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Author Information
ClaudioCorradetti
Email: [email protected]
University of Rome Tor Vergata
Italy

The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory

The Frankfurt School, known more appropriately as Critical Theory, is a philosophical and
sociological movement spread across many universities around the world. It was originally
located at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), an attached
institute at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute was founded in
1923 thanks to a donation by Felix Weil with the aim of developing Marxist studies in
Germany. After 1933, the Nazis forced its closure, and the Institute was moved to the
United States where it found hospitality at Columbia University in New York City.
The academic influence of the critical method is far reaching. Some of the key issues and
philosophical preoccupations of the School involve the critique of modernity and capitalist
society, the definition of social emancipation, as well as the detection of the pathologies of
society. Critical Theory provides a specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy with
regards to some of its central economic and political notions like commodification,
reification, fetishization and critique of mass culture.

Some of the most prominent figures of the first generation of Critical Theorists were Max
Horkheimer (1895-1973), Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979),
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Friedrich Pollock (1894-1970), Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993),
and Eric Fromm (1900-1980). Since the 1970s, a second generation began with Jürgen
Habermas, who, among other merits, contributed to the opening of a dialogue between so-
called continental and the analytic traditions. With Habermas, the Frankfurt School turned
global, influencing methodological approaches in other European academic contexts and
disciplines. It was during this phase that Richard Bernstein, a philosopher and
contemporary of Habermas, embraced the research agenda of Critical Theory and
significantly helped its development in American universities starting from the New School
for Social Research in New York.

The third generation of critical theorists, therefore, arose either from Habermas’ research
students in the United States and at Frankfurt am Main and Starnberg (1971-1982), or
from a spontaneous convergence of independently educated scholars. Therefore, tthird
generation of Critical Theory scholars consists of two groups. The first group spans a broad
time—denying the possibility of establishing any sharp boundaries. It can be said to
include also scholars such as Andrew Feenberg, even if he was a direct student of Marcuse,

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or people such as Albrecht Wellmer who became an assistant of Habermas due to the
premature death of Adorno in 1969. Klaus Offe, Josef Früchtl, Hauke Brunkhorst, Klaus
Günther, Axel Honneth, Alessandro Ferrara, Cristina Lafont, and Rainer Forst, among
others, are also members of this group. The second group of the third generation is instead
composed mostly of American scholars who were influenced by Habermas’ philosophy
during his visits to the United States.

Table of Contents
1. Critical Theory: Historical and Philosophical Background
2. What is Critical Theory?
a. Traditional and Critical Theory: Ideology and Critique
b. The Theory/Practice Problem
c. The Idea of Rationality: Critical Theory and its Discontents
Concluding Thoughts
References and Further Reading
1. Critical Theory: Historical and Philosophical
Background
Felix Weil’s father, Herman, made his fortune by exporting grain from Argentina to
Europe. In 1923, Felix decided to use his father’s money to found an institute specifically
devoted to the study of German society in the light of a Marxist approach. The initial idea
of an independently founded institute was conceived to provide for studies on the labor
movement and the origins of anti-Semitism, which at the time were being ignored in
German intellectual and academic life.

Not long after its inception, the Institute for Social Research was formally recognized by
the Ministry of Education as an entity attached to Goethe University Frankfurt. Felix could
not imagine that in the 1960s Goethe University Frankfurt would receive the epithet of
“Karl Marx University”. The first officially appointed director was Carl Grünberg (1923-9),
a Marxist professor at the University of Vienna. His contribution to the Institute was the
creation of a historical archive mainly oriented to the study of the labor movement (also
known as the Grünberg Archiv).
In 1930, Max Horkheimer succeeded to Grünberg. While continuing under a Marxist
inspiration, Horkheimer interpreted the Institute’s mission to be more directed towards an
interdisciplinary integration of the social sciences. Additionally, the Grünberg Archiv ceased
to publish and an official organ was instead launched with a much greater impact:
the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. While never officially supporting any party, the Institute
entertained intensive research exchanges with the Soviet Union.
It was under Horkheimer’s leadership that members of the Institute were able to address a
wide variety of economic, social, political and aesthetic topics, ranging from empirical
analysis to philosophical theorization. Different interpretations of Marxism and its
historical applications explain some of the hardest confrontations on economic themes
within the Institute, such as the case of Pollock’s criticism of Grossman’s standard view on
the pauperization of capitalism. This particular confrontation led Grossman to leave the
Institute. Pollock’s critical reinterpretation of Marx received support also from intellectuals
who greatly contributed to later developments of the School as, for instance, in the case of
Leo Lowenthal, Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno and Erich Fromm. In particular, with
Fromm’s development of a psychoanalytic trend at the Institute and with an influential
philosophical contribution by Hokheimer, it became clear how under his directorship the

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Institute faced a drastic turning point which characterized all its future endeavors. The
following sections, therefore, briefly introduce some of the main research patterns
introduced by Fromm and Horkheimer, respectively.

