Critical Theory

Many theoretical programmes, in a variety of fields and disciplines, have a critical

component and can therefore be described, and indeed define themselves as, “critical
theory”. Amongst those various programmes, however, the term also designates more
specifically the tradition of critical social inquiry that was initiated at the “Institute for Social
Research” in Frankfurt in the 1920s. This “first generation” of critical theorists came to be
represented by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin,
to name only the most famous of the philosophers attached to the Institute. After the
Second World War, the Critical Theory programme was continued through the influential
oeuvre of Jürgen Habermas, and more recently in the writings of Axel Honneth. These later
developments are commonly labelled “second” and “third generation” of Critical Theory.
Because of the initial location of the Institute (which is also its current one), this programme
of critical social inquiry is also referred to as the “Frankfurt School”.

The name “Critical Theory” first appeared in the title of a famous article entitled “Traditional
and Critical Theory”, published in 1937 by Max Horkheimer, the Institute’s director at the
time. This article was both a retrospective synthesis and a manifesto for future research. In
it, Max Horkheimer identified the distinctive parameters characterising the collaborative
research programme conducted at the Institute. Even from its early days, however,
important shifts, indeed, significant ruptures have affected this intellectual movement.
Today the number of authors that can be attached to this tradition and the range of issues
they discuss are extremely varied. This heterogeneity is the product of the internal evolution
of Critical Theory itself and of its successful introduction and expansion in countries outside
Germany, notably the United States. At the heart of all these developments lies the
immense influence played by Jürgen Habermas. His own theory of communicative action
continues to operate within the parameters of the original programme as set out by
Horkheimer. But a significant aspect of Habermas’ impact on Critical Theory after the War
has been to open Critical Theory to new traditions, especially American pragmatism,
analytical theories of language and political liberalism. This, combined with the quasi-
encyclopaedic scope of his interventions (hardly any area of theoretical and practical
philosophy has not been addressed by him), means that research in Critical Theory today
touches on a vast array of topics, references and methodologies.

For all these reasons, it seems at first impossible to provide a concise overview of “the
political theory of Critical Theory”. One might suspect that it does not designate a unified
object but refers only loosely to a set of authors with germane interests and references.
However, if we return to Horkheimer’s original characterisation, which continues to capture
the unity and distinctiveness of the Critical Theory programme, and if we focus on the
development from the first to the second and third generations, we might well find a useful
thread to help us in our task. Accordingly, it seems possible to distinguish between three
categories of contemporary critical theorists: authors who address contemporary issues
from the perspective of first generation writers; authors for whom Critical Theory mainly
means a critical engagement with Habermas’s work; and a third category of writers who
attempt to develop a new model of Critical Theory to implement its traditional programme
in new ways. If we want to inquire into the “political theory” of Critical Theory in a
contemporary sense, we do not need to focus on the first category of writers. Outstanding
work has been produced in recent decades in studies specifically dedicated to the authors of
the first generation, Adorno and Benjamin in particular. But the second group and third
groups are the decisive ones for an account of the political theory of contemporary Critical
Theory. Before we deal with them though, it is crucial to outline briefly the main
characteristics of the Critical Theory programme as they were first articulated by
Horkheimer.

The “Critical Theory” programme

The distinctiveness of the “Critical Theory” programme stems directly from its Marxist
inspiration, even if that is now often overlooked. In his seminal article, Horkheimer,
recasting classical arguments of materialist epistemology, castigated “traditional”, that is
positivistic and idealistic, conceptions of theoretical inquiry that treat the latter as if it were
radically independent from the social and historical time in which it is conducted.

