Critical Theory

Abstract

I want to thank the organizers for allowing us to go back to those halcyon days of yore when we were young, the world was ours, and we, the carriers of the coals, were unintentionally about to bring critical theory to the United States. No doubt I played a minor role in that process, and looking back there was no singular event that led to my association with critical theory but, rather, a curious set of happenings that led to encounters, friendships, and a richness of life that I could not have fathomed when I made a simple trip to Germany in 1971. At the time I considered myself to be a thoroughgoing phenomenologist and hermeneuticist. I had written my first book on Paul Ricoeur and was hired to teach philosophy of religion, having had the good fortune of having been a student directly of Mircea Eliade and indirectly of Paul Ricoeur. No doubt I would still be teaching and writing about the philosophy of religion had it not been for the events of the day. America was “all shook up” with the opposition to the Vietnam War, the dilemma of the draft and the reaction to it on college campuses, Kent State, the invasion of Cambodia, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and numerous other incidents. True, I had no particular qualifications to deal with those things; none of us did. But I was prone to try. I was equipped by sentiment if not by intellect.I had spent the summer of 1960 studying Greek and working as a laundry truck driver for the Alert Laundry Company, who's cliental lived in the ghetto that surrounded the University of Chicago. That summer, of the thirteen laundry trucks of the Alert Laundry Company, twelve were robbed. Mine wasn't. I got to know everybody, including the robbers, who gave me a pass. That summer marked the beginning of an education that allowed me to see, firsthand, the real injustice of America, which in the course of events led to the civil rights movement, whose northern base was Chicago. Looking back over the events of my life I can say that although I was born in Iowa, I grew up in Chicago. Clearly, the University of Chicago provided me with a dual education: one that made it possible for me to earn academic degrees and another that afforded a set of experiences that transformed my life. As a result of all that, the changing times and the Chicago experience, much to the chagrin of those who hired me at Boston College, I began to teach a number of courses on social phenomenology (Schutz), attempting to do a kind of social philosophy, which, of course, was a very respectable thing, still being done today. Then in 1971 I went to Germany to perfect my German and by accident ended up at the University of Marburg (Phillips Universität Marbug), the most radical university in Germany at the time. There I was appropriately intimidated, mainly by German students, regarding my knowledge of political philosophy as it related to the most celebrated figure of the day, Karl Marx. I returned to Boston at the end of that summer harboring a passion for finding out what Marx was about. After reading several books on Marx I decided that he couldn't be as bad as his representatives portrayed him, and I started reading the man himself. Like many others I was seduced, converted, overwhelmed, transformed by the encounter, which led to a long struggle with the man and his work from which I never fully recovered, although strangely enough the encounter with critical theory did a lot to straighten me out.Marx led me to critical theory. If one were to reconstruct the beginning from my perspective, exhibit number one would be the special issue on hermeneutics and critical theory published as volume 2, number 4, of the journal Cultural Hermeneutics (February 1975), which I founded in 1973. I organized a conference featuring the old Hans-Georg Gadamer (my new colleague) and the young Rüdiger Bubner, which attempted to construct a dialogue between the two philosophical disciplines, hermeneutics and critical theory. Gadamer's essay “Hermeneutics and Social Sciences,” given as a talk without a written text (later it was the target of a summer's work by me and some of my graduate students, who made it into a text), was, I am told, one of the first things by Gadamer to appear in English. Looking back, Gadamer was eloquent in his characterization of the critique that critical theory made of his hermeneutic position. He, of course, although we didn't give him credit for it at the time, knew well what defined the difference between critical theory and hermeneutics, having hired Habermas just at the time Warheit und Methode was published. Habermas's review began the debate. Gadamer attacked the notion of “emancipatory reflection,” which he defined as “a critique of the process of self-illumination which is supposed to bring about a social discourse free from force.” According to Gadamer, such a claim is impossible because there can be “no reflection at all without a prior basis of common agreement.” The weakness of critical theory is that it takes over the program of “critique of ideology,” which falsely presumes that it can “enthrone its own norms and ideals as self-evident and absolute.” Hermeneutics, on the contrary, offers us the possibility of a return to “practical reason,” freeing us from the “domination of technology.”1 Gadamer received a kind of standard criticism from Bubner and others, who claimed that going back to the tradition of practical philosophy associated with the tradition established by Aristotle is not an option because Aristotle is not part of our modern tradition. Alas, Habermas, who declined my invitation, was not there to defend himself.Actually my first brief encounter with Habermas occurred a couple of years after the Marburg experience, when I was invited to participate in a course on phenomenology and Marxism organized by Bernard Waldenfels for the Inter-European Center for Post-graduate Studies in Dubrovnik. Waldenfels had wanted me to present my essay “Between Autonomy and Sociality,” which had been the lead article in the first issue of Cultural Hermeneutics. This didn't quite work out, but what did work out was a first encounter with Habermas, which led eventually to an invitation to be part of the Max Plank Institute in 1981 and a series of associations that lasted half a lifetime. Looking back one wonders why the invitation occurred. My guess is that it had something to do with a very critical review I wrote of Habermas's Legitimation Crisis. In it I accuse Habermas, of all things, of having misunderstood Marx. I conclude the review with the rather presumptuous claim that “this latest attempt simply repeats the mistakes of earlier ones.”2Four years later I was in Munich reading Theory of Communicative Action and defending it in, among all places, Der Spiegel. Spiegel had published a terrible review of the book shortly after it came out in 1981, and I awoke one morning finding myself banging out a critique of the review. My German friends informed me that contrary to U.S. procedure, one should attack not the person who wrote the review but the magazine that published it. My general line as I recall it was that Spiegel was so utterly incompetent that it hired a person to review the book who hadn't the slightest capacity to understand it. This, of course, was not untrue. Spiegel, the master of journalistic irony, must have loved my reaction because just two weeks after the review appeared it published my commentary along with others under the byline taken from my contribution, “Nicht begreifen,” he didn't get it.That period (1980–81) symbolized the end of the “then” period. Critical theory, with its close ties to the interpretation of Marx, was no longer front and center. But the idea of critique was still alive, or at least we thought that it could be kept alive given the ominous truth of criticism that associated critique and ideology (Gadamer). At least we tried. Some four years after the publication of the first issue of Cultural Hermeneutics, Reidel, the publisher, suddenly and with little warning discontinued the journal. Whether it was Reidel's penchant for the good life or that we were the lowest journal in the hierarchy I never knew, but this much was clear, unless something unusual happened my life as a journal editor was over. As I was mulling over what to do, a process that took months, I received a late-night call from a former graduate student who was on his way to a distinguished career. His question was simple: “Dave, if you give up, where are we going to get published?” I took the question seriously; I bit the bullet, as it were—whoever said something could not be created out of nothing—and I started a publishing company to privately publish my journal. And by the most unusual stroke of luck I and the grad students associated with me at the time changed the name Cultural Hermeneutics to Philosophy and Social Criticism. Unbelievably the phrase “social criticism” had not yet caught the public's imagination, and the choice of title was a stroke of pure luck. Significantly this change of title marked a transition in my view of critical theory, as reflected in the new editorial statement: “In modern industrial society reason cannot be separated from practical life. At their interface a critical attitude is forged.” The statement, which now sounds a bit passé, though I still keep it on the masthead, takes its distance from the earlier phase of critical theory. No revolution in the nineteenth-century historical sense is to be expected here. Social criticism will reign.To be sure the early days of Philosophy and Social Criticism were difficult. We had no money and no external support, only subscriptions. But we survived. And the flourishing of the journal must be somehow connected to the flourishing of critical theory as well as Continental philosophy. We now publish nine issues (1,160 pages) a year, and we will expand next year. The expansion has not been accidental. Rather, it has been due to the overwhelming number of quality submissions made and the evolving readership. If anything, critical theory has flourished.In my Handbook of Critical Theory I try to define critical theory: Critical theory is a metaphor for a certain kind of theoretical orientation which owes its origin to Kant, Hegel and Marx, its systematization to Horkheimer and his associates at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, and its development to successors, particularly to a group led by Jürgen Habermas, who have sustained it under various renditions to the present day. As a term, critical theory is both general and specific. In general it refers to that critical element in German philosophy, which began with Hegel's critique of Kant. More specifically it is associated with a certain orientation toward philosophy, which found its twentieth-century expression in Frankfurt.3 No doubt that definition changed and continues to change principally under the auspices of Habermas. Incidentally, when I asked Albrecht Wellmer to contribute to the Handbook he announced that the era of critical theory was over. I doubt that, but it certainly has changed radically. In my view, critical theory has gone through four phases since 1980. The first is associated with the status of social theory and analytic philosophy. The second is connected with the critique of postmodernism. The third is related to the appropriation of political philosophy and law, and the fourth attempts to address the heavy reliance of critical theory on a theory of modernity in a postsecular society. In retrospect one has to admit that Habermas's work was and is central to each phase, although the last phase belongs to everyone who would defend a critical theory.The Theory of Communicative Action, the leading tome of the first phase, addressed two things: social theory and analytic philosophy. On the one hand, it attempted to address critical theory's contribution to social theory, particularly in relationship to