Since the beginning, psychoanalysis in the Frankfurt School was conceived in terms of a
reinterpretation of Freud and Marx. The consideration of psychoanalysis by the Frankfurt
School was certainly due to Horkheimer’s encouragement. It was Fromm, nevertheless,
who achieved a significant advancement of the discipline; his central aim was to provide,
through a synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis, “the missing link between ideological
superstructure and socio-economic base” (Jay 1966, p. 92). A radical shift though occurred
in the late 1930s, when Adorno joined the School and Fromm decided, for independent
reasons, to leave. Nevertheless, the School’s interest in psychoanalysis, particularly in
Freud’s instinct theory, remained unaltered. This was manifest in Adorno’s paper Social
Science and Sociological Tendencies in Psychoanalysis(1946), as well as in Marcuse’s book Eros
and Civilization (1955). The School’s interest in psychoanalysis coincided with a
marginalization of Marxism, a growing interest into the interrelation between
psychoanalysis and social change, as well as with Fromm’s insight into the psychic (or even
psychotic) role of the family. This interest became crucial in empirical studies of the 40s
that led, eventually, to Adorno’s co-authored work The Authoritarian Personality (1950). The
goal of this work was to explore, on the basis of empirical research making use of
questionnaires, to define a “new anthropological type”—the authoritarian personality
(Adorno et. al. 1950, quoted in Jay 1996, p. 239). Such a character was found to have
specific traits such as: compliance with conventional values, non-critical thinking, as well
as absence of introspectiveness.
As pointed out by Jay: “Perhaps some of the confusion about this question was a product of
terminological ambiguity. As a number of commentators have pointed out, there is an
important distinction that should be drawn
between authoritarianism and totalitarianism [emphasis added]. Wilhelminian and Nazi
Germany, for example, were fundamentally dissimilar in their patterns of obedience.
What The Authoritarian Personality was really studying was the character type of a
totalitarian rather than an authoritarian society. Thus, it should have been no surprise to
learn that this new syndrome was fostered by a familial crisis in which traditional paternal
authority was under fire” (Jay 1996, p. 247). Horkheimer’s leadership provided a very
distinct methodological direction and philosophical grounding to the research interests of
the Institute. As an instance of Horkheimer’s aversion to so-
called Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life), he criticized the fetishism of subjectivity and
the lack of consideration for materialist conditions of living. Furthermore, arguing against
Cartesian and Kantian philosophy, Horkheimer, by use of dialectical mediation, attempted
to rejoin all dichotomies including the divide between consciousness and being, theory and
practice, fact and value. Differently from Hegelianism or Marxism, dialectics amounted for
Horkheimer to be neither a metaphysical principle nor a historical praxis; it was not
intended as a methodological instrument. On the contrary, Horkheimer’s dialectics
functioned as the battleground for overcoming overly rigid categorizations and unhelpful
dichotomies and oppositions. It originated from criticism by Horkheimer of orthodox
Marxism's dichotomy between productive structures and ideological superstructure, as
well as positivism’s naïve separation of social facts and social interpretation.
In 1933, due to the Nazi takeover, the Institute was temporarily transferred, first to Geneva
and then in 1935 to Columbia University, New York. Two years later Horkheimer
published the ideological manifesto of the School in his Traditional and Critical
Theory ([1937] 1976) where he readdressed some of the previously introduced topics
concerning the practical and critical turn of theory. In 1938, Adorno joined the Institute

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after spending some time as an advanced student at Merton College, Oxford. He was
invited by Horkheimer to join the Princeton Radio Research Project. Gradually, Adorno
assumed a prominent intellectual leadership in the School and this led to co-authorship,
with Horkheimer, of one of the milestones works of the School, the publication of Dialectic
of Enlightenment in 1947. During the time of Germany’s Nazi seizure, the Institute remained
the only free voice publishing in German language. The backlash of this choice, though,
was a prolonged isolation from American academic life and intellectual debate, a situation
described by Adorno with the iconic expression “message in the bottle” to refer to the lack
of a public American audience. According to Wiggershaus: “The Institute disorientation in
the late 1930s made the balancing acts it had always had to perform, for example in
relation to its academic environment, even more difficult. The seminars were virtually
discussion groups for the Institute’s associates, and American students only rarely took
part in them” (1995, p. 251).
Interestingly, and not surprisingly, one of the major topics of study was Nazism. This led to
two different approaches in the School. One marshaled by Neumann, Gurland and
Kirchheimer and oriented mainly to the analysis of legal and political issues by
consideration of economic substructures; the other, instead, guided by Horkheimer and
focusing on the notion of psychological irrationalism as a source of obedience and
domination (see Jay 1996, p. 166).