Horkheimer viewed this as a mistake that produces errors and abstractions not just in the
application of theory to practice, but within theory itself, specifically in the theory of society.
Positivistic and idealistic conceptions of theory lead to the tendency to naturalise the
objects studied (facts and laws), and thus to interpret them as though they were not
strongly influenced by the general social life in which they are found. By contrast, theory
must be “critical”, not initially in the sense of Kant’s Critique of Pure reason, as a critique of
reason’s powers by reason alone, but in the sense of Marx’s critique of political economy,
where “critical” therefore is closely related to “dialectical”. It is no wonder then that Hegel is
the second fundamental reference, next to Marx, for Critical Theory. Accordingly, theorists
of society must indeed follow the examples of great sociologists like Emile Durkheim and
Max Weber and study social facts and laws, but they must do so in dialectical fashion. First,
they must highlight in what way these social facts and laws combine to form an unjust and
inhuman social world, in what way social life is, as it were, contradicting itself. Then
conversely, they must pinpoint the forces present in the social world that carry the promise
of a more humane and just future.

Two fundamental implications derive from this vision of the dialectical nature of a “critical
theory of society”. These two implications are the two features, which, taken together,
demarcate Critical Theory from other forms of social and political theory. Indeed, they form
the litmus test in deciding whether a contemporary social or political theory can be called
Critical Theory in a narrow sense.
First, Critical Theory’s methodology is dialectical in the sense that it envisages a substantial
link between theory (philosophy) and the empirical social and human sciences (especially
sociology and psychology). Theory provides the general conceptual grammar that can unite
the diverse descriptions borrowed from the social sciences of the different components of
social reality. For the first generation of critical theorists, this general theoretical role was
devolved to Marx’s historical materialism. Since Habermas, new philosophical and social-
theoretical models have replaced the Marxist cannon. However, some form of strong
relation remains between conceptual inquiry and empirical science. Throughout the
generations of Critical Theory, that relationship between philosophy and empirical science
remains one of mutual correction and enrichment. The conceptual framework is not
constructed a priori but is informed by the most relevant human and social sciences.
Reciprocally, the empirical information receives a new systematic meaning by being
integrated and unified in a framework that it cannot independently establish.

The second implication concerns the unity of theory and practice. The historical self-
awareness of critical theory means that it is conscious of participating in the very historical
time it studies. The relation between social theory and social reality is therefore again a
relationship of reciprocal dependence. On the one hand, theory receives its fundamental
impetus from extra-theoretical interests. This means that theoretical endeavours find
leading clues about the reality they study in the experiences of individual and collective
dissatisfaction with the existing social order, as well as in the aspirations expressed notably
by social movements for a more just and a more humane social order. On the other hand,
theory also aims to have practical relevance by clarifying the core concepts, norms and
values with which to describe social experience, in both its negative and positive aspects.

Post-Habermasian political theory

Today the greatest proportion of political research conducted from a Critical Theory angle
relies on the Habermassian framework as an explicit, undisputed presupposition, one that
predetermines the objects of study, the core conceptual language and the fundamental
philosophical hypotheses. In order to give an account of Critical Theory’s contribution to
political theory, it is therefore necessary to briefly highlight those aspects of Habermasian
political theory that constitute its background conditions.

Habermas’ most fundamental assumption is the intersubjective nature of the human

individual. According to this premise, one becomes a self through interactions with others.
The individual internalises external behavioural patterns and expectations which gradually
give rise to an inner space in which the capacity for reflective self-consciousness can be
exercised and developed, leading, at the end of the socialisation process, to a concrete
personal identity and, ideally, the capacity for autonomous action. Accordingly, to be a
subject is structurally to include the perspective of others’ in one’s own perspective. This
conception of an “individuation through socialisation” is famously buttressed by Habermas’
other fundamental assumption, namely his insistence on the central role played by language
in human interaction. This involves his analysis of linguistic communication as operating
precisely on the logic of perspective sharing already analysed in the account of subjective
formation. In the end, all dimensions of intersubjective experience, whether in the special
case of socialisation or in the case of the relations that make up society, what Habermas
calls the “lifeworld”, depend on the power of language to “decentre” subjects’ perspectives
and thus ensure that they view the world from the perspective of others. Beyond the
potential for deceit and manipulation, communication requires that the agents commit to a
number of restricting conditions that basically amount to recognising the other agents as full
partners of communication, individuals to whom they owe truth, respect and sincerity, and
who can at any moment reject their claims, or demand that they justify them.

