Critical Theory

Introduction

Critical Theory is the twentieth-century philosophical and social-theoretical tradition founded by the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main (the Frankfurt School) that integrates Marxist analysis of capitalism, Hegelian dialectical method, Freudian psychoanalysis, Weberian sociology, and the phenomenological tradition into a comprehensive critical theory of contemporary society. The tradition takes its organizing methodological commitment from Max Horkheimer's 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory: critical theory is distinguished from traditional theory by its self-conscious orientation to the emancipation of human beings from social conditions of domination, and by its reflexive awareness of its own historical and social conditions of production.

The tradition has developed across three generations and continues into a fourth and fifth. The first generation — Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Friedrich Pollock, Leo Löwenthal — produced the founding work in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, in exile during the Nazi period. The second generation — Jürgen Habermas, Albrecht Wellmer, Karl-Otto Apel — developed the tradition from the 1960s onward toward a theory of communicative action and discourse ethics. The third generation — Axel Honneth, Seyla Benhabib, Rainer Forst — has extended the tradition into recognition theory, deliberative democracy, and the theory of justice. The contemporary fourth and fifth generations continue work across many subfields.

Founding moment

Founded with the establishment of the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) at the University of Frankfurt in 1923, originally funded by the wealthy grain trader Felix Weil to support independent Marxist research outside the constraints of party politics and orthodox academic philosophy. The early years under the directorship of Carl Grünberg (1923–29) were historical and empirical in orientation; the theoretical transformation came when Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) assumed the directorship in 1930.

Horkheimer's inaugural address The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research (1931) and his programmatic essay Traditional and Critical Theory (1937) gave the founding statements of the methodological program. The Institute's first major collaborative product was the Studies on Authority and the Family (1936), a empirical and theoretical study integrating Freudian psychoanalysis with Marxist class analysis to study the authoritarian personality structure.

The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 forced the Institute into exile. Horkheimer relocated the Institute first to Geneva, then to Columbia University in New York, where it remained through the war years. The exile years produced some of the foundational works of the tradition: Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (composed 1942–44, published 1947), Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music (1949), Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), and the collaborative Studies in Prejudice series (especially The Authoritarian Personality, 1950).

The return to Frankfurt began in 1949 when Horkheimer accepted a chair at the university; the Institute formally reopened in Frankfurt in 1951. The post-war Frankfurt years produced the work of the late first generation and the formation of the second generation under Habermas, whose 1962 Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere extended the tradition in new directions.

Core doctrines

Critical Theory is more a methodological and substantive orientation than a single doctrine, but the shared commitments are substantial.

1. Emancipatory orientation. Critical theory is distinguished from traditional theory by its self-conscious orientation to human emancipation from social conditions of domination. The interest (in the Habermasian sense) of critical theory is the emancipatory interest; the test of the theory is its contribution to emancipation rather than merely to explanation or prediction.
2. Immanent critique. The method of critical theory operates by exhibiting the contradiction between a society's own normative self-understanding and its actual practices, rather than by imposing external standards. The Hegelian-Marxist method of immanent critique is the methodological core.
3. The Dialectic of Enlightenment thesis. Horkheimer and Adorno's 1947 thesis that the Enlightenment project of emancipation through reason has produced its own opposite — the dominance of instrumental rationality, the culture industry, the regression of autonomous individuality. The thesis structures the first-generation critical theory.
4. The critique of instrumental reason. Critical theory distinguishes instrumental reason (rationality oriented to the efficient achievement of given ends) from substantive reason (rationality concerned with the ends themselves). The dominance of instrumental reason in modern society produces the conditions of domination that critical theory exposes.
5. The critique of ideology. Critical theory extends the Marxian critique of ideology to encompass cultural, psychological, and structural forms of false consciousness that function to legitimize existing relations of domination. The culture industry analysis (Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment) and the analyses of authoritarian personality, one-dimensionality, and instrumental rationality extend the framework.
6. The integration of Marx, Hegel, Freud, and Weber. Critical theory integrates Marxist analysis of capitalism, Hegelian dialectical method, Freudian psychoanalysis (especially in Marcuse, Adorno, and Fromm), and Weberian sociology (especially in Habermas) into a comprehensive social theory.
7. The communicative turn (second generation). Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action (1981) reorients critical theory from the first-generation analysis of instrumental reason toward a theory of communicative reason and the conditions of undistorted communication. The turn structures the second-generation development.

