Abstract
These are undoubtedly unpropitious times in which to question the foundations of critical theory. Nevertheless, in so far as these foundations are complicit in the social conditions they seek to criticize this cannot be avoided. All attempts to anchor the normative content of modernity in a ‘philosophical anthropology’, whether labour, ‘communicative action’ or mutual recognition, controverts the ethos of autonomy that grounds the normative content of modernity. For this reason, critical theory’s attempt to discover an undamaged form of (inter)subjectivity in an inherent ‘social ontology’ is less a means to judge the ‘pathologies’ of modernity than a manifestation of them. No matter how benign the motives behind this undertaking, it comprises an attempt to criticize modernity from a standpoint incompatible with its normative content.KeywordsNormative ContentCritical TheoryEthical LifeAutopoietic SystemSocial StruggleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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