This fundamental intuition, that beyond power, violence and manipulation, human
interaction is premised on intersubjective recognition, the recognition of each other by the
partners of interaction, was developed at first not for the purpose of a contribution to
political theory per se, but rather as a new paradigm to fulfil the original programme of
Critical Theory. It was a new entry point into critical social theory. In particular, it allowed
Habermas to propound a new critique of contemporary capitalistic society by showing how
the institutions characteristic of that society, the market and the bureaucratic state,
gradually impinge on the processes of genuine communication that underpin social life.
Habermas’ first aim was thus to propound a new theory of reification, one however that
shed the old Marxist clothes, abandoned the outdated theory of surplus value, and instead
fully embraced the linguistic turn. This led him to reformulate the classical ideal of social
emancipation in the terms of a communication free of domination. Later on, in the 1980s,
the communicative model was brought to bear on moral philosophy, as Habermas took an
active part in the debates that were occurring at the time regarding the nature of moral
norms and the structure of moral reasoning. It is only at the end of the 1980s and in the
early 1990s, in particular as a result of the impact of John Rawls’ work, that Habermas used
his communicative model to address questions of political theory more specifically. This
culminated in the publication in 1992 (first German edition) of Between Facts and Norms,
one of his most important books. Subsequently, Habermas published a number of seminal
essays on political questions, gathered in particular in The Inclusion of the Other (1996) and
The Postnational Constellation (2001). Most of the political thinking developed by
contemporary critical theorists lies in the shadow of that magnum opus and the articles that
followed.

Of course, earlier Critical Theory did not wait for Habermas’ interventions in the political
philosophy debates of the 1990s, and had developed its critical diagnoses of contemporary
society into its own critical reflections on politics. In the most general sense, since the
Critical Theory project consisted in the diagnosis of “social pathologies” and aimed to
indicate the directions of a more emancipated social life, it always contained a significant
political dimension. Already the demand for a unity of theory and practice inherited from
Marx and which forms, as we have seen, a characteristic feature of the Critical Theory
project, pointed to its inherent political aims. Furthermore, the “Left-Hegelian” grounding of
Critical Theory has a direct, critical implication in its relation to political philosophy. It entails
a fundamental methodological suspicion towards all approaches to political theory that aim
to conduct it as a separate discipline, severed from social theory and social criticism. This
suspicion has remained alive from the first generation of the “Frankfurt School”, through
Habermas’ entire work and continuing to the most recent writings, notably the work of Axel
Honneth.

The political theory developed by Habermas after his 1992 magnum opus combines a largely
sympathetic reception of Rawls’ political liberalism with methodological premises stemming
from his Critical Theory background, notably the “Left-Hegelian” suspicions just mentioned.
In fact Habermas’ turn towards political theory was not simply dictated externally by the
resurgence of the discipline as a result of Rawls’s seminal intervention. It was also a logical,
internal development of his social theory premised on the model of communicative action.
The ideal of a communication free of domination provides a normative model for practical
interactions between human individuals, in other words, a model for moral or social
philosophy. But it is also, very simply, a way of defining democratic practices. Habermas’
“communicative” correction of Critical Theory, that is, the strong emphasis he puts on the
equality and freedom of the partners involved in social interaction, thus implied making
explicit and articulating fully the internal link that already existed between critical theory
and democratic theory. At the same time though, the “Left-Hegelian” origins of Habermas’
project, which insist on the social preconditions of politics, continued to exert a strong
influence on his arguments. As a result his model of deliberative democracy coincides with
none of the other competing models, liberal, communitarian, republican, or other.

Today, a great deal of the research conducted by critical theorists consists in extending the
dialogue between the communicative approach and other approaches to political theory, in
particular by working out the differences and overlaps between various models of
democracy. This has implications in terms of substantive, political questions, for example in
terms of the link between democratic life and the critique of contemporary social and
economic phenomena. More often than not, though, the debates are of a more conceptual
and methodological nature, relating to the analysis of political norms, the definition of
justice, and the method used in normative justification (for example, in the criticism of
Rawls’ constructivist approach). Rainer Forst in Germany and James Bohman in the United
States are the most prominent representatives of this line of inquiry.