In 1941, Horkheimer moved to Pacific Palisades, near Los Angeles. He built himself a
bungalow near other German intellectuals, among whom were Bertold Brecht and Thomas
Mann as well as with other people interested in working for the film industry (Wiggershaus
1995, p. 292). Other fellows like Marcuse, Pollock and Adorno followed shortly, whereas
some remained in New York. Only Benjamin refused to leave Europe and in 1940, while
attempting to cross the border between France and Spain at Port Bou, committed suicide.
Some months later, Arendt also crossed the same border, passing on Adorno Benjamin’s
last writing: Theses on the Philosophy of History.
The division of the School into two different premises, New York and California, was
paralleled by the development of two autonomous research programs led, on the one hand,
by Pollock and, on the other hand, by Horkheimer and Adorno. Pollock directed his
research to study anti-Semitism. This research line culminated into an international
conference organized in 1944 as well as a four-volume work titled Studies in Anti-Semitism;
Horkheimer and Adorno, instead, developed studies on the reinterpretation of the
Hegelian notion of dialectics as well as engaged into the study of anti-Semitic tendencies.
The most relevant publication in this respect by the two was The Authoritarian
Personality or Studies in Prejudice. After this period, only few devoted supporters remained
faithful to the project of the School. These included Horkheimer himself, Pollock, Adorno,
Lowenthal and Weil. In 1946, however, the Institute was officially invited to join Goethe
University Frankfurt.
Upon return to West Germany, Horkheimer presented his inaugural speech for the
reopening of the institute on 14 November 1951. One week later he inaugurated the
academic year as a new Rector of the University. Yet, what was once a lively intellectual
community became soon a small team of very busy people. Horkheimer was involved in
the administration of the university, whereas Adorno was constantly occupied with
different projects and teaching duties. In addition, in order to keep US citizenship, Adorno
had to go back to California where he earned his living by conducting qualitative research
analysis. Horkheimer, instead, attempted to attract back his former assistant Marcuse
when the opportunity arose for a successor to Gadamer’s chair in Frankfurt, but neither
this initiative nor further occasions were successful. Marcuse remained in the United
States and was offered a full position at Brandeis University. Adorno returned to Germany

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in August 1953 and was soon involved again in empirical research, combining quantitative
and qualitative methods in the analysis of industrial relations for the Mannesmann
Company. In 1955, he took over Horkheimer position as director of the Institute for Social
Research, and on 1 July 1957 he was appointed full professor in philosophy and sociology.
Even though greatly influential in philosophy, Adorno’s most innovative contribution is
unanimously thought to be in the field of music theory and aesthetics. Some of his
significant works in this area included Philosophy of Modern Music (1949) and later Vers une
Musique Informelle. In 1956, Horkheimer retired just when several important publications
were appearing, such as Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization and the essay’s
collection Sociologica. These events marked the precise intellectual phase of maturity
reached at that time by the Frankfurt School.
The sixties—which saw famous student protests across Europe—also saw the publication of
Adorno’s fundamental work, Negative Dialectics (1966). This study, while far from either
materialism or metaphysics, maintained important connections with an “open and non-
systemic” notion of dialectics. It appeared only a few years later than One-Dimensional
Man (1964), where Marcuse introduced the notion of “educational dictatorship”— a
strategy intended for the advancement of material conditions aimed at the realization of a
higher notion of the good. While Marcuse, quite ostensibly, sponsored the student
upheavals, Adorno maintained a much moderate and skeptical profile.
In 1956, Habermas joined the Institute as Adorno’s assistant. He was soon involved in an
empirical study titled Students and Politics. The text, though, was rejected by Horkheimer
and it did not come out, as it should have, in the series of the Frankfurt Contributions to
Sociology. Only later, in 1961, it appeared in the series Sociological Texts (see Wiggershaus
1995, p. 555). Horkheimer’s aversion towards Habermas was even more evident when he
refused to supervise his Habilitation. Habermas obtained his Habilitation under the
supervision of Abendroth at Marburg, where he addressed the topic of the bourgeois
formation of public sphere. This study was published by Habermas in 1962 under the title
of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, just before he handed in his Habilitation.
With the support of Gadamer he was, then, appointed professor at Heidelberg. Besides his
achievements, both in academia and as an activist, the young Habermas contributed
towards the construction of a critical self-awareness of the socialist student groups around
the country (the so-called SDS, Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund). It was in this
context that Habermas reacted to the extremism of Rudi Dutschke, the radical leader of the
students' association who criticized him for defending a non-effective emancipatory view.
It was principally against Dutschke’s positions that Habermas, during a public assembly
labeled such positions with the epitome of “left-wing fascism”. How representative this
expression was of Habermas’ views on student protests has often been a matter of
contention.
Discussions of the notion of emancipation had been at the center of the Frankfurt School
political debate since the beginning. The concept of emancipation (Befreiung in German),
covers indeed a wide semantic spectrum. Literarily it means “liberation from”. The notion
spans, therefore, from a sense related to action-transformation to include also
revolutionary action.
After his nomination in 1971 as a director of the Max Planck Institute for Research into the
Conditions of Life in the Scientific-Technical World at Starnberg, Habermas left Frankfurt. He
returned there only in 1981 after having completed The Theory of Communicative Action. This
decade was crucial for the definition of the School’s research objectives. In The Theory of
Communicative Action (1984b [1981]), Habermas provided a model for social complexities
and action coordination based upon the original interpretation of classical social theorists
as well as the philosophy of Searle’s Speech Acts theory. Within this work, it also became
evident how the large amount of empirical analysis conducted by Habermas’ research team
on topics concerning pathologies of society, moral development and so on was elevated to a

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functionalistic model of society oriented to an emancipatory purpose. The assumption was
that language itself embedded a normative force capable of realizing action co-ordination
within society. In this respect, Habermas defined these as the “unavoidable pragmatic
presuppositions of mutual understanding”. Social action whose coordination-function
relies on the same pragmatic presuppositions was seen as connected to a justification
discourse based on the satisfaction of specific validity-claims.
Habermas described discourse theory as relying on three types of validity-claims raised by
communicative action. He claimed that it was only when the conditions of truth, rightness
and sincerity were raised by speech-acts that social coordination could be obtained. As
noticed in the opening sections, differently from the first generation of Frankfurt School
intellectuals, Habermas contributed greatly to bridging the continental and analytical
traditions, integrating aspects belonging to American Pragmatism, Anthropology and
Semiotics with Marxism and Critical Social Theory.