Weber and Parsons. On the other hand, it embedded critical theory in a full-blown analytic argument, which was designed to address developments in analytic philosophy. In retrospect these were permanent contributions to the reconstruction of critical theory and if anything, kept it alive. As many know I expressed my doubts regarding the universal claims associated with Habermas's reconstruction of speech-act theory.4 However, it must be admitted that Habermas's reconstruction shaped the subsequent debates. If there are any doubts about that, I suggest that people consult the Sage Masters in Modern Social Thought series volumes on Habermas. An extraordinary amount of material has been produced responding to Habermas. Further, the debate over this contribution has been kept alive by the development of the discourse ethic, which began at a session of the Habermas seminar in spring 1982. Regarding the publication of The Theory of Communicative Action I recall specifically a four-hour discussion I had with Habermas over his theory of modernity, which in my view was all too willing to undercut archaic experience at the expense of scientific modernity. In retrospect that problem did not go away, and Habermas is now confronting it. A second recollection from that period has to do with Habermas's presentation of the paper that became the basis for the discourse ethic. Ernst Tugentat had written a six-page critique of it, which was circulated among the Habermas seminar group. Looking back it appears that most of the criticisms that were ever made subsequently of that view were made on that day. We were merciless, and when I left the conversation a full eight hours after it began Habermas and Tugentat were still going at it like two German schoolboys.A second major development of critical theory in the eighties was Habermas's critique of postmodernism. In 1984 I invited Habermas to Boston, where he gave a version of his Discourse of Modernity, which included an appropriation of the Frankfurt school and a critique of the so-called postmoderns, including, among others, Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida. Habermas wrote his critique of Derrida while at Boston College, where before giving it he complained of not being able to find the code. Eventually, he gave the lecture, which led, as everyone knows, to the controversy that followed, alienating a potential friendship with Derrida for over a decade. Later Habermas confided, “You know, we became friends.” Ute Habermas chimed in, “Best friends.” And then Habermas turned to me and asked the inevitable question, which had bothered me since 1984, “Why didn't you people tell me that I was wrong?” Of course, we both laughed, and I said, “We didn't dare.”The third development that I regard as Habermas's most brilliant attempt was his foray into law and politics in the book Facts and Norms. I reviewed it as Habermas's most brilliant attempt, and I still stand by that judgment. Allow me to quote from the first and last sentences of my review of that work: From the introduction: “German culture has produced two great theoretical discourses on law represented in the work of Hegel and Weber respectively; now, with the publication of Habermas's Faktizität und Geltung, it may lay claim to a third.”And from the conclusion: “The book promises to play a central role in the future debate on the role of law, not merely because of its theoretical contribution, which is monumental, but because its author has generated a new framework, a new architectonic, from which the phenomenon of law in a democratic society can be perceived. In that sense, this book which was written in the shadow of the great German discourses on law authored by Hegel and Weber will cast its own light.”5 We have been debating the book since the day it came out. And it is not insignificant that the famous debate between Rawls and Habermas was anticipated in that book. Beyond that, not only does the book serve as a reconstruction of the path of critical theory, it also provides a revision of Habermas's earlier work. In this sense the discourse on law at the end of The Theory of Communicative Action emerges here in a totally new form.Finally, we come to the now, the fourth phase of critical theory. September 11, the resurgence of religion, the clash of civilizations, globalization—these are the issues not only confronting the world but also confronting critical theory. Although some might argue with this assumption, it appears to me that critical theory, given its origins in the German enlightenment, has a vested interest in a certain theory of modernity. Whether one uses the Kantian model from What Is Enlightenment? the Hegelian model based on a certain philosophy of history, Marx's idea of the social evolution of society, Weber's idea of the disenchantment of the world, or Horkheimer's classic distinction between traditional and critical theory, critical theory manifests a distinct orientation to modernity that links modernization with secularization. My guess is that the great challenge to critical theory that has to deal with the rise of religion, on the one hand, and globalization, on the other, will be whether or not it can keep a critical perspective alive or whether in the future we will look back at critical theory as just another theory of modernity.No doubt the rise of religion has not only posed a particular dilemma for critical theory but also provided a curious place to end this reflection. Having started my career doing philosophy of religion it is somewhat surprising to meet religion again as I turn to what surely must be at least a later phase of my career. I am reminded of Antonio's line from the Italian film C'eravamo Tanto Amati, translated as We All Loved Each Other So Much: “We thought we could change the world, but the world changed us.” “Philosophers only interpret the world, the point is to change it,” so said Marx. But in a curious way those who would change the world are changed by it.