On the Methods of Critical Theory: Advancing the Project of Emancipation beyond the Early Frankfurt School

Abstract

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.