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Two Histories of the Frankfurt School
Abstract
This chapter begins the diagnosis of the ‘crisis of critique’ of contemporary Frankfurt School thought. It does so by engaging in a historical reconstruction of how the prevailing Habermasian framework of Critical Theory came into being. Against the conventional interpretation of the history of the Frankfurt School as an incremental learning process, it shows the present impasse of Critical Theory to be rooted in a series of long running aporias and contradictions. In particular, it argues that the origins of the present crisis can be traced back to the failure to correctly diagnose and overcome the previous impasse of Critical Theory, that of the first generation or early Frankfurt School. By re-interpreting the works of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Friedrich Pollock, the chapter argues that the main unresolved tension at the heart of the tradition lies in Critical Theory’s abandonment of the critique of political economy and substantive misapprehension of the character of twentieth-century global capitalism.
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Theorists working within the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory have not been immune to calls to “decolonize” that have been circulating in and beyond the academic world. This article asks what it means to seek to decolonize a tradition of thought that has never explicitly acknowledged colonial histories. What is needed, instead, this article suggests, is consideration of the very implications of the “colonial modern”—that is, an acknowledgement of the colonial constitution of modernity—for Frankfurt School critical theory's idea of historical progress. The issue is more extensive than simply acknowledging the substantive neglect of colonialism within the tradition; rather, this article suggests that its categories of critique and their associated normative claims are also necessarily implicated by this neglect and require transformation. Acknowledgment of colonial histories requires material reparations for the substantive inequalities bequeathed as legacies of the past, but these reparations also require a transformation of understandings and a recognition of “epistemological justice.”
The critique of capitalism is the bedrock on which rests the reputation of Frankfurt School critical theory. Though critical theory has often been heralded – or criticized and rejected – as a reformulation of Marxian theory for our times, its relation with the critique of political economy, and in particular the economic treatises, has barely been studied. Friedrich Pollock, who was Max Horkheimer’s lifelong friend and close associate at the Institute for Social Research, was responsible for all administrative and financial questions, but he wrote few theoretical essays and Wiggershaus calls him ‘the last unknown member of the Frankfurt School’. Nevertheless this article asks whether not only has his influence on early critical theory been sorely underestimated, but also his impact on the late philosophies of Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse.
This paper explores potential points of synthesis between two leading theorists in Critical Theory and Critical International Relations Theory, Axel Honneth and Andrew Linklater. Whereas Linklater's recent work on the harm principle has turned away from the critical social theory of the Frankfurt School in favour of Norbert Elias and process sociology, the paper observes a fundamental complementarity between harm and the precepts of recognition theory that can bridge these otherwise disparate approaches to emancipation. The paper begins with a brief overview of Linklater's emancipatory vision before examining his recent turn to the harm principle and Eliasian process sociology. It is argued that Honneth's work, particularly the ideas of mutual recognition and the diagnosis of social pathologies, clearly resonant with Linklater's defence of ethical universalism and can help further the emancipatory project of Critical International Relations Theory. In particular , Honneth's intersubjective concept of autonomy is argued to provide a normative and empirical standard for emancipation premised on the historically progressive expansion of attitudes of recognition, born out of social struggles, toward the ideal institutionalisation of mutual recognition in world politics.
This in-depth conversation with Professor Andrew Linklater engages with his academic biography, his intellectual contribution to the field of International Relations (IR) and his reflections on the current state of, and challenges facing, the discipline of (IR). It thereby traces his biography from his undergraduate days in Aberdeen, via his first lectureships in Australia, back to the United Kingdom and eventually to Aberystwyth University; it engages with his main oeuvres from the 1982 book Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations to his most recent work on The Problem of Harm in World Politics, and covers the development of IR as a global discipline from the 1970s until today.
This article offers a reconstruction of the methodological tools pioneered by the first generation of the Frankfurt School (FS) and how they have been adapted in the contemporary project of emancipation in Critical International Relations Theory (CIRT). It is argued that the praxeological and methodological commitments of the early FS are of continuing utility in the post-positivist turn in IR theory. The paper also argues that CIRT has made significant advances on the original programme of CT developed by Horkheimer in the early 1930s. In particular, it is contended that the alleged pessimism typically associated with the later work of the early FS can be overcome if critical analysis looks beyond the state to those possibilities of emancipation pregnant within the global processes of world politics. Here the work of CIRT is argued to offer a number of advances on the sociology of the early FS, which was problematically confined to the examination of Euro- and state-centric possibilities for emancipation.