Another internal line of development was already present in Habermas’s theory of

communicative action, this time in relation to the issues that arise with the tensions
between, on the one hand, the definition of normativity as universalisability, following the
pressure of sharing perspectives, and on the other, the boundaries of the community
concerned by the application of norms. Following the communicative hypothesis, the
normative value of an action is defined in terms of the procedure by which it is ensured that
the action actually takes into consideration the interests of others affected by it. It then
becomes arbitrary to limit the range of normative application to specific groups, for example
to the nation-state in the case of democratic action, or to a majority culture in a
multicultural society. The logic of Habermas’s communicative approach to ethics and
politics, which constantly decentres the perspective and enlarges the boundaries of the
community of value, chimes in substantially with real trends occurring in the contemporary
world, notably as a result of globalisation. By embracing Habermas’s approach,
contemporary Critical Theory has been particularly well-placed to make significant
contributions to a number of pressing debates in political theory. These include challenges
to democratic ideals and practices arising from the questioning of the nation-state as the
ultimate locus of popular sovereignty; the new “claims of culture”, following the emergence
of multicultural societies, and the problem of the legal, cultural and social treatment of non-
nationals, migrants and refugees; the shape of global democratic politics; in particular, the
question of the institutional structure and evolution of the European Union, as the first
transnational democratic space; the difficulties involved in creating a new, valid framework
for international law; the problem of cosmopolitan solidarity. On all these issues, the work
of Seyla Benhabib, James Bohman, Hauke Brunkhorst, David Held and Max Pensky, to cite
only some of the most important contributors, has been decisive.

Despite its deep democratic features, however, Habermas’s quasi-transcendantal approach,

which defines the ideal presuppositions under which communication is possible, has been
consistently suspected of not dealing sufficiently with the problem of its relation to
empirical application and of overlooking too easily the issue of power and social
domination. A third major area of activity in contemporary Critical Theory has therefore
consisted in a series of internal criticisms targeted at the Habermasian framework from the
perspective of those groups who have been historically excluded from the circle of the
participants in communicative action. In particular, a great deal of significant work has
developed Habermasian themes and arguments in confrontation with feminist concerns. Of
particular note in this respect is the work of Nancy Fraser, who initially based her immanent
critique of Habermas in a feminist perspective, borrowing elements from other traditions
such as Weberian sociology and post-structuralism. She has extended her critical
reappropriation of Habermas’s politics to develop an exhaustive analytical model of the
forms of contemporary injustice, and the implication of the multi-faceted aspect of
contemporary injustice for radical democratic politics. By defining the norm of justice as
capacity to “participate” in social life, Nancy Fraser has been able to correct and
complement Habermas’s theory of democracy by integrating concerns about economic
exclusion and cultural misrecognition, thus making room within the analytical framework for
these significant forms of contemporary injustice.

Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition

As said, most of the work in Critical Theory today is conducted either within the frameworks
of first generation writers, or by taking Habermas’s writings as the fundamental departure
point. By contrast, the work of Axel Honneth stands out as a profound innovation in the
field, offering a truly new paradigm, one that also manages to remain deeply faithful to the
initial programme. Axel Honneth is the current director of the Frankfurt Institute and
continues to foster an interdisciplinary research programme as advocated by his illustrious
predecessors.

Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition arises from a deep dissatisfaction with some of the
central features of Habermas’s communicative theory. At the most basic level, Honneth
agrees with Habermas in describing social life as a web of intersubjective relations. Honneth
departs from Habermas in the immediate identification of intersubjective interaction with
discursive communication. The emphasis on linguistic exchange as the sole medium, indeed
as the paradigm, of normative interactions brings with it serious drawbacks for a critical
theory of society, especially in its political implications. For example, it leads to an
interpretation of social pathologies as distortions of communication, which does not
correspond to the participants’ actual experiences of domination and injustice. The suffering
caused by poverty, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression does not just involve
exclusion from public discourse, but consists also of attacks on the conditions of subjective
identity and well-being.