Just one year before Habermas’ retirement in 1994, the directorship of the Institut für
Sozialforschung was assumed by Honneth. This inaugurated a new phase of research in
Critical Theory. Honneth, indeed, revisited the Hegelian notion of recognition
(Anerkennung) in terms of a new prolific paradigm in social and political enquiry. Honneth
began his collaboration with Habermas in 1984, when he was hired as an assistant
professor. After a period of academic appointments in Berlin and Konstanz, in 1996 he
took Habermas’ chair in Frankfurt.
Honneth’s central tenet, the struggle for recognition, represents a leitmotiv in his research
and preeminently in one of his most important books, The Struggle for Recognition: The
Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts ([1986]). This work represents a mature expansion of
what was partially addressed in his dissertation, a work published under the title of Critique
of Power: Stages of Reflection of a Critical Social Theory (1991 [1985]). One of the core themes
addressed by Honneth consisted in the claim that, contrary to what Critical Theory initially
emphasized, more attention should have been paid to the notion of conflict in society and
among societal groups. Conflict represents the internal movement of historical
advancement and human emancipation, falling therefore within the core theme of critical
social theory. The so-called “struggle for recognition” is what best characterizes the fight
for emancipation by social groups. This fight represents a subjective negative experience of
domination—a form of domination attached to misrecognitions. To come to terms with
negations of subjective forms of self-realization means to be able to transform social
reality. Normatively, though, acts of social struggle activated by forms of misrecognition
point to the role that recognition plays as a crucial criterion for grounding intersubjectivity.
Honneth inaugurated a new research phase in Critical Theory. Indeed, his communitarian
turn has been paralleled by the work of some of his fellow scholars. Brunkhorst, for
instance, in his Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community (2005 [2002]),
canvasses a line of thought springing from the French Revolution of 1789 to contemporary
times: the notion of fraternity. By the use of historical conceptual reconstruction and
normative speculation, Brunkhorst presented the pathologies of the contemporary
globalized world and the function that solidarity would play.
The confrontation with American debate, initiated systematically by the work of
Habermas, became soon an obsolete issue in the third generation of critical theorists—not
only because the group was truly international, merging European and American scholars.
The work of Forst testifies, indeed, of the synthesis between analytical methodological
rigor and classical themes of the Frankfurt School. Thanks to Habermas’ intellectual
opening, the third generation of critical theorists engaged into dialogue with French post-
modern philosophers like Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard and so forth, which according to
Foucault are the legitimate interpreters of some central aspects of the Frankfurt School.

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2. What is Critical Theory?
“What is ‘theory’?” asked Horkheimer in the opening of his essay Traditional and Critical
Theory[1937]. The discussion about method has been always a constant topic for those
critical theorists who have attempted since the beginning to clarify the specificity of what it
means to be “critical”. A primary broad distinction that Horkheimer drew was that of the
difference in method between social theories, scientific theories and critical social theories.
While the first two categories had been treated as instances of traditional theories, the
latter connoted the methodology the Frankfurt School adopted.

Traditional theory, whether deductive or analytical, has always focused on coherency and
on the strict distinction between theory and praxis. Along Cartesian lines, knowledge has
been treated as grounded upon self-evident propositions or, at least, upon propositions
based on self-evident truths. Accordingly, traditional theory has proceeded to explain facts
by application of universal laws, that is, by subsumption of a particular to a universal in
order to either confirm or disconfirm this. A verificationist procedure of this kind was what
positivism considered to be the best explicatory account for the notion of praxis in
scientific investigation. If one were to defend the view according to which scientific truths
should pass the test of empirical confirmation, then one would commit oneself to the idea
of an objective world. Knowledge would be simply a mirror of reality. This view is firmly
rejected by critical theorists.

Under several aspects, what Critical Theory wants to reject in traditional theory is precisely
this “picture theory” of language and knowledge as that defined by “the first” Wittgenstein
in his Tractatus. According to such a view, later abandoned by “the second” Wittgenstein,
the logical form of propositions consists in showing a possible fact and in saying whether
this is true or false. For example, the proposition “it rains today” shows both the possibility
of the fact that “it rains today” and it affirms that it is the case that “it rains today.” In order
to check whether something is or is not the case, one must verify empirically whether the
stated fact occurs or not. This implies that the condition of truth and falsehood
presupposes an objective structure of the world.

Horkheimer and his followers rejected the notion of objectivity in knowledge by pointing,
among other things, to the fact that the object of knowledge is itself embedded into a
historical and social process: “The facts which our senses present to us are socially
preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and
through the historical character of the perceiving organ” (Horkheimer [1937] in Ingram
and Simon-Ingram 1992, p. 242). Further, with a rather Marxist twist, Horkheimer noticed
also that phenomenological objectivity is a myth because it is dependent upon
“technological conditions” and the latter are sensitive to the material conditions of
production. Critical Theory aims thus to abandon naïve conceptions of knowledge-
impartiality. Since intellectuals themselves are not disembodied entities observing from a
God’s viewpoint, knowledge can be obtained only from a societal embedded perspective of
interdependent individuals.