In this book Mark Neufeld argues that the predominance of the positivist approach to the study of international politics has meant that theory committed to human emancipation remains poorly developed. He suggests that International Relations theory must move in a non-positivist direction, and takes recent developments in the discipline (including Gramscian, postmodernist, feminist and normative approaches) as evidence that such a shift is already under way. In a comprehensive treatment, he argues that the critical theory of the Frankfurt School can be used to reorient the study of world politics. Drawing on recent work in social and political theory, as well as International Relations, this book offers an accessible analysis of recent developments in the study of international politics.
Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory's prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory's reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory: An Intellectual History defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.
Originally published in 1984, Contradictions of the Welfare State is the first collection of Claus Offe’s essays to appear in a single volume in English. The political writings in this volume are primarily concerned with the origins of the present difficulties of welfare capitalist states, and he indicates why in the present period, these states are no longer capable of fully managing the socio-political problems and conflicts generated by late capitalist societies. Offe discusses the viability of New Right, corporatist and democratic socialist proposals for restructuring the welfare state. He also offers fresh and penetrating insights into a range of other subjects, including social movements, political parties, law, social policy, and labour markets.
Combining aspects of Marxist theory, the Frankfurt School, French social theory, and American social science, Marcuse outlines a theory of advanced industrial society in which changes in production, consumption, and culture combine to create a technological society in which thought and labor is restructured in such a way that perpetuates domination and dehumanization. Marcuse argues that this leads to an oversimiplified culture that he refers to as a "one-dimensional society." Reason is used as a method of control in this society. Marcuse outlines simultaneous tensions in society: 1) advanced industrial society is capable of containing qualitative change and 2) forces exist which can break this containment and explode the society.
Acknowledgements - Preface - PART 1: FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL THEORY - The Case for International Political Theory - Men and Citizens in International Relations - Internal and External Concepts of Obligation in the Theory of International Relations - PART 2: FROM RATIONALISM TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY - Introduction to Part Two - Pufendorf's Theory of International Relations - Vattel's Society of States - Kantian Ethics and International Relations - The Dissolution of Rationalist International Theory - Freedom and History in the Political Theory of International Relations - PART 3: A HIERARCHY OF FORMS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - Introduction to Part Three - From Tribalism to Political Society - From Citizenship to Humanity - Concluding Remarks - Notes and References - Select Bibliography - Index
Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations discusses the challenge to realism which proponents of international political economy and critical theory have mounted in the last few years. At the same time, it emphasises the part that realist themes now play in the argument for a 'post-Marxist' critical sociology. The changing relationship between realism and Marxism is explored in a wide-ranging survey which includes recent developments in the theory of international relations and various Marxist and non-Marxist approaches to nationalism, imperialism, international inequality, the world-system and the relationship between class and the state. Beyond Realism and Marxism presents the case for a critical approach to international relations which analyses the reasons for the expansion and contraction of community in relations between states. This book is aimed specifically at students of approaches to international relations, but it will also be of interest to students of Marxism, politics and sociology.
The theorists who conceptualized Critical Theory’s general framework set themselves a double task: they sought to critically illuminate the great historical changes of the twentieth century while reflexively grounding the possibility of their critique with reference to its historical context. Most attempts to contextualize Critical Theory have done so in terms of contemporary historical developments, such as the failure of revolution in the West after World War One and the Russian Revolution, the development of Stalinism, the rise of Fascism and Nazism, and the growing importance of mass mediated forms of consumption, culture, and politics. Too often, however, such attempts do not consider that Critical Theory sought to make sense of such developments with reference to a superordinate historical context - an epochal transformation of capitalism in the first part of the twentieth century. In grappling with this transformation, the Frankfurt School theorists formulated sophisticated and interrelated critiques of instrumental reason, the domination of nature, political domination, culture, and ideology. Yet they also encountered fundamental conceptual difficulties. These difficulties were related to a theoretical turn taken in the late 1930s, in which the newer configuration of capitalism came to be conceived as a society that, while remaining antagonistic, had become completely administered and one-dimensional.
That so many competent and distinguished colleagues have dealt so seriously with publications which, as I know only too well, are at best stimulating but by no means present finished thoughts is a source of both embarrassment and pleasure. For all the ambivalence, satisfaction is, to be sure, predominant. There has never been any need to complain about lack of attention among the scholarly and political public; however, this resonance often enough brings me to the painful awareness that I have apparently been unable to present my theoretical approach in a comprehensible manner or, perhaps, to awaken the hermeneutic willingness requisite for its reception. This situation has recently changed. Especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, and also in Scandinavia and Holland, for instance, I am encountering a critique that over-indulges me with careful argumentation, that unsettles me with interesting objections, and that involves me in very instructive discussions. The contributions to the present volume are an impressive case in point. I suspect that this well-informed interest could not have developed if Thomas McCarthy had not subjected my work to a penetrating analysis which, for all its criticism, represents a co-operative effort to advance the argument. I could not have wished for a fairer and more productive partner in dialogue.
