BOOK REVIEWS | 859

Treblicot, J. (1988). Dyke methods or principles for the discovery/creation of the withstanding. Hypatia, 3(2), 1–­14.
Vogelmann, F. (2017a). Critique as a practice of prefigurative emancipation. Distinktion, 18(2), 196–­214.
Vogelmann, F. (2017b). The spell of responsibility. Labor, criminality, philosophy. Rowman & Littlefield International.
Vogelmann, F. (2020). Critical theory and political epistemology: Six theses on untruth in politics. Azimuth, 16, 89–­102.
Vogelmann, F. (2021). One step forward, two steps back: Idealism in critical theory. Constellations, 1–­15. EarlyView.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-­8675.12548

DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12861

On the unity and dissonance of Critique and Praxis

In 1937, Max Horkheimer, the German social philosopher and founder of the Institut für Sozialforschung at the
University of Frankfurt, wrote a famous essay called “Traditional and Critical Theory.”1 This essay is considered
paradigmatic for that unique blend of philosophical theory and social science research which the Critical Theory
of the Frankfurt School came to represent, the 1937 essay was written at a time when the defeat of the German
working class and its socialist and communist parties by fascism appeared complete, and when Stalinist terror and
purges in the Soviet Union destroyed all illusions about this first experiment of socialism. Horkheimer, therefore,
emphasizes that a thinker’s relation to social movements may be one of opposition and critique rather than affirm-
ing common goals and solidarity.
What is critical about Critical Theory if it no longer considers itself to be in close alliance with an emancipatory
social movement? Marcuse expresses this disjunction forcefully in “Philosophy and Critical Theory,” written in
response to the discussion generated by Horkheimer’s essay. “What then, when the developments outlined by
the theory do not take place, when the forces which should have led to the transformation are pushed back and
appear to be defeated?... The changing function of the theory in the new situation gives it the character of ‘critical
theory’ in a more poignant sense.” (ZfS, 1937, pp. 636–­637. My translation)2
According to Horkheimer, both specialized sciences and philosophical theories which consider the former’s
achievements to be the only valid model of knowledge are built on a dual epistemological illusion: the object of
cognition is presented as a ready-­made ahistorical reality, while the relationship of the knowing subject to this
object is assumed to be one of passive cognition or limited experimentation alone. The concepts, constructions,
and scientific operations of traditional theory reproduce a distorted image of social reality in that they deny the
social formation and construction of the object of knowledge. The task of Critical Theory is not just to offer an
epistemological critique of traditional theorizing but also to engage in defetishizing false objectivity and to reveal
the contradictory forces composing it, hoping to change them to advance a better future.
Like positivistic science and philosophy, spontaneous everyday consciousness proceeds from the assumption
that social reality is an objective law-­governed sphere impervious to human intervention. Neither the social re-
lationships nor the human activities that give rise to this appearance is taken into account. But Horkheimer and
Marcuse hope that “[T]he materialist concept of a free, self-­determining society” envisions a praxis that can “shape
social reality in such a way as to make it correspond to human potentials.” (ZfS, 1937, pp. 628/248)
Bernard Harcourt’s Critique and Praxis3 is a searing and noteworthy account of the development and eventual
disintegration of this theoretical paradigm and the unity of critique and praxis once advocated by it. Harcourt
claims that with Marxian theory and struggles fading ever more into the background after the post-­W W II years,
Kant replaced Marx in the work of critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Rainer Forst, whereas Axel
Honneth and Rahel Jaeggi found their grounding in a reborn Hegelianism. “Critical theory became even more
contemplative as it struggled over the questions of epistemology and foundations,” (CP, 123; 406) Harcourt
writes, and juxtaposes to this epistemological turn an anti-­foundationalist ethos (CP, 158). His inspiration comes

