SÄRKELÄ, Arvi. Immanent Critique As Self-Transformative Practice - Hegel, Dewey, and Contemporary Critical Theory (2017)

Immanent Critique as Self-Transformative Practice: Hegel, Dewey, and Contemporary
Critical Theory
Author(s): Arvi Särkelä
Source: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2017), pp. 218-230
Published by: Penn State University Press
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jsp
Immanent Critique as Self-Transformative
Practice: Hegel, Dewey, and Contemporary
Critical Theory
Arvi Särkelä
university of lucerne
abstract: There are two traditions of immanent social critique. One of them, prom-
inent in contemporary Frankfurt school critical theory, regards the immanence of cri-
tique as a quality of the standard employed. Such a conception of immanent critique
needs to show, prior to the concrete practice of critique, how the standard is immanent
in the object of critique. Showing this is the task of a “model of immanent critique.” The
other tradition, going back to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and practiced in particular
by Dewey in his later works, regards the immanence of critique as the form of critical
practice itself. Because such a conception of immanent critique does not, at the outset,
ask how the standard is immanent to its object, it also does not need a model licensing
critical practice. Indeed, it must be inherently hostile to any attempt at modeling imma-
nent critique because the immanence lies in the power of critical practice to transform
any models it applies.
keywords: immanent critique, critical theory, John Dewey, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, Frankfurt school
journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 31, no. 2, 2017

Copyright © 2017 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
hegel, dewey, and contemporary critical theory 219
1.
Every model of critique establishes a double bind to critical practice. On the