If traditional theory is evaluated by considering its practical implications, then no practical

consequences can be actually inferred. Indeed, the finality of knowledge as a mirror of
reality is mainly a theoretically-oriented tool aimed at separating knowledge from action,
speculation from social transformative enterprise. Critical Theory, instead, characterizes
itself as a method contrary to the “fetishization” of knowledge, one which considers
knowledge as something rather functional to ideology critique and social emancipation. In

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the light of such finalities, knowledge becomes social criticism and the latter translates
itself into social action, that is, into the transformation of reality.

Critical Theory has been strongly influenced by Hegel’s notion of dialectics for the
conciliation of socio-historical oppositions as well as by Marx’s theory of economy and
society and the limits of Hegel’s “bourgeois philosophy”. Critical Theory, indeed, has
expanded Marxian criticisms of capitalist society by formulating patterns of social
emancipatory strategies. Whereas Hegel found that Rationality had finally come to terms
with Reality with the birth of the modern nation state (which in his eyes was the Prussian
state), Marx insisted on the necessity of reading the development of rationality through
history in terms of a class struggle. The final stage of this struggle would have seen the
political and economic empowerment of the proletariat. Critical theorists, in their turn,
rejected both the metaphysical apparatus of Hegel and the eschatological aspects
connected to Marx’s theory. On the contrary, Critical Theory analyses were oriented to the
understanding of society and pointed rather to the necessity of establishing open systems
based on immanent forms of social criticism. The starting point was the Marxian view on
the relation between a system of production paralleled by a system of beliefs. Ideology,
which according to Marx was totally explicable through an underlying system of
production, for critical theorists had to be analyzed in its own respect and as a non-
economically reducible form of expression of human rationality. Such a revision of
Marxian categories became extremely crucial, then, in the reinterpretation of the notion of
dialectics for the analysis of capitalism. Dialectics, as a method of social criticism, was
interpreted as following from the contradictory nature of capitalism as a system of
exploitation. Indeed, it was on the basis of such inherent contradictions that capitalism
was seen to open up to a collective form of ownership of the means of production, namely,
socialism.
a. Traditional and Critical Theory: Ideology and Critique
From these conceptually rich implications one can observe some of the constant topics
which have characterized critical social theory, that is, the normativity of social philosophy
as something distinct from classical descriptive sociology, the everlasting crux on the
theory/practice relation and, finally, ideology critique. These are the primary tasks that a
critical social theory must accomplish in order to be defined as “critical”. Crucial in this
sense is the understanding and the criticism of the notion of “ideology”.

In defining the senses to be assigned to the notion of ideology, within its descriptive-
empirical sense “one might study the biological and quasi-biological properties of the
group” or, alternatively, “the cultural or socio-cultural features of the group” (Geuss 1981,
p. 4 ff). Ideology, in the descriptive sense, incorporates both “discursive” and “non-
discursive” elements. That is, in addition to propositional contents or performatives, it
includes gestures, ceremonies and so forth (Geuss 1981, pp. 6-8); also, it shows a
systematic set of beliefs—a world-view—characterized by conceptual schemes. A variant of
the descriptive sense is the “pejorative” version where a form of ideology is judged
negatively in view of its epistemic, functional or genetic properties (Geuss 1981, p. 13). On
the other hand, if one takes “ideology” according to a positive sense, then, reference is not
with something empirically given, but rather with a “desideratum”, a “verité a faire”
(Geuss 1981, p. 23). Critical Theory, distances itself from scientific theories because, while
the latter understands knowledge as an objectified product, the former serves the purpose
of human emancipation through consciousness and self-reflection.

If the task of critical social theory is to evaluate the degree of rationality of any system of
social domination in accordance to standards of justice, then ideological criticism has the

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function of unmasking wrong rationalizations of present or past injustices—that is,
ideology in the factual and negative sense—such as in the case of the belief that “women
are inferior to men, or blacks to whites…”. Thus ideological criticism aims at proposing
alternative practicable ways for constructing social bounds. Critical Theory moves
precisely in between the contingency of objectified non-critical factual reality and the
normativity of utopian idealizations, that is, in between the so-called “theory/practice”
problem (see Ingram 1990, p. xxiii). Marcuse, for instance, in the essay Philosophie und
Kritische Theorie (1937), defends the view that Critical Theory characterizes itself as being
neither philosophy tout court nor pure science, as it claims to be instead an overly
simplistic approach to Marxism. Critical Theory has the following tasks: to clarify the
sociopolitical determinants that explain the limits of analysis of a certain philosophical
view as well as to transcend the use of imagination—the actual limits of imagination. From
all this, two notions of rationality result: the first attached to the dominant form of power
and deprived of any normative force; the second characterized, on the contrary, by a
liberating force based on a yet-to-come scenario. This difference in forms of rationality is
what Habermas has later presented, mutatis mutandis, in terms of the distinction between
instrumental and communicative rationality. While the first form of rationality is oriented
to a means-ends understanding of human and environmental relations, the second form is
oriented to subordinating human action to the respect of certain normative criteria of
action validity. This latter point echoes quite distinctively Kant’s principle of morality
according to which human beings must be always treated as “ends in themselves” and
never as mere “means”. Critical Theory and Habermas, in particular, are no exception to
these view on rationality, since they both see Ideologiekritik not just as a form of
“moralizing criticism”, but as a form of knowledge, that is, as a cognitive operation for
disclosing the falsity of conscience (Geuss 1981, p. 26).