© 2021 London School of Economics and Political Science

860 | BOOK REVIEWS

from Gilles Deleuze as well as Michel Foucault, who read Kantian philosophy not as a search for universal truths
that can serve as foundations but as a disclosure of “the conditions of possibility” of knowledge and action. The
Foucaultian genealogical method is critical in that it is concerned with the conditions of possibility of the emergence
of phenomena and subjects more than with a search for normative foundations.
Harcourt’s search for a non-­foundationalist episteme for a critical theory of the present leads him away from
Kant to Nietzsche and from Habermas4 to Foucault and beyond. Harcourt is one of the foremost contemporary
interpreters of Foucault’s thought. His account of Foucault’s intellectual evolution from its confrontation with
Marx and Sartre to its genealogies of punishment and sexuality, to the later Collège de France lectures on society
and eventually to regimes of truth, is a must-­read for all those who want to understand the divergences between
German and French thought from the 1960s onwards. (CP, 107–­122) Harcourt tells us that

Critical philosophy, Foucault explained, can give rise to two very different projects. One is the
project, essentially inspired by Kant, to determine the limits of reason and the criteria of truth…
The other, which Foucault became interested in, is to explore how claims to truth get infused with
truth-­value and how truth-­telling succeeds. The latter project provides the basis for a history of
truth-­production and truth-­telling: an analysis of the historical sequence of the methods by means
of which the claim to speak truth (what Foucault refers to as veridiction, the diction or telling of
truth, or veritas) achieves success and is performative.”
(CP, 108. Emphasis in the text)

Following Foucault, Harcourt replaces Kantian foundationalism with a Nietzschean philosophy of truth as illusion.
But can he thereby repair the torn link between critique and praxis? Can an emancipatory theory ever give up the
claim to truth, truthfulness, and reason in the struggle to fight for a “free, self-­determining society” (Horkheimer)?
Harcourt is firm in his commitment to go beyond epistemology and the search for foundations, and he rejects
strategies of critique in the Frankfurt School tradition such as immanent criticism and ideology critique, claiming
that they remain caught in the epistemic trap of postulating some criteria of truth, validity, and/or reasonableness.
This meta-­philosophical argument is developed in Part I of the book, “Reconstructing Critical Theory,” (CP, 51–­
227) and in Parts II, III, and IV, Harcourt develops his reformulation of critique and praxis in the light of a radical
theory of values.
Yet, Harcourt’s own position vacillates between two alternatives: the first is what he calls a “radical theory of
illusions,” (CP, 208) and the second, which he does not distinguish from the first, but which I will name a “pragma-
tist theory of truth.” (CP, 187).
It is common to assume that calling something an “illusion” implies calling some set of beliefs, hopes or aspira-
tions false, wrong-­headed, irrational, defying the facts, etc. The term “illusion” captures “the idea of a misleading
solid belief that masquerades as truth.” (CP, 208) Why is a radical theory illusion any more defensible epistemo-
logically than the Marxian concept of ideology or false consciousness? Would not it also presuppose some access
to an independent truth and rationality? Harcourt believes that illusion may be unveiled ultimately through much
work, “not to arrive at truth but instead at another space that will eventually itself become an illusion,” (CP 208)
which will in turn need to be critiqued and unveiled into infinity. Harcourt cites Nietzsche, “Truths are illusions that
we have forgotten are illusions.”5 (CP, 213)
This radical theory of illusion presupposes a sharp distinction between ordinary humans, who go on making
distinctions between truth and falsehood, reality and illusion, and the theorist who, like a therapist, knows this to
be a self-­deceiving enterprise. There is a fundamental asymmetry here between social observer and social partic-
ipant. Whereas it is impossible to use terms such as “illusion” and “ideology” in everyday life without incurring an
obligation to expose in what their error or falsehood consists, the theorist, in her role as observer and as therapist
of illusions, can assume a bemused and detached attitude toward ordinary mortals. Although she may choose to
engage in the language game of truth and falsehood, she knows that another set of illusions will win the day.
BOOK REVIEWS | 861

