, i.e., mythological, they have no interest views on the scope of instrumental reason in Chapter 4. These engagements with
for the people; on the other hand, before mythology is rational, the philosopher the tradition in his systematic writings leaves aside his numerous occasional essays.
must be ashamed of it.' Clause one of this sentence fits too well the abstraction For a beauty on Horkheimer, see]A, pp. 133-46.
of the moral from the ethical that forms one of the grounds for the unlimited 5 Critical Theory, op. cit. note 1, p. 227.
communication community (the disenchantment of nature being the other); 6 Ibid., p. 215.
7 Ibid., p. 3.
clause two rehearses our collective shame at an autonomous art world that 8 Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans . Jeremy J . Shapiro (Harmondsworth,
continually attempts to raise ethical matters but equally continually finds itself Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 135 .
speaking only aesthetically, its creative and world-disclosing praxis forever 9 See Critical Theory, op. cit. note 1, p. 203.
locked in a world of semblance and illusion. Habermas simplifies this analysis 10 Here I am agreeing with the astute analysis to be found in Axe! Honneth's Tk
too much in underlining the aesthetic critique of abstract reason and forgetting Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. Kenneth Baynes
(London: MIT Press, 1991), Chapter 1.
our shame before art's want of rationality. 11 In Stephen Bonner and Douglas Kellner (eds), Critical Tkory and Socuty (London:
Routledge, 1989), pp. 33-4.

235
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 RECOVERING ETHICAL LIFE NOTES

12 Jiirgen Habermas, 'Notes on the developmental history of Horkheimer's work', It would be worthwhile interrogating to what extent Habermas's sociological for-
Theory, Culture & Society 10 (1993), p. 64. malism, as analysed by Honneth and Baxter, supports or licenses his philosophical
13 Honneth, The Critique of Power, op. cit. note 10, pp. 26-7. formalism.
14 In this diagnosis I am agreeing with Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action 24 See the diagram in Habermas's 'A reply to my critics', in John Thompson and
(Volume ll): The Critique of Functioruzlist Reason, trans . Thomas McCarthy David Held (eds), Habermas: Critical Debates (London: Macmillan, 1982).
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), pp. 374-85. 25 For a good conspectus on this debate see I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds),
15 I am using Fredjameson's translation, usefully included in Banner and Kellner, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
op. cit. note 11. Page references are to this edition; here, p. 267. 1970). It is certainly worth reminding ourselves that anti-positivist philosophy of
16 Ibid. , p. 271. science depends in part on defending the idea that there are no formal criteria for
17 Ibid. , p. 273. scientific rationality. Why should morals be different?
18 Ibid., p. 275 .
19 'Cultural criticism and society', in Prisms, trans . Samuel and Shierry Weber
(London: Neville Spearman Ltd, 1967), p. 33. 2 LIBERTY AND THE IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION
20 These terms are central to Seyla Benhabib's reconstruction of critical theory,
Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory, op. cit. note 3. 1 Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 132.
21 For a precise reconstruction of the debate over 'reification' see Gillian Rose's The 2 Ibid., pp. 133-8.
Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adomo (London: The 3 'Does political theory still exist?', in P. Laslett and W .G . Runciman (eds),
Macmillan Press, 1978), Ch. 3. Philosophy, Politics and Society, Second Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
22 The attempt to demonstrate that Kantian moral reason really is Hobbesian and 1962), p. 13. See also Berlin's discussion of science and human freedom in
instrumental in character is central to my defence of Adorno in The Ethics of Non- 'Historical inevitability', collected in Four Essays on Liberty, op. cit. note 1.
identity (forthcoming). 4 'Hannah Arendt's communications concept of power' , Social Research 44 (1977),
23 Kenneth Baines, 'Rational reconstruction and social criticism: Habermas's model p. 15.
of interpretive social science', The Philosophical Forum 21(1-2) (1989-90), p. 156. In 5 'The public sphere', New Ge;rrzan Critique 3 (1974), p. 42. This essay summarizes the
the critical line that follows I ignore a further problem with Habermas's theory, results of Strukturwandel der Offentlichkit (1962), which has only recently been trans-
namely, his assumption that systems (as relieved from communicative control by lated: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger
the ' media' of money and power) and lifeworld represent two distinct tiers of the (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).
social world. So: 6 Ibid., p. 49.
Via the media of money and power, the subsystems of economy and the state 7 Ibid.
are differentiated out of an institutional complex set within the horizon of the 8 For a good discussion of this see jean Cohen's 'Why more political theory?', Telos
lifeworld;formally organized domains of action emerge that - in the final analysis 42 (1979), p. 79.
- are no longer integrated through the mechanism of mutual under- 9 'Technology and science as "ideology" ', in Toward a Ratioruzl Society (London:
standing, that shear off from the lifeworld contexts and congeal into a kind of Heinemann, 1970), p. 103 (emphasis in original).
norm-free sociality. 10 'The scientization of politics and public opinion', in Toward a Rational Society, op.
(TCA, II, 307) cit. note 9, p. 75.
11 'Technology and science as "ideology"', op. cit. note 9, p. 112.
For astute criticisms of this view - how could economic exchanges not be lifeworld
12 By ' interests' Habermas means 'the basic orientations rooted in specific funda-
practices imbued with certain values? didn' t Weber demonstrate that only a certain
mental conditions of the possible reproduction and self-constitution of the human
formation of the human 'soul' could explain the rise of capitalism? and how can species, namely work and interaction' (KHI, 196).
lifeworld practices not be subject to deformations by structural displacements 13 'Technology and science as "ideology" ', op. cit. note 9, p . 92.
caused by relations of money and power (consider the role of money in marriage)?
14 In English one fmds a defence of this position in Peter Winch 's The Idea of a Social
- see Honneth, op. cit. note 10, pp. 294-302, and Hugh Baxter, 'System and life-
Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958).
world in Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action', Theory and Society 16 (1987), pp.
Habermas's view ofhermeneutics is indebted to H .-G. Gadamer's Truth and Method
39-86. In Chapter 6, below, I suggest that the right way to understand 'media' is
(New York: Seabury Press, 1975). On Gadamer see Habermas's 'A review of
in terms of a certain syntax dominating and reifying semantic implications and
Gadamer's Truth and Method' , in F. Dallmayr and T. M cCarthy (eds), Under-
possibilities. Finally, with respect to my argument here about Hegel, which is
standing and Social Inquiry (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1977).
elaborated in different, Rousseauian, terms in Chapter 4, I note the following 15 Ibid., p. 360.
complaint by Baxter (p. 71) about the 'uncoupling' of system from lifeworld: 16 Ibid., p. 341.
Habermas, after all, classifies societies as democratic or authoritarian, 17 For an excellent account of this argument see T. McCarthy's 'A theory of com-
capitalist or socialist, and thus it seems that the nature of the economic and municative competence', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3 (1973), esp. pp. 151-4.
political/administrative systems define the identity of the society. In what 18 'Wahrheitstheorien', in Wirlichkit und Reflexion: Walter Schulz zum 60 Geburstag
sense, then, can Habermas also claim that these systems are ' uncoupled' (Pfullingen: Nesk, 1973), pp. 251-2, quoted in T. McCarthy's The Critical Theory of
from the identity-securing core of society seen as lifeworld? Jurgen Habermas (London: Heinemann, 1978), p . 316.

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