This paper re-examines the relationship between power, reason and history in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Contesting Habermas' highly influential reading of the text, I argue that Dialectic of Enlightenment, far from being a dead-end for critical theory, opens up important lines of thought in the philosophy of history that contemporary critical theorists would do well to recover. My focus is on the relationship that Horkheimer and Adorno trace between enlightenment rationality and the domination of inner and outer nature.
Although political realism is often understood as a more or less homogeneous tradition fixed on certain essential concepts, John Herz's provocative piece prompts an attempt to examine realist scholarship in a way that reveals some deep antinomies: some internal tensions that make realist scholarship, at least potentially, an evolving, open-ended "dialogue." Specifically, Jurgen Habermas's categories of knowledge-constitutive interests--practical, technical, and emancipatory--are employed to distinguish two opposed aspects of the realist dialogue: practical realism and technical realism. Practical realism is guided by a practical cognitive interest in sustaining intersubjective understanding within the context of tradition. Its corresponding approach to inquiry and grounding is hermeneutic. Technical realism is guided by a technical cognitive interest in coming to grips with objective laws so as to expand powers of technical control over an objectified reality. Its approach to inquiry and grounding is essentially positivistic. Against this background, Herz's contribution to the realist dialogue is that, unique among realists, he brings a strong commitment to an emancipatory cognitive interest--an interest in self-reflection as the basis for the autonomous expression of will and consciousness in the human species' "self-formative process." Interpreted in this light, Herz is seen to employ a two-sided discursive strategy, each side addressed to one of realism's two aspects, the practical and the technical. However, though brilliant in conception, Herz's argument is unlikely to be persuasive if realist scholars are at base positivist scientists oriented by a technical interest in control. In this sense, Herz's piece represents a critical "test" of realism, its essence, and its developmental potential.
During the 1990s, IR scholars began to debate the merits of the dialectic as a method of IR theory. Much of the debate focused on Christian Heine's and Benno Teschke's efforts to situate dialectics in IR theory. Heine and Teschke, for instance, argued that dialectics had remained an overlooked social scientific (holistic) method of international relations theory. Despite their insights into its methodological value, dialectics has yet to evolve into an IR research programme. Part of the problem, I claim, is that critical IR theorists have yet to `structure' adequately a dialectical theory of international relations. The central aim of this article is to position dialectics in IR theory by formulating a meta-dialectical theory that counterposes negative dialectics to positive dialectics. The main argument in the article is that while negative dialectics remain in many respects a non-redemptive method, it does constitute an important functional (and reflexive) limit of a meta-dialectical theory of IR. It is this limit, I claim, that is essential to understanding meta-dialectics as an alternative critical IR theory research programme.
International Relations as an academic discipline is at a major crossroads. Since it was first constituted as an academic discipline in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, International Relations has moved through a series of ‘debates’ with the result that in the course of its development, and as a consequence of these debates, International Relations theory has been undergoing constant change and modification. After moving through the debate between Idealism and Realism in the inter–war period, between Realism and Behaviouralism in the Great Debate of the 1960s, through to the complementary impact of Kuhn’s development of the idea of ‘paradigms’ and the post-Behavioural revolution of the early 1970s and on to the rise of International Political Economy and neo-Marxist, Structuralist dependency theory in the late 1970s and early 1980s, International Relations has arrived at a point that Banks has termed the ‘inter-paradigm debate’.1 The effect of this evolutionary process is contradictory. On the one hand, it makes the discipline exciting and alive because of the diversity of approaches, issues and questions within it, creating opportunities for research which would previously have been deemed to be outside the boundaries of the discipline. On the other hand, the lack of an agreed core to the subject has lead to confusion and a degree of intellectual insecurity.
L'A. reflechit sur la crise actuelle de l'utopie (traditionnellement fondee sur une conception du travail)| il l'analyse dans son lien avec les programmes politiques du " welfare " incapables de dessiner l'avenir
This article provides an immanent critique of Critical Theory and argues that instead of analysing concrete phenomena in their historical and social totality Critical Theory considers ideas in abstraction from their social role and constructs speculative histories instead of analysing real or imagined ones. As a result the universal ethics propagated by the Critical Theorists turns out to be a rather particular strand of European thought with a long history of justifying colonialism and imperialism.