Such a theory of radical illusion is self-­contradictory and self-­defeating. If all our beliefs in truth are but illu-
sions, then the theory that “all truth is illusion” is itself an illusion, and we have no reason to take it seriously. This
is simply the application of what is known as the “Cretan paradox” to Harcourt’s position. If all Cretans are liars,
then the Cretan who claims this is also a liar, etc.
Yet there is another version of truth that Harcourt also defends, and which I will call a “pragmatist theory of
truth.” To engage in critical philosophy, he writes, it is not necessary to gesture toward “a more permanent or uni-
versal statement about the human condition.”(CP, 186) Rather, we “fix our beliefs,” to use Charles Sanders Peirce’s
expression6, “by reviewing the evidence and decide based on a burden and a standard of proof.” (CP, 186) In civil
or penal trials, for example, we share standards for judging evidence; we assume that someone who makes claims
carries a burden of proof in the light of shared standards; then, on the basis of such a temporary assessment of
evidence and argument, we render a judgment. (CP, 187)
Such a fallibilist epistemic model, which nonetheless defends some criteria of truth, evidence, and rationality,
was developed by American pragmatists, Peirce as well as Dewey.7 Peirce thought that “truth as such” could never
be attained and that the most one could hope for was a “consensus” that could emerge among those who partici-
pated in an “infinite community of inquirers.” For Peirce, both the judgment that our beliefs in the present deserve
to be defended on the basis of the best standards of proof and evidence available to us, as well as the faith that
some consensus could be reached among inquirers at some future time, were transcendental presuppositions of
science. “Transcendental” here means precisely what is suggested by Foucault, namely, that these presuppositions
are “conditions of the possibility of” true knowledge.
In this pragmatist theory of truth, which influenced Richard Rorty and Karl-­Otto Apel, as well as Jürgen
Habermas,8 there is no asymmetry between the position of the theorist and that of ordinary acting and thinking
individuals. Both are guided by certain standards of evidence and proof, and these are subject to scrutiny and
critique in the name of those very same standards. Just as in a court of justice, we argue that the evidence is
inadmissible because it was tampered with, and that it was merely based on hearsay, in the search for knowledge
we employ different but related standards of rational inquiry depending on whether our subject matter is the
historical human sciences or the sciences of nature.
Yet, equally significantly, this process would not be possible if those participating in it—­whether it be in a lab-
oratory or a courtroom—­did not respect the right of others to present evidence, to sincerely argue their case, to
assert what they believed to be true. There is an implicit communicative ethic among conversation partners, with-
out which these practices would collapse. Harcourt is absolutely correct that, as a matter of fact, in contemporary
societies today, we may have reached a point of the collapse of the communicative ethic that undergirds the public
sphere and the rule of law in liberal democracies. Surely, the rise of autocratic populism all around us requires new
vigilance in theory and practice. But the historical and sociological collapse of these ideals does not mean that
they were false or wrong in the first place. Hence, my dilemma in reading this deep and moving book: I am in great
agreement with its political commitments and sensibility while deeply disagreeing with its epistemology and the
belief that critical inquiry can simply dispense with criteria of truth, validity, and rationality.
Harcourt suggests that what really matters are values and ideals that guide action and commitment. Yet, why
choose one set of values rather than another? Harcourt chooses values of “equality, compassion, respect, solidar-
ity, social justice and autonomy.” (CP, 265) Refusing to engage in epistemic justification, he writes: “We thus have
no choice but to defend our values as if they were external, and for critical theory on political grounds.” (CP, 266)
But if we choose these values because they guide our struggle, and if we are faced with others whose struggle is
guided by different values—­say by “hierarchy; cruelty; contempt; egoism; social inequality and subordination”—­
what do we do then? We struggle and we fight is Harcourt’s answer, which then amounts to an existentialism of
commitment at best and a kind of political decisionism at worst. We choose, we commit, we fight—­is his conclusion.
Having dispensed with the epistemological problem in Part I Harcourt turns to “Reformulating Critical Praxis”
and “Reformulating Critique.” In these pages, he shows himself to be an astute political observer and social analyst,
who notes that along a spectrum of issues, from immigration to social welfare, to sexual orientation and racial
862 | BOOK REVIEWS