This point is strictly connected to another conceptual category playing a great role within
Critical Theory, the concept of interest and in particular the distinction between “true
interests” and “false interests”. As Geuss has suggested, there are two possible ways to
propose such separation: “the perfect-knowledge approach” and “the optimal conditions
approach” (1981, p. 48). Were one to follow the first option, the outcome would be one of
falling into the side of acritical utopianism. On the contrary, “the optimal conditions
approach” is reinterpreted, at least for Habermas, in terms of an “ideal speech situation”
that by virtually granting an all-encompassing exchange of arguments, it assumes the
function of providing a counterfactual normative check on actual discursive contexts.
Within such a model, epistemic knowledge and social critical reflection are attached to
unavoidable pragmatic-transcendental conditions that are universally the same for all.

The universality of such epistemological status differs profoundly from Adorno’s

contextualism where individual epistemic principles grounding cultural criticism and self-
reflection are recognized to be legitimately different along time and history. Both versions
are critical in that they remain faithful to the objective of clearing false consciousness from
ignorance and domination; but whereas Habermas sets a high standard of validity/non-
validity for discourse theory, Adorno’s historicism remains sensitive to degrees of
rationality that are context-dependent. In one of his later writings of 1969 (republished in
Adorno 2003, pp. 292 ff.), Adorno provides a short but dense interpretation in eight theses
on the significance and the mission of Critical Theory. The central message is that Critical
Theory, while drawing from Marxism, must avoid hypostatization and closure into a
single Weltanschauung on the pain of losing its “critical” capacity. By interpreting
rationality as a form of self-reflective activity, Critical Theory represents a particular form
of rational enquiry that must remain capable of distinguishing, immanently, ideology from

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a Hegelian “Spirit”. The mission of Critical Theory, therefore, is not exhausted by a
theoretical understanding of social reality; as a matter of fact, there is a strict
interconnection between critical understanding and transformative action: theory and
practice are interconnected.

b. The Theory/Practice Problem

During the entire course of its historical development, Critical Theory has always
confronted itself with one crucial methodological concern: the “theory/practice” problem.
To this puzzle critical theorists have provided different answers, such that it is not possible
to regroup them into a homogeneous set of views. In order to understand what the
significance of the theory/practice problem is, it is useful to refer back to David Hume’s
“is/ought” question. What Hume demonstrated through the separation of the “is” from the
“ought” was the non-derivability of prescriptive statements from descriptive ones. This
separation has been at the basis of those ethical theories that have not recognized moral
statements as a truth-property. In other words, alternative reading to the “is/ought”
relation have defended either a cognitivist approach (truth-validity of moral statements)
or, alternatively, a non-cognitivist approach (no truth-validity), as in the case of
emotivism.

Even if characterized by several internal differences, what Critical Theory added to this
debate was the consideration both of the anthropological as well as the psychological
dynamics motivating masses and structuring ideologies.

As far as the anthropological determinants in closing up the gap of the “theory/practice”

problem is concerned, it is possible to take into consideration Habermas’ Knowledge and
Human Interest([1968] 1971). There Habermas combined a transcendental argument with
an anthropological one by defending the view according to which humans have
an interest in knowledge insofar as such interest is attached to the preservation of self-
identity. Yet, to preserve one’s identity is to go beyond mere compliance
with biological survival. As Habermas clarifies: “[…] human interests […] derive both from
nature and from the cultural break with nature” (Habermas [1968], in Ingram and Simon-
Ingram,1992, p. 263). On the contrary, to preserve one’s identity means to find in the
emancipatory force of knowledge the fundamental interest of human beings. Indeed, the
grounding of knowledge into the practical domain has quite far-reaching implications as,
for instance, that interest and knowledge in Habermas find their unity in self-reflection,
that is, in “knowledge for the sake of knowledge” (Habermas [1968], in Ingram and Simon-
Ingram 1992, p. 264).

The Habermasian answer to the theory/practice problem comes from the criticism of non-
cognitivist theories. If it is true, as non-cognitivists claim, that prescriptive claims are
grounded on commands and do not have any cognitive content which can be justified
through an exchange of public arguments, it follows that they cannot provide an answer to
the difference between what is a “convergent behavior”, established through normative
power on the basis, for example, of punishment and what is instead the notion of
“following a valid rule”. In the latter case, there seems to be required an extra layer of
justification, namely, a process through which a norm can be defined as valid. Such process
is for Habermas conceived in terms of a counterfactual procedure for a discursive exchange
of arguments. This procedure is aimed at justifying those generalizable interests
that ought to be obeyed because they pass the test of moral validity.

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The Habermasian answer to the is/ought question has several important implications. One
implication, perhaps the most important one, is the criticism of positivism and of the
epistemic status of knowledge. On the basis of Habermasian premises, indeed, there can be
no objective knowledge, as positivists claim, detached from intersubjective forms of
understanding. Since knowledge is strictly embedded in serving human interests, it follows
that it cannot be considered value-neutral and objectively independent.