At the political level, the emphasis on open and rational structures of public discourse leads
to a proceduralist approach, which reduces problems of democratic theory to issues of
proper process in public will formation. This latter dimension is certainly an important one
for politics but it underestimates its key precondition, namely the social conditions of
political participation, and the reciprocal links between social and political exclusion. In
particular, the emphasis on rational justification as the touchstone of political normativity
runs the risk of entrenching the exclusion of forms of social experience from the circle of the
politically relevant. Put more simply, the fact that some forms of social experience might not
be expressed in the proper normative language should not necessarily rule them out, and
conversely, there is a suspicion, well supported by critical sociology, that the language
games of normative justification are to a large extent socially acquired, if not socially
defined.

As a result of his discontent with Habermas’ communicative approach to politics, Axel

Honneth has proposed a new paradigm in Critical Theory to fulfil its initial programme.
Habermas’s key intervention consisted of replacing the old Marxist paradigm of production
with that of communication. With that shift, he made it possible for Critical Theory to
reconnect with the phenomenology of social experience, a crucial move for social and
political theory. Honneth proposes to radicalise the communicative turn by interpreting
intersubjective interaction not as communication, but as recognition.
As in Habermas, the subject, society and politics, are internally related through their sharing
of an identical normative core. At first, recognition indicates the fundamental forms of
interaction that enable a subject to develop “positive relationships to himself”, that is, those
basic dimensions of self-worth without which it is impossible for a subject to articulate, let
alone attempt to accomplish, his or her own conceptions of the good life. In short, they are
the conditions of practical identity and autonomy. Because of the intersubjective
dependence of the subject, “positive self-relations” depend structurally on the quality of the
interactions with socially encountered others. Recognition names the different ways in
which society can positively affirm, or in the case of social pathologies, disregard or
misrepresent, subjective capacities and identity features. The dependence of the subject on
social recognition for his or her fulfilment means that the norms of subjective well-being are
at the same time norms of social life. Affirmative forms of interaction create the conditions
for practical identity and subjective autonomy defined not just as self-determination but
also as self-realisation. On the other hand, social pathologies can be redefined as forms of
social interaction that prevent the creation of strong enough subjective identities, because
they look upon in negative ways, or simply fail to look at and register at the societal level,
subjective traits and capacities. Social psychology and social theory thus combined translate
into an alternative approach to political theory as Honneth turns to the issue of the rise of
social movements. In the right cultural and social circumstances, subjects who suffer from
systematic denials of recognition have the means to realise that their subjective suffering is
due to social causes, that their subjective plight is in fact that of a whole group.
Consequently, if circumstances are favourable, they can form a collective identity around a
specific wrong, and turn towards society to demand that the denial of recognition or the
misrecognition they suffer be corrected, that they be granted true recognition, of who they
are (identity conflicts) or of what they do (notably in conflicts about work and
redistribution).

Like all the authors in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition, Honneth refuses to devise the
normative core of his theory ahistorically. Indeed it is in the real “struggles for recognition”,
that the theorist finds historical instantiations of the fundamental types of recognition that
are at stake for modern subjects. The first type of recognition is provided by the limited
interaction that occurs in the intimate sphere, a sphere that has separated itself from other
social spheres in modernity. In this sphere capacities are developed that are necessary for
subjects to develop the self-confidence required to engage in the social world. Beyond the
family, by far the largest area, in which social struggles have been waged in the past,
concerns the denial of, and demand for, rights. Mostly, the demand for legal recognition
concerns the claim of individuals to be considered as equals to all others. This claim
underpinned by the norm of universal equality can be couched in strict universalistic terms,
notably when groups demand to be given rights that have been granted to other groups.
But the egalitarian claim can also lead to claims for special treatment when the exercise of
universally accepted social functions cannot be performed without special consideration.
Finally, struggles for recognition have also historically challenged systems of value in which
certain types of contribution to the social division of labour have not received their due
acknowledgement. This corresponds to the demand of an individual not only to be
respected like any other human being, but also to have their specific contribution to social
life recognised as such.