equality, “the gloves come off,” and the Left is facing the rise of authoritarianism, ranging from right-­wing and left-­
wing populisms to forms of new fascism. In addition to the parliamentary struggles of movements such as Bernie
Sanders’, Harcourt discusses new social movements such as Occupy, BlackLivesMatter, as well as more anarchist,
utopian, and counter-­institutional variants suggested by Antifa and The Invisible Committee. (CP, 416)
So what is to be done? Harcourt urges us to resist “foundational thinking and adamantly overcome the hege-
monic ideas we oppose.” (CP, 437) In considering various tactics, such as hunger strikes, occupations, litigation,
and insurrection, we must be mindful that “different forms will function in different contexts.” (Ibid) This point
seems obvious for anyone engaged in political struggle, where the collective deliberation and disputations of po-
litical actors determine these choices. “Critical theory itself, therefore, cannot answer the question ‘What is to be
done,’?”(CP, 438) Harcourt concludes. But did it ever try to? Certainly this was never the goal of the Critical Theory
of the Frankfurt School. Harcourt conflates strategy and philosophy; critique and tactics.
Since I have argued that the normative search for justification in terms of truth, validity, and rationality can-
not be dispensed with if we are to ever plausibly defend “equality, compassion, respect, solidarity, social justice
and autonomy,” (CP, 265) let me raise two brief objections in conclusion. Harcourt does not consider extensively
the political alternative of mass non-­violent movements such as those exemplified by Gandhi (CP, 434 ff.), the
Civil Rights struggle in the United States, but also in South Africa as well as in the course of the various “color”
revolutions in East-­Central Europe, extending from Poland to the Czech Republic, from Lithuania to Romania.9
He dismisses Gandhi’s satyagraha for being too morally demanding and not always defensible since it can lead
to slaughter of those who fight. (CP, 310–­311) Mass non-­violent movements combine parliamentary and anti-­
parliamentary forms of struggle and can be built on other foundations besides satyagraha.
Finally, critical theory must still aim to comprehend the present as a contradictory social totality with transfor-
mative social potential. This means taking critical social sciences seriously, whether this critical input comes from
economics, law, sociology, or philosophy. We not only have to struggle against right-­wing populisms and the coun-
terrevolutions of our times but we also have to understand what it is about our particular moment that is giving
rise to these new forces. Harcourt has grown impatient with, and may be even disillusioned by, what he considers
the turn to liberalism and quietism in Critical Theory. But the dislocations of the present still require the force of
quiet comprehension as well as commitment to political struggle. Critical Theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt
School is not about strategy precisely because the theorist, as a citizen in a democracy, has no privilege to dictate
to those in the struggle what they ought to do. She is a part of the conversation, and at the most she may succeed
in showing that critical thought and the quest for justice and equality are attached at their core.

Seyla Benhabib1,2

1
Department of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
2
Department of Law, Columbia Law School, New York, NY, USA
Email: seyla.benhabib@yale.edu

E N D N OT E S
1
Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in Critical Theory, M.J. O’Connell et al., trans. (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1972), pp. 188-­ 214; 244-­252; Max Horkheimer, “Traditionelle und Kritische Theorie,” in Zeitschrift
für Sozialforschung, 1937, pp. 245-­
294 [publication of the Institut für Sozialforschung, 9 vols. A. Schmidt, ed.
Photomechanical reprint (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980)] Referred to in the text as ZfS. First number
refers to the German, and the second to the English translation.
2
Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, “Philosophie und kritische Theorie,” in: ZfS, vol. 6 (3); of this jointly authored
piece, section 1 is Horkheimer’s, Ibid., pp. 625-­631, and section 2 is signed by Marcuse, pp. 631-­47.
3
Critique and Praxis. A Critical Philosophy of Illusions, Values, and Action by Bernard Harcourt (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2019).
4
Harcourt’s treatment of Habermas is particularly cursory, reducing Habermas’s work of the last half century to a thin
version of Rawls’s political liberalism. Neither the critical analysis of the post-­W W II welfare state in Legitimation Crisis
BOOK REVIEWS | 863