A further line of reflection on the theory/practice problem comes from psychoanalysis

where a strict separation has been maintained between the “is” and “ought” and false
“oughts” have been unmasked through the clarification of the psychological mechanisms
constructing desires. Accordingly, critical theorists like Fromm referred to Freud’s notions
of the unconscious which contributed defining ideologies in terms of “substitute
gratifications”. Psychoanalysis represented such a strong component within the research of
the Frankfurt School that even Adorno in his article Freudian Theory and the Pattern of
Fascist Propaganda (1951) analyzed Fromm’s interconnection between sadomasochism
and fascism. Adorno noticed how a parallel can be drawn between the loss of self-
confidence and estimation in hierarchical domination, on the one hand, and compensation
through self-confidence which can be re-obtained in active forms of dominations, on the
other hand. Such mechanisms of sadomasochism, though, are not only proper of fascism.
As Adorno noticed, they reappear under different clothes in modern cultural industry
through the consumption of so-called “cultural commodities”.

Notwithstanding the previous discussions, the greatest philosophical role of

psychoanalysis within Frankfurt School was exemplified by Marcuse’s thought. In his case,
the central problem became that of interpreting the interest in the genealogical roots of
capitalist ideology. How can one provide an account of class interests after the collapse of
classes? How can one formulate, on the basis of the insights provided by psychoanalysis,
the criteria through which it can be distinguished true from false interests? The way
adopted by Marcuse was with a revisitation of Freud’s theory of instinctual needs.
Differently from Freud’s tensions between nature and culture and Fromm’s total social
shaping of natural instincts, Marcuse defended a third—median—perspective where
instincts were considered only partially shaped by social relations (Ingram 1990, p. 93 ff).
Through such a solution, Marcuse overcame the strict opposition
between biological and historical rationality that was preventing the resolution of the
theory/practice problem. He did so by recalling the annihilation of individual’s sexual
energy laying at the basis of organized society and recalling, in its turn, the archetypical
scenario of a total fulfillment of pleasure. Marcuse took imagination as a way to obtain
individual reconciliation with social reality: a reconciliation, though, with an underlying
unsolved tension. Marcuse conceived of overcoming such tensions through the
aestheticization of basic instincts liberated by the work of imagination. The problem with
Marcuse’s rationalization of basic instincts was that by relying excessively on human
biology, it became impossible to distinguish between the truth and the falsity of socially
dependent needs (see on this Ingram 1990, p. 103).

c. The Idea of Rationality: Critical Theory and its

Discontents
For Critical Theory, rationality has always been a crucial theme in the analysis of modern
society as well as of its pathologies. Whereas the early Frankfurt School and Habermas
viewed rationality as a historical process whose unity was taken as a precondition for social
criticism, later critical philosophies, influenced mainly by post-modernity, privileged a

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rather more fragmented notion of (ir)rationality manifested by social institutions. In the
latter views, social criticism could not act as a self-reflective form of rationality, since
rationality cannot be conceived as a process incorporated in history. One point shared by
all critical theorists was that forms of social pathology were connected to deficits of
rationality which, in their turn, manifested interconnections with the psychological status
of the mind (see Honneth 2004, p. 339 ff.).

In non-pathological social aggregations, individuals were said to be capable of achieving

cooperative forms of self-actualizations only if freed from coercive mechanisms of
domination. Accordingly, for the Frankfurt School, modern processes of bureaucratic
administration exemplified what Weber considered as an all-encompassing domination of
formal rationality over substantive values. In Weber, rationality was to be interpreted as
purposive rationality, that is, as a form of instrumental reason. Accordingly, the use of
reason did not amount to formulating prescriptive models of society but aimed at
achieving goals through the selection of the best possible means of action. If in Lukács the
proletariat was to represent the only dialectical way out from the total control of formal
rationality, Horkheimer and Adorno saw technological domination of human action as the
negation of the inspiring purposes of Enlightenment. In the already mentioned work—
>Dialectic of Enlightenment (1969 [1947])—Horkheimer and Adorno emphasized the role
of knowledge and technology as a “means of exploitation” of labor and viewed the dialectic
of reason as the archetypical movement of human self-liberation. Nevertheless, the
repression by formal-instrumental rationality of natural chaos pointed to the possible
resurgence of natural violence under a different vest, so that the liberation from nature
through instrumental reason opened to the possibility of domination by a totalitarian state
(see Ingram 1990, p. 63).

According to this view, reason had been seen essentially as a form of control over nature
characterizing humanity since its inception, that is, since those attempts aimed at
providing a mythological explanation of cosmic forces. The purpose served by instrumental
rationality was essentially that of promoting self-preservation, even if this goal turned
paradoxically into the fragmentation of bourgeois individuality that, once deprived of any
substantive value, became merely formal and thus determined by external influences of
mass-identity in a context of cultural industry.

Rationality, thus, began assuming a double significance: on the one hand, as traditionally
recognized by German idealism, it was conceived as the primary source of human
emancipation; on the other, it was conceived as the premise of totalitarianism. If, as Weber
believed, modern rationalization of society came to a formal reduction of the power of
rationality, it followed that hyper-bureaucratization of society led not just to a complete
separation between facts and values but also to a total disinterest in the latter forms.
Nevertheless, for Critical Theory it remained essential to defend the validity of social
criticism on the basis of the idea that humanity is embedded in a historical learning
process where clash is due to the actualization of reason re-establishing power-balances
and struggles for group domination.