one hand, it has to entail a normative conception of how to proceed in crit-
ical practice such that the practice counts as truly critical: the model gives
authoritative directions for critical practice, and it evaluates specific prac-
tices as more or less critical. As the model is one of immanent critique, it
does this by accounting for how the standard the critical procedure employs
inheres in the object, social practice; the “model of immanent critique” is,
namely, not only to determine the correct procedure for critically assess-
ing social norms, as is done by “models of external critique” (Jaeggi 2014,
chap. 5.1; Stahl 2013, chap. 1.1), but also to function as an effigy of the social
practices it evaluates, and those practices in turn have to imply the model
(Stahl 2014, 36). Hence, “models of immanent critique” relate, first, to crit-
ical practice by taking criticized social practices to entail norms that afford
it with standards for the assessment of those practices (Jaeggi 2014, chap.
6.1; Stahl 2013, 15).
On the other hand, every model of immanent critique entails at least
an implicit conception of the nature of the practice of model construction:
in addition to explicitly giving an account of the social practices to be crit-
icized and giving directions for the practice of critique, the model itself
presents an example of the description and evaluation of practices, and this
description and evaluation is also a practice. Hence, every model of critique
presents, second, a picture of what modeling critique is about: it entails an
implicit conception of metacritical practice.
Now, in contemporary Frankfurt school critical theory, the idea of a
“model of immanent critique” is understood in two ways according to the
relation that the model of critique is taken to exhibit with critical practice.
First, the “model of critique” can be taken to present the picture of
a means of critique that is constructed independently of the practice of
critique and then applied in a second step by critical practice to a material
that is specified in the model. Critical practice is then taken to be a modeled
activity, and the metacritical practice, a modeling activity: the metacritical
construction work delivers a model that critical practice has to follow in
order to qualify as truly critical and immanent. Thus, Titus Stahl (2013,
15) describes the reconstruction of the social-ontological presuppositions
of immanent critique in the model as intending to “justify” (rechtfertigen) a
practice conceived as critical.
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The problem that Dewey and Hegel would have with this picture of
immanent critique is that it separates the “model” of critique from the prac-
tice of critique in a dualistic way. The requirement for a model of immanent
critique that is to be applied in a second step to a demarked social material
is, in Hegel’s words, “absurd” (PoS, §73), or better, counterproductive (wid-
ersinnig), because a practice that requires an antecedent model as a stan-
dard for its success would be neither “critical” nor “immanent.” It would
not be immanent, because, granted that its object transforms during cri-
tique, there seems to be no reason to believe that the object at the end still
corresponds to its model. It would then be hard to see why the assessment
would not consist in mere “counterassertions and random thoughts from
outside” (PoS, §24). It would not be critical, since if the model is not itself
the outcome of critical practice but merely an account whose directions
the latter is supposed to follow, it is not clear why critical practice ought to
attribute authority to it in the first place. In other words, if the practice of
model construction is prior to what is conceived as critical practice, it is by
definition precritical. This does not, of course, need to be a problem. People
do most things precritically and will continue to do so, regardless of what
philosophers tell them. But this does become a problem if critical practice
is expected to correspond to a prior model as the standard for what it can and
cannot do: it is hard to see what critique would gain from following pre-
critical instructions. The insistence on such a model might merely hinder
practice on its path of (self-)critique.
Yet the critical modelist might try to remedy this disappointing situa-
tion by regarding the model not as a means but as the end of critical prac-
tice. This is the second way to understand what is meant by a “model of
immanent critique.” In this case, it would perhaps not be “counterproduc-
tive” to work with models after all, since it would be the very raison d’être of
critical practice itself to construct a model. Critical practice would then not
be understood in terms of following a precritical model but, rather, as the
construction of critical models. It would intend to aid social forms of life
in their struggles with their own contradictions and conflicts by construing
for them a model of immanent critique. Thus, Rahel Jaeggi describes the
business of model construction as a “critique of life-forms” that functions
as a “ferment” of social transformation within these forms (2014, 14).
Critical practice is not conceived as a modeled activity anymore but,
rather, as a modeling activity; it constructs a model not for critique but of
critique in the genitive sense; its goal is to serve as a means not of critique
but of social transformation. Thus, on first look, the problems of the first
conception seem to vanish: the modeling critic need not presuppose a dual-
ism of precritical instructions and critical practice. Nevertheless, implied in
this picture seems to be a preestablished hierarchy of more and less critical
practices: the conception of the modeling critic entails the idea of a receiver
of the construction work. Immanent critique becomes a distinctively phil-
osophical practice of constructing a model for other, nonphilosophical sub-
jects within life-forms. The modelists conceive of themselves as providing a
model for the presumably less critical practice of, say, empirical researchers
and social movements, who are expected to follow the instructions.
Dewey’s and Hegel’s difficulty with this second conception of a model
of immanent critique would be that the modelist regresses to a hierarchical
separation of theory and practice in the sense of the superiority of a free crit-
ical practice delivering a model for a slavish empirical practice, for which
the model is taken to offer a foundation. Instead of a precritical constructor,
we now get a postcritical receiver. At the end of the day, we will find our-
selves reunited with our initial dilemma: Why would this model-receiving
empirical knowledge stick to an antecedent model if this were contrary to
the facts of its own experience?
The immanent critics might want to remove this hierarchy between
critical and empirical practice by humbly conceiving of themselves as both
the receiver and the constructor of the model. This could be a third way
to conceive a model of immanent critique: critical practice would then be
conceived of as constructing its own model of construction. Alas, now the
modelist risks falling into an infinite regress. Suppose, namely, that the
end of critical practice would be to construct a model for how to proceed in
critical practice and that this construction would be licensed by a model for
model construction: then the practice would lapse into the vicious regress
of models of construction being licensed by prior models of construction
licensed by even earlier models of construction ad infinitum, where every
model begs the question.
Yet the critical theorist might try to reformulate the same dilemma
progressively in terms of the critical practice’s ongoing perfection of its
model. Suppose now that the end of critical practice would be to construct
a model for how to proceed in critical practice, but this time it is this same
model that would serve as a foundation for the model construction: then
immanent critical practice must be conceived as an inquiry, in which its
own model can be transformed as required by the inquiry to fit the purposes
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of the inquiry. However, if this is the case, that is, if immanent critique is
to be understood as “presuppositionless” in the sense of determining its
own way of proceeding by retrospectively assessing its consequences with
regards to its ends, then the metaphor of a model seems not to express
adequately what is required by inquiry. If what is at stake in the immanent
critical inquiry is its own way of proceeding, then a “model,” in which the
procedure is determined, is not very helpful in the task that the immanent
critical inquiry sets for itself, and thus the idea of a “model of immanent
critique” turns out, again, to be “counterproductive.”
It seems that if the hierarchy between philosophical critique and
empirical knowledge or the dualism between theory and practice, infecting
the two ways of modeling immanent critique, is to be done away with by
understanding the method as being at stake in the inquiry itself, then what
has so far been called a “model” needs to be regarded as a radically mutable
method, and the inquiry following and constructing that method, as open
to transformation. What we then have before us is not a model but a pair
of ideas: the ideas of a mutable method and a transformative self. Incidentally,
Hegel understands his phenomenology to map a critical “way of despair”
(PoS, §78), and Dewey talks about critics needing not a model but a “com-
pass” and a “map” (1973, 64) guiding their adventures.
2.
In order to assess the claim of the immanent critics neither applying nor
constructing a “model” but employing a “map” and a “compass” on their
“way of despair,” it is helpful to take a brief look at the commitments of a
mutable method and a transformative self. I will call these commitments
(a) “strong corrigibilism” and (b) “radical fallibilism.”
“Strong corrigibilism” denotes the attitude of taking experience as a
self-correcting process. For this reason, the strong corrigibilist finds no
need for constructing models of critique prior to the experience of critique.
For the strong corrigibilist, the idea of “models of critique” is based on a
tacit mistrust of the practice of critique, since whichever way we choose to
understand the idea of a “model of critique,” it turns out that its point is
to regulate this practice so as to ensure that it really is critical. Thus it is
assumed that this practice needs an authority behind its back licensing its
activity.
In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel introduces the idea of strong