Major figures

First generation:

• Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) — the Institute director from 1930; Traditional and Critical Theory (1937); Dialectic of Enlightenment (with Adorno, 1947).
• Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) — the major theorist of the late first generation; Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947); Minima Moralia (1951); Negative Dialectics (1966); Aesthetic Theory (1970, posthumous).
• Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) — the major theorist of culture, history, and the work of art; suicide while fleeing the Nazis in 1940.
• Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) — the major American Frankfurt theorist; Eros and Civilization (1955); One-Dimensional Man (1964); the major theorist of the New Left.
• Erich Fromm (1900–1980) — the major theorist of social psychology; Escape from Freedom (1941); The Art of Loving (1956).
• Friedrich Pollock (1894–1970) — the major theorist of state capitalism.
• Leo Löwenthal (1900–1993) — the major theorist of literature and mass culture.

Second generation:

• Jürgen Habermas (1929–) — the major theorist of communicative action and discourse ethics; Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962); Theory of Communicative Action (1981); Between Facts and Norms (1992).
• Albrecht Wellmer (1933–2018) — major continuator.
• Karl-Otto Apel (1922–2017) — the parallel discourse ethicist.

Third generation:

• Axel Honneth (1949–) — the major theorist of recognition; The Struggle for Recognition (1992).
• Seyla Benhabib (1950–) — the major theorist of cosmopolitan democracy and feminist critical theory.
• Rainer Forst (1964–) — the major theorist of the right to justification.

Contemporary fourth and fifth generations:

• Nancy Fraser (1947–) — the major theorist of recognition, redistribution, and representation.
• Hartmut Rosa (1965–) — the major theorist of social acceleration and resonance.
• Rahel Jaeggi (1967–) — the major contemporary theorist of forms of life and alienation.

Major texts

• Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory (1937); Eclipse of Reason (1947).
• Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/1947).
• Adorno, Minima Moralia (1951); Negative Dialectics (1966); Aesthetic Theory (1970).
• Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1936); On the Concept of History (1940).
• Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (1941); Eros and Civilization (1955); One-Dimensional Man (1964).
• Fromm, Escape from Freedom (1941); The Art of Loving (1956).
• The Institute, The Authoritarian Personality (1950).
• Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962); Knowledge and Human Interests (1968); Theory of Communicative Action (two volumes, 1981); Between Facts and Norms (1992).
• Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition (1992); Freedom's Right (2011).
• Fraser, Justice Interruptus (1997); Redistribution or Recognition? (with Honneth, 2003).

Internal tensions and rival schools

The major internal tension within Critical Theory has been the generational disagreement between first-generation pessimism and second-generation reconstructive optimism. The first-generation Frankfurt School (especially the late Horkheimer and Adorno) developed an increasingly pessimistic analysis of modern society: the Dialectic of Enlightenment thesis treats the Enlightenment project as having produced its own opposite; the negative dialectics of late Adorno refuses the possibility of positive reconciliation. The second-generation Habermasian turn reverses this: the theory of communicative action recovers the rational foundations of emancipatory critique by distinguishing communicative from instrumental rationality and grounding critical theory in the idealized presuppositions of communicative practice.

The second tension has been between the critique of contemporary society and the constructive provision of normative foundations. The first-generation tradition emphasized critique; the second generation under Habermas developed the constructive normative framework; the third generation under Honneth extended the framework into a theory of recognition; the contemporary fourth generation integrates critique and construction in various ways.

The third tension has been over the relation between critical theory and empirical social science. The first-generation tradition produced empirical work (especially The Authoritarian Personality); the Habermasian tradition developed reconstructive social theory that engages with empirical sociology; the contemporary tradition engages with empirical work across many subfields.

The great external rivals have been orthodox Marxism (which treated critical theory as revisionist), analytic philosophy (which treated critical theory as unrigorous), post-structuralism and post-modernism (which treated critical theory as continuing the modernist project that post-modernism rejected), and liberal political theory (especially the Rawlsian tradition, with which critical theory has had complex relations of engagement and disagreement).

Legacy

Critical Theory's legacy operates along multiple distinct trajectories.

Within academic philosophy, the Habermasian tradition shaped late-twentieth-century continental political philosophy and produced dialogue with the analytic tradition through Habermas's engagement with Rawls, with Donald Davidson, and with portions of the analytic philosophy of language. The Honneth recognition theory has shaped contemporary social and political philosophy.