Given such a general framework on rationality, it can be said that Critical Theory has
undergone several paradigm revolutions, both internally and externally. First of all,
Habermas himself has suggested a further pre-linguistic line of enquiry by making appeal
to the notion of “authenticity” and “imagination”. This suggests a radical reformulation of
the same notion of “truth” and “reason” in the light of its metaphorical capacities of
signification (see Habermas 1984a). Secondly, the commitment of Critical Theory to

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universal validity and universal pragmatics has been widely criticized by post-structuralists
and post-modernists who have instead insisted respectively on the hyper-contextualism of
the forms of linguistic rationality, as well as on the substitution of a criticism of ideology
with genealogical criticism. While Derrida’s deconstructive method has shown how binary
opposition collapses when applied to the semantic level, so that meaning can only be
contextually constructed, Foucault has oriented his criticisms to the supposedly
emancipatory power of universal reason by showing how forms of domination permeate
micro-levels of power-control such as in sanatoriums, educational and religious bodies and
so on. The control of life—known as bio-power—manifests itself in the attempt of
normalizing and constraining individuals’ behaviors and psychic lives. For Foucault,
reason is embedded into such practices which display the multiple layers of un-
rationalized force. The activity of the analyst in this sense is not far from the same activity
of the participant: there is no objective perspective which can be defended. Derrida, for
instance, while pointing to the Habermasian idea of pragmatic of communication, still
maintained a distinct thesis of a restless deconstructive potential of any constructing
activity, so that no unavoidable pragmatic presuppositions nor idealizing conditions of
communication could survive deconstruction. On the other hand, Habermasian theory of
communicative action and discourse ethics, while remaining sensitive to contexts,
pretended to defend transcendental conditions of discourse which, if violated, were seen to
lead to performative contradictions. Last but not least, to the Habermasian role of
consensus or agreement in discursive models, Foucault objected that rather than a
regulatory principle, a true critical approach would simply enact a command in case of
“nonconsensuality” (see Rabinow, ed. 1984, p. 379 ff).
3. Concluding Thoughts
The debate between Foucault and Critical Theory—in particular with Habermas—is quite
illuminating of the common critical-universalist orientations of the first phase of the
Frankfurt School versus the diverging methodologies defended starting from the
Habermasian interpretation of modernity. For Foucault it was not correct to propose a
second-order theory for defining what rationality is. Rationality is not to be found in
abstract forms. On the contrary, what social criticism can only aim to achieve is the
unmasking of deeply enmeshed forms of irrationality deposited in contingent and
historical institutional embeddings. Genealogical methods, though, do not reject the idea
that (ir)-rationality is part of history; on the contrary, they rather pretend to illuminate
abstract and procedural rational models by dissecting and analyzing concrete institutional
social practices through immanent criticism. To this views, Habermas has objected that
any activity of rational criticism presupposes unavoidable conditions in order to justify the
pretence of validity of its same exercise. This rebuttal reopened the demands of
transcendental conditions for immanent criticism revealed along the same pragmatic
conditions of social criticism. For Habermas, criticism is possible only if universal
standards of validity are recognized and only if understanding (Verständigung) and
agreement (Einverständnis) are seen as interconnected practices.
A further line of criticism against Habermas, one which included also a target to Critical
Theory as a whole, came from scholars like Chantal Mouffe (2005). What she noticed is
that in the notion of consensus it nested a surrendering to a genuine engagement into
“political agonism”. If, as Mouffe claimed, the model of discursive action is bound to the
achievement of consensus, then, what rolecan be left to politics once agreement is
obtained? The charge of eliminating the consideration of political action from “the
political” has been extended by Mouffe also to previous critical theorists such as
Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse. Criticism concerned the non-availability of context-
specific political guidance answering the question “What is to be done?” (see Chambers
2004, p. 219 ff.). What has been noticed is that whereas Critical Theory has aimed at

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 fostering human emancipation, it has remained incapable of specifying a political action-
strategy for social change. For the opponents to the Critical Theory paradigm, a clear
indication in this sense was exemplified by Marcuse’s idea of “the Great Refusal”, one
predicating abstention from real political engagement and pretences of transformation of
the capitalist economy and the democratic institutions (Marcuse 1964). It was indeed in
view of the reformulation of the Critical Theory ambition of presenting “realistic utopias”,
that some of the representatives of the third generation directed their attention. Axel
Honneth, for instance, starting from a revisitation of the Hegelian notion of (mis)-
recognition and through a research phase addressing social pathologies, has proposed in
one of his latest studies a revisited version of socialism, as in The Idea of Socialism: Towards
a Renewal (2017). Nancy Fraser, instead, by focusing on the notion of redistribution has
provided key elements in understanding how it is possible to overcome economic
inequalities and power-imbalances in post-industrial societies where cultural affiliations
are no longer significant sources of power. In his turn, Alessandro Ferrara along his recent
monograph The Democratic Horizon (2014), has revived the paradigm of political liberalism
by addressing the significance of democracy and tackled next the problem of
hypepluralism and multiple democracies. For Ferrara, what is inherent to democratic
thinking is innovation and openness. This notion bears conceptual similarities with what
Kant and Arendt understood in terms of “broad mindedness”. Seyla Benhabib, along
similar lines, has seeked to clarify the significance of the Habermasian dual-track model of
democracy, as one based on the distinction between moral issues that are proper of the
institutional level (universalism) and ethical issues characterizing, instead, informal public
deliberations (pluralism). Whereas the requirement of