c orrigibilism in the first sentence of the introduction. Here he advises his
reader against the “natural assumption that in philosophy, before we start
to deal with its proper subject matter, viz. the actual cognition of what truly
is, one must first of all come to an understanding about cognition” (PoS,
§73). The difficulty is that this “natural assumption” directs a tacit mistrust
against the critical power of experience itself. The corrigibilist, by contrast,
holds that such a mistrust would need to be justified, since doubt requires
reasons just as much as any disputed belief does. And as experience itself
“in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually
cognizes something,” Hegel encourages his readers instead to “turn round
and mistrust this very mistrust” (PoS, §74).
In a similar vein, Dewey pleads against a distrust of the power of expe-
rience and, instead, advocates a faith in the self-correcting, ongoing move-
ment of experience: “Adherence to any body of doctrines and dogmas based
upon a specific authority signifies distrust in the power of experience to
provide, in its own ongoing movement, the needed principles of belief and
action. Faith in its newer sense signifies that experience itself is the sole
ultimate authority” (LW 5, 267). As long as nothing within experience has
established itself as a definite ground for doubting the power of experi-
ence to solve its own problems, Dewey and Hegel argue, we ought to give
“empirical” inquiry a fair chance to resolve whatever problems occur in
its ongoing movement. And if experience did not succeed in resolving its
problems immediately, the reason might be that critical practice is being
blocked by some second-order difficulty, which might be identified by
means of an experiential inquiry itself, in which case inquirers will need to
revise the methodological commitments of their first-order inquiry.
Positively expressed, this “mistrust of mistrust” implies a hypotheti-
cal faith in the power of critical social practice to remedy all deficits that
might turn up in its own ongoing movement—if need be on higher levels
of self-reflection about the need to revise methodological assumptions. It is
crucial for Hegel’s and Dewey’s philosophical self-conceptions to drop any
aspirations to look to the conditions of possibility of critique prior to critical
inquiry—regardless of these conditions being understood as transcenden-
tal (Apel 1980), quasi-transcendental (Habermas 1976), formally anthro-
pological (Honneth 2007), or social-ontological (Jaeggi 2014; Stahl 2013).
Instead the strong corrigibilist finds no reason, at the outset, to doubt that
whatever appears as a problem for critical inquiry within critical inquiry can
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be dealt with in the course of further critical inquiry. If this were not the case,
the proof would clearly need to come from the failure of experience itself in
dealing with its problems and not be based, as Hegel says, on “our bright
ideas” about cognition (PoS, §84).
As a methodological commitment strong corrigibilism thus also entails
an ontological implication about what Dewey calls the “pattern of experi-
ence” (LW 10, chap. 3) and Hegel labels its “movement” (PoS, §86). The
endorsement of strong corrigibilism relocates the knowledge interest of a
critical social theory, as did the Darwinian revolution in the sciences of life,
from comprehending the objects’ intrinsic essence beyond all transitional
flux in models to recording how concrete changes fulfill or frustrate the
immanent ends of experience (MW 4, 14; Särkelä 2015). The Deweyan and
Hegelian species of corrigibilism is “strong” because it is not merely empir-
ical or experiential but experimental: it invests faith in the self-correcting
character of experience to the extent that the task of philosophical critique
becomes to get on with the criticizing as an experiment and check on the
consequences of the criticizing in the course of the experience of critique.
Thus, strong corrigibilism presents the response to the first of the
above difficulties of thinking about immanent critique in terms of “mod-
els.” One aspect of the model being “counterproductive” was due to it not
being immanent: Granted, namely, that its object is social change, there
seemed to be no reason for the belief that the object at the end of its trans-
formation still corresponds to its model; and if it did not, we could not
be sure whether either thing—the object or the model—was truly critical,
the assurance of which was supposed to be the point with models anyway.
Strong corrigibilists need not license the changes by their correspondence
to a model, because their object is not the intrinsic structure of social prac-
tices beyond the flux of social change but the way in which social change
actually constitutes an experience in the sense of consuming, fulfilling, or
frustrating its ends.
Yet immanent critique not only transforms the criticized conditions
and the commitments implicit in them. As Dewey and Hegel understand
it, in the course of critical practice the situation and the self of the critic
are transformed, too. Their conception of immanent critique is not merely
transformative but also self-transformative. So, the second commitment at
odds with contemporary “models of immanent critique” consists in Hegel’s
and Dewey’s “radical fallibilism,” meaning openness to self-transformation
in a self-correcting experiential process. Radical fallibilists are open to
having their various commitments transformed by the self-correcting