nor the “colonization of the lifeworld” theory of the two volumes of Theory of Communicative Action find room in this
account. Harcourt seems to view any form of neo-­Marxist social theory, including Habermas’s, as a form of “scientism,”
and he distances social theory from social science.
5
Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense,” (1873) in On Truth and Untruth: Selected Writings, ed. and
trans Taylor Carman (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), p. 30. Quote has been slightly modified by Harcourt.
6
Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make our Ideas Clear” in: Selected Writings. Values
in a Universe of Chance, ed. and with an Introduction by Philip P. Wiener (1958 edition), reproduced Dover
Books on Western Philosophy on line (1966), https://books.google.com/books​ ?hl=en&lr=&id=J7bCA​ g AAQB​
AJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&dq=charl​es+sande​r s+peirc​e+and+the+fixat​ion+of+belie​f s&ots=lG0Ph​VaVyO​& sig=mhF8r​Ifa33​
kj_z9YrE​g goBQ​5IXI#v=onepa​ge&q=charl​es%20san​ders%20pei​rce%20and​%20the​%20fix​ation​%20of%20bel​iefs&f=-
false. Last accessed January 17, 2021.
7
For John Dewey, see The Quest for Certainty. A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action (1929) in: The Later Works
of John Dewey, vol. 4, 1925-­1953, ed. by JoAnn Boydston, (Ilinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), pp. 1-­251.
8
See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Karl-­Otto Apel,
Toward a Transformation of Philosophy, Glyn Adey and David Frisby, trans. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980);
Karl-­Otto Apel, Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981.
The literature tracing the evolution of Habermas’s theories of truth, language and ethics is too extensive to be summa-
rized here, but see T.A. McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1978) for one
of the early and best accounts of the development of a non-­foundationalist communicative conception of reason in
his work. Kenneth Baynes gives a good account of Habermas’s “Kantian Pragmatism,” in: Habermas (London and New
York: Routledge, 2016). My own work over the years has attempted to develop the project of “communicative ethics”
in dialogue with feminist, hermeneuticist, and post-­modernist theory. See Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self. Gender,
Community and Post-­Modernism in Contemporary Ethics (London: Polity Press, 1992); Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler,
Drucilla Cornell, Nancy Fraser, and Lindo Nicholson, ed. Feminism as Critique: A Philosophical Exchange (New York:
Routledge, 1995).
9
For an account see Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World (2003) in: Jonathan Schell, The Library of America, ed by
Martin J. Sherwin (Penguin Random House Inc, 2020), pp. 463–­577.

ORCID
Seyla Benhabib https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7318-028X

DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12860

An “illuminati” and its acolytes: Critical theory in

the text and in the world
Being a commentary on Bernard Harcourt’s Critique and Praxis

As I mentioned earlier, critical theorists have been bogged down now for decades in an episte-
mological detour that has now given rise to clannish politics between its various branches—­
Frankfurt School, Foucaultian, deconstructive, Lacanian, feminist, postcolonial, queer—­or worse,
has d
­ escended to mere gossip about its illuminati.
Critique and Praxis (44)
Where one thing stands, another thing will stand beside it.
Chinua Achebe

For those familiar with the famous online platform of seminars that Bernard Harcourt directs at Columbia
University, I reveal nothing secret when I state that Critique and Praxis probably had either its origins or an earlier

© 2021 London School of Economics and Political Science