[Note:
This posting is subject to further editing.]
An advocate of critical
theory continues his/her presentation[1] …
This current series of postings is reporting on
the basic elements of critical theory, the main antithetical view to the
dominant natural rights view that Americans mostly favor when it comes to governmental/political
thought. Critical theory is a view that focuses
its concern on political qualities of domination and authority. Readers are invited to review the last two
posting of this blog for how it, the blog, has introduced this construct.
Part
of that reportage was describing how critical theory grew out of the efforts of
a multidisciplinary group of scholars who established the Frankfurt Institute. Their initial efforts, due to German politics
during the 1930s, found these scholars moving the Institute eventually to New
York City. After the ensuing years in
which World War II transpired plus some stabilizing years, the Institute moved
back to Frankfurt, Germany.
Changing its name once again – to the Frankfurt
School – they were able to skillfully advocate their political positions and garnered
a good degree of influence in a conservative West Germany. With this re-establishment in their original
location, this group during the 1950s and ’60s aimed most of its efforts at
attacking positivism. That is, these
scholars found a good deal of fault with the trend among the social sciences to
adopt more rigorous scientific protocols in conducting their studies.
This specifically meant that social sciences –
which relied heavily, up to that time, on more narrative/historical forms of
research – focused on hypothesis testing methods in which observations of human
behaviors were measured to discover significant correlations between
independent and dependent variables.
This was deemed to be a major obstruction to the School’s main aim, i.e.,
to change society.
Why?
Because the behavioral approach objectified the study of politics while
the Frankfurt group’s change-oriented aim relied heavily on normative questions
– change presupposes value determinations.
And adding fuel to this disaffection of the prevalent social sciences
was, at that time, a highly emotional development, that being the student
anti-war movement – mostly a reaction to the Vietnam War – that both Europe and
the US was experiencing.
The resulting disruptions between those in
power and anti-war demonstrators with allies like leftists from the Frankfurt
School, grew and featured concerns over the various forms of subjugation the School
was highlighting which mostly affected either low-income groups or targeted
groups of prejudicial policies or both.
And this fed into the School’s concern with social science modes of research.
The “establishment” – made of those who
belonged to privileged groups – was adopting behavioral approaches in their
analyses of social realities and they stood in support, for the most part, with
the war footing against Communism.
Partly due to World War II lessons – appeasing aggression from “foreign”
invaders – and capitalist aims to expand their markets across the world, there
seemed to be tunnel vision among the power centers as to what appropriate
policy should be adopted concerning such developments as those being witnessed
in Southeast Asia.
The School found itself, again, in an uncomfortable
domestic environment in Germany due to the disruptions associated with the
anti-war movement. At that time, though,
new blood was making its way into the School’s ranks. One such newcomer was Jurgen Habermas, who
introduced a very influential communication theory.
That theory points out the necessity for
participating actors of various social arrangements – whether they be federated
(in agreement) or antagonistic – to recognize the intersubjective validity
among their claims so that social cooperation can be achieved.[2] This is veering critical thought further from
pure Marxist thinking (a trend pointed out in previous posting), albeit not in
contradiction to it.
Was there a complete divorce between Marxists
and critical theorists by what critical theorists were promulgating through the
School or other platforms? One area that
these critical scholars seem to have maintained a strong link with Marxist
thinking was their rejection of purely objectified social science
research.
And by transcending the boundaries among the
various social sciences – becoming highly interdisciplinary – and other related
disciplines (such as linguistic or aesthetic studies), these writers started to
find fault with segregating these objectified studies from normative political
theory as indicated above.
In so doing, they fell squarely with Marx and
his views that it is essential to keep social science protocols (of either historical
or behavioral-based types) and social criticism relatable to each other. The former provides the means, but the latter
keeps such efforts along justifiable rationales which, in turn, help those
involved in exerting the energy and expending the resources such research demands.
Despite this link, Marxist scholars, for their
part, found it offensive that critical theorists would be disposed to seemly
leave behind Marxist focus on proletarian revolution and the energetic adoption
of going into other non-Marxist sources of scholarship to inform the substance
of their research and writings.
But, as time passed, this separation of
research such as between positivist studies (based on factual information) and
normative studies (based on values), lost its fervor and has come to be seen today
as artificial. The concern eventually fell
from overall academic importance. In
that, critical theorist played an important role.
And as critical theory further developed,
certain inconsistencies have materialized among those affected scholars. The next posting will delve into these inconsistencies
and report on how they, ironically, further diversified the interests of those
who claim to be critical theorists or exponents of this construct. Many a movement was generated or overwise inspired
by critical theory and its advocates.
[1] These postings that convey the basic information regarding
critical theory heavily depends on the overview provided by William Outhwaite. See William Outhwaite, “Critical Theory,” in The
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet
Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd), 106-109.
[2] For interested readers in this generalization, see
“Jurgen Habermas,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007/2014),
accessed March 18, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/#:~:text=Habermas's%20theory%20of%20communicative%20action,on%20which%20social%20cooperation%20depends. It is beyond
the purposes here to delineate Habermas’ argument at this point.
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