process of experience. Processually understood, “radical fallibilism” refers
to a transformation-friendly disposition, that is, to the openness to the pos-
sibility that whatever belief that once stood the test of experience might still
turn out to be false as a methodological assumption in further inquiry. This
involves keeping one’s personal metaphysical beliefs at arm’s length when
needed. Such a need arises with every novel problem, that is, in experiential
situations that do not succumb to earlier methods’ conception of the object
of inquiry. A radical fallibilist believes, then, not only that any outcome of
critical inquiry can be put in jeopardy at any time but also that the method of
inquiry that is effective is at stake in the process of immanent critique.
In one of the few passages where Dewey literally refers to “fallibilism,”
he emphasizes that it arises not because of a priori limits on cognitive pow-
ers but because our interpretive models at the outset do not correspond
to the object at the end of inquiry: “The recognition of what Peirce called
‘fallibilism’ . . . results of necessity from the possibility and probability
of a discrepancy between means available for use and consequences that
follow: between past and future conditions, not from mere weakness of
mortal powers. Because we live in a world in process, the future, although
continuous with the past, is not its bare repetition. The principle applies
with peculiar force to inquiry about inquiry, including, needless to say, the
inquiry presented in this treatise” (1938, 40). Hence, there arises for a rad-
ical fallibilist no need to distinguish structurally between metacritical and
critical practices: “Inquiry about inquiry” is continuous with “inquiry”; the
former is just the way the latter redirects itself when blocked. Therefore, the
radical fallibilist about immanent critique has no need to postulate a hier-
archy of critical and empirical practices or a dualism of metacritique and
critique: “Inquiry about inquiry” is just as fallible as any “inquiry”; it just
happens to take inquiry as its object. Similarly, Hegel in the introduction to
the Phenomenology conceives of critical practice as transforming itself in its
ongoing course: “Consciousness . . . is explicitly the Notion of itself. Hence
it is something that goes beyond limits, and since these limits are its own,
it is something that goes beyond itself” (PoS, §80). As in Dewey, a radical
fallibilism of self-transformation arises here from the discrepancy between
the methods at hand limiting the object of inquiry and the object at the end
of inquiry transcending those limits and constituting a new inquiring self.
Thus, radical fallibilism responds to the second weakness mentioned
above of thinking about immanent critique in terms of a “model”: a critical
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practice relying on an antecedent model is “counterproductive” in the sense