Like his predecessors, Honneth was initially interested in social criticism rather than political
theory strictly speaking. Thus, his contribution to political theory has been limited to a
number of issues. Questions about the history, nature and value of different constitutional
arrangements, questions about the relations between the different arms of government, or
even the normative origin of the law, all issues in which Habermas has made significant
contributions in recent years, remain unchartered territory for the theory of recognition. On
other issues, however, the approach in terms of recognition brings substantive new insights.
To begin with, the political theory that results from the turn to recognition is more clearly
demarcated from political liberalism, communitarianism and republicanism than most of its
post-Habermasian counterparts. Honneth’s concerns are always about the social
foundations of political life. This defines a substantial critical vantage point towards theories
of justice whose main concern is normative consistency, as well as theories that emphasise
only the social embeddedness of the individual (communitarianism) or his/her political
dependency (republicanism), without making sufficient room for the structures of
domination. The old Marxist critique of the abstraction and bad idealism of political thinking
that does not relate its definition of political norms to the reality of society finds a most
striking reincarnation, in a new vocabulary, in the theory of recognition.

But the insistence on social life as the ground of politics also leads to a positive new
direction in contemporary political theory. Honneth thus propounds a threefold theory of
justice, revolving on three equally important normative principles that can guide particular
political movements. The conflict that arises between the principles of justice, rather than
representing an embarrassment for the theory of recognition, is in fact one of its strength.
For, rather than attempting to subordinate one principle to another, it articulates one of the
main normative problems of modern societies, namely the conflicts between principles that
seem equally justified.

The insistence on the social conditions of politics also enables Honneth to reintegrate
questions that had disappeared from political theory after its normative turn. His emphasis
on struggles for recognition not only highlights the historical role of social movements in
modern history; it also connects political theory with studies in political sociology that
analyse the mechanisms by which individuals and groups overcome psychological,
institutional and social obstacles to organise collective action. Similarly work and the
division of labour take centre stage once again, not only as major areas of contemporary
political confrontation, but also, on a conceptual level, as the central social institutions in
which democratic participation is rooted. Not only is the recognition of one’s contribution to
socially defined labour one of the key demands of modern social movements (especially
feminism); following Dewey’s conception of democratic social life, Honneth sees the division
of labour as the most important area of social life in which citizens develop the motivations
and capacities to engage in politics. The political theory of recognition thus reformulates in a
new version the old idea that is at the heart of Critical Theory. Democracy is more than just
a set of political procedures. It is in fact a social ideal, a vision of what just and humane
relations between beings associated through their shared social life should be like.

Further reading

Benhabib, S. (2002). The Claims of Culture. Equality and Diversity in the Global Era.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bohman, J. (2000). Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy. Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press.

Bohman, J. (2007). Democracy across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.

Brunkhorst, H. (2007). Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cooke, M. (2006). Re-Presenting the Good Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Forst, R. (2002). Contexts of Justice: Political Philosophy beyond Liberalism and

Communitarianism. University of California Press.

Fraser, N. (1996). Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist" Condition.

Oxford: Routledge.

Fraser, N. and Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical

Exchange. London: Verso.

Habermas, J. (1996) Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Habermas, J. (2000). The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.

Habermas, J. (2001). The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.

Honneth, A. (1995). The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political
Philosophy. State University of New York Press.

Honneth, A. (1996). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Honneth, A. (2007) Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Polity Press.

Horkheimer, M. (2002) Critical Theory. Selected Essays. New York: Continuum.

Pensky, M. (2008). The Ends of Solidarity: Discourse Theory in Ethics and Politics. University
of New York Press.

Thompson, S. (2006). The Political Theory of Recognition: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge:

Polity.

Wiggershaus, R. (1994). The Frankfurt School: its History, Theories and Political
Significance. Cambridge: Polity.