Within sociology, critical theory shaped the post-war German sociological tradition (through the Frankfurt Institute's continued institutional presence) and shaped Anglo-American sociology through the work of transmitters (especially Martin Jay, whose The Dialectical Imagination, 1973, was the English-language history of the first generation). The contemporary sociology of acceleration (Rosa) and of forms of life (Jaeggi) continues the tradition.

Within cultural studies, the first-generation analyses of mass culture, the culture industry, and the work of art shaped twentieth-century cultural criticism. The Frankfurt school analyses of authoritarianism (especially The Authoritarian Personality) have been revived in the post-2016 political context.

Within political activism and theory, the Marcusean tradition shaped the 1960s New Left through One-Dimensional Man and the student movements. The Habermasian tradition shaped the deliberative democracy movement.

The contemporary engagement is and continuing. The Frankfurt School Critique journal, the book series from major academic publishers (especially Polity and MIT Press), and the work of the contemporary Frankfurt Institute under its current director Stephan Lessenich anchor the contemporary scholarly infrastructure.

Internal debates within the tradition

The defining intramural dispute is the first-generation pessimism versus second-generation reconstructive optimism described above. The dispute turns on the possibility of recovering rational foundations for emancipatory critique within modernity. The first-generation late Adorno treated this as impossible without dialectical irony; the Habermasian project recovers the rational foundations through the analysis of communicative reason.

A second sustained debate concerned the relation between critical theory and political practice. The first-generation tradition (especially Adorno) maintained distance from direct political engagement; Marcuse and Habermas (in different ways) engaged more directly with political movements; the contemporary tradition engages with activist movements through portions of the contemporary work (especially the work of Fraser and Forst).

Third, the relation between Hegelian dialectical method and empirical social science has been continuously contested. The first-generation tradition maintained Hegelian methodological commitments while producing empirical work; the Habermasian tradition reconstructed the Hegelian framework into the reconstructive social theory of communicative action; the Honneth tradition continues this work through reconstructive analysis of recognition.

Fourth, the relation to feminism, race theory, and postcolonial theory has been continuously developed. The second-generation Habermasian framework engaged with feminist critique through Seyla Benhabib's work; the Fraser framework integrates gender, race, and class analysis through the recognition–redistribution framework; the contemporary critical theory continues this work.

Fifth, the relation between critical theory and empirical critical race theory, decolonial theory, and postcolonial theory has developed in recent years. The work of Amy Allen (The End of Progress, 2016) engages the decolonial critique of critical theory; the contemporary engagement extends critical theory in directions that question its Eurocentric assumptions.

Texts and transmission

The Frankfurt School corpus is gathered in the Schriften of the individual major figures: Horkheimer's Gesammelte Schriften (19 volumes, S. Fischer Verlag, 1985–96); Adorno's Gesammelte Schriften (20 volumes, Suhrkamp, 1970–86, with additional posthumous volumes); Benjamin's Gesammelte Schriften (7 volumes, Suhrkamp, 1972–89); Marcuse's Schriften (9 volumes, Suhrkamp, 1978–89); Habermas's Philosophische Texte (5 volumes, Suhrkamp, 2009).

The English-language transmission has been substantial. The Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought series at MIT Press (under the editorship of Thomas McCarthy and then James Bohman) has translated the major works of the second and third generations; the Stanford University Press Cultural Memory in the Present series has translated portions of the first-generation work. The Continuum International publishing house, Polity Press, and Verso have published portions of the Frankfurt School corpus in English.

The institutional transmission has operated through the Frankfurt Institute (under directors Horkheimer 1930–58, Adorno 1958–69, Ludwig von Friedeburg 1972–87, Axel Honneth 2001–18, Stephan Lessenich 2021–), through major academic departments (especially the Frankfurt philosophy department under the Habermas chair and successor positions), and through international networks of scholars working in the tradition.

The major journals include Critical Theory (begun 2018, published by Brill), the Constellations journal (begun 1994), the Philosophy and Social Criticism journal, and the Telos journal (which transmitted critical theory to American audiences in the 1970s and 1980s). The scholarly anchors include Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination (1973) for the first generation, Stephen Eric Bronner's Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2011), Raymond Geuss's The Idea of a Critical Theory (1981), and the Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory (Rush, ed., 2004).

The twentieth-century philosophical and social-theoretical tradition founded by the Frankfurt School that integrates Marxist analysis, Hegelian dialectic, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Weberian sociology into a critical theory of contemporary society.