that if the model is not itself taken to be the outcome of critical practice, it
is not clear why the latter ought to attribute critical authority to it or why
a model-receiving empirical knowledge should stick to a “critical” model
if this is contrary to the facts of its own experience. Instead of blocking
experience in its own attempt to come to terms with its difficulties, radical
fallibilism intends to boost critical confidence and encourage the critic to
look “the facts of experience in the face,” which implies a “serious acknowl-
edgment of the evils they present and serious concern with the goods they
promise but do not as yet fulfill” (MW 4, 12).
An advantage of this division of labor between strong corrigibilism and
radical fallibilism is that it reconciles two different prevalent conceptions
of fallibilism in their peculiarities, yet it seems to be able to overcome their
respective one-sidedness. On the one hand, Dewey’s and Hegel’s under-
standing of immanent critique as self-transformative practice entails what
Hilary Putnam has called the “fallibilist thesis of American pragmatism,”
according to which “pragmatists hold that there is never a metaphysical
guarantee to be had that such and such a belief will never need revision”
(1994, 152). Irrespective of Putnam’s own precise use of “fallibilism,” the
radical fallibilist applies this “belief about beliefs” to the method of the crit-
ical inquiry itself. Such a fallibilism is thus radical because it pertains not
only to belief but also to the very production of belief: it affects the roots
(radix) of the critical practice.
Strong corrigibilism, on the other hand, terms another thesis that
is also floating around under the banner of “fallibilism” (e.g., Bernstein
2006, 5). This is the thesis of empirical inquiry as a “self-correcting enter-
prise,” as has been formulated famously by Wilfrid Sellars. The leading
idea here is that “empirical knowledge is rational, not because it has a foun-
dation [e.g., a model] but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which
can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once” (Sellars 1997, §38).
This corrigibilist commitment is akin to what Putnam calls “the antiskep-
tic thesis of American pragmatism,” which is the view that “doubt requires
justification just as much as belief” (1994, 152). This is so since doubt
about any claim relies tacitly at least on validity claims implicit in meth-
odological commitments. The creed of strong corrigibilism is that criti-
cal practice is such that it can within the experience of critique check on
the consequences of critique, so as to assess the value of methodological
assumptions.
Instead of confusing these two theses by referring to them by the same

name, it might make sense to keep them relatively distinct in the organic
division of labor of self-transformative practice. The Putnamian name prag-
matic “antiskepticism” for the idea that “any claim can be put in jeopardy,
though not all at once,” is somewhat misleading, as is Putnam’s further
claim that it is “the unique insight of American pragmatism” that “one can
be fallibilistic and antiskeptical” (1994, 152). A minor difficulty with this
is, obviously, that it misses the influence of Hegel as a pragmatist avant la
lettre on Dewey. But the serious deficit is that it misses the Deweyan and
Hegelian point with the division of labor between strong corrigibilism and
radical fallibilism resulting in a critical social practice, which claims not to
be antiskeptical but, rather, “thoroughgoing[ly]” (PoS, §78) skeptical. The
original German term is sich vollbringender Skeptizismus, which could also
be translated as “self-consuming skepticism.” Both in Hegel and in Dewey
this would be the correct term, since what we get here is the idea of a skep-
ticism that stretches all the way into its ends, consuming the critical self
and producing it in a new shape on its “way of despair”: it is a skepticism
that hauls the conditions of its activity back on board, or, as Dewey says, the
practice “which is capable of enjoying the doubtful” (LW 4, 182).
3.
Meeting the commitments of strong corrigibilism and radical fallibilism

constitutes the process of self-consuming skepticism practiced by Hegel in
his Phenomenology and by Dewey, most famously, in The Quest for Certainty
and, most infamously, in Experience and Nature. Here, accordingly, the
validity of immanent critique cannot be based on a “model” or a “norm” for
good or correct critique. Yet how is immanent critique possible without a
model?—As self-transformative practice.
A positive account of immanent critique as self-transformative prac-
tice would need to stress the vigorously social nature of critical practice.
A model seems necessary for measuring the success of critique, if noth-
ing else, for distinguishing mere opinion from warranted assertions. Yet
such claims of universality can only be achieved in a practice understood as
“social,” as Dewey calls it, or “spiritual,” as goes the Hegelian term. Such
a social practice of self-transformation involves a division of labor in what
Hegel calls “subjective,” “objective,” and “absolute spirit.” They all come
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to life in the observing and recording “we” that is thematized time and
again as Dewey and Hegel are practicing immanent critique: this “we” of
critical practice involves an organic division of labor as it is differentiated
into (a) the author of critique (Dewey, Hegel, any “subjective spirit”), (b) the
public (the co-critics and the institutionalized “ethical life” or “associated
living” they represent), and (c) the absolute spirit as the community of
artists, scientists, philosophers, and so on, that is, any critical communi-
ties dissociating themselves from the given institutionalized ethical life in
order to mediate between the common sense, the counterintuitive world-
view of science, and emancipatory hopes (LW 3). What individual critics
need are the “map” of preceding co-critics, the “compass” of emancipatory
values, and an understanding of their own practice as one of drawing a new
map of the “way of despair” (PoS, §78) through the “province of criticism”
(LW 1, chap. 10). As spatial constraints prohibit dwelling on this social
pattern of the practice of immanent critique, I will confine myself to con-
cluding that there are not one but two traditions of immanent critique:
modelism and experimentalism.
The first tradition may be characterized by two commitments.
Modelists, first, take the immanence of critique to be a quality of the stan-
dards employed by the critic in evaluating social practices. The critique
is immanent because its standard is immanent in the object. Hence, the
modelists need, second, to show to their addressees, prior to criticizing
the object, how the standard truly resides in it. Showing this is to have a
“model” of immanent critique. These two commitments do not seem com-
pelling.
The other tradition may likewise be characterized by two commit-
ments. Experimentalists are radical fallibilists and strong corrigibilists.
They take the immanence of critique to be a quality of the practice of cri-
tique: immanent critique is immanent and critical to the extent to which
it hauls its conditions and presuppositions back on board in its ongoing
movement by transforming itself (Bristow 2007; Dove 1970). The practice
of reflecting on critical practice is not different in kind from the practice it
reflects. In this tradition, metacritical practice and critical practice structur-
ally coincide.
This need not mean throwing the normativity of critical theory over-
board. On the contrary, self-transformative immanent critique represents
the legacy of Frankfurt school critical theory in its insistence on being inter-
penetratingly descriptive and prescriptive. It is descriptive in recording the
ways of critical practice. But self-transforming critics also evaluate these

ways and prescribe the best ones to their co-critics. They do not just find
any reason to “ground critique.” The “norms” of critical inquiry constitute
neither a priori forms of cognition nor a metacritically justified model.
They are habits that have emancipated critique in its ongoing movement.
note
I am grateful to Federica Gregoratto, Martin Hartmann, Axel Honneth, and
Arto Laitinen for valuable criticisms.
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Transcript.

SÄRKELÄ, Arvi. Immanent Critique As Self-Transformative Practice - Hegel, Dewey, and Contemporary Critical Theory (2017)

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Immanent Critique as Self-Transformative Practice: Hegel, Dewey, and Contemporary

journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 31, no. 2, 2017

Every model of critique establishes a double bind to critical practice. On the

In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel introduces the idea of strong

having their various commitments transformed by the self-correcting

practice relying on an antecedent model is “counterproductive” in the sense

Instead of confusing these two theses by referring to them by the same

Meeting the commitments of strong corrigibilism and radical fallibilism

ways of critical practice. But self-transforming critics also evaluate these

Dove, Kenley R. 1970. “Hegel’s Phenomenological Method.” Review of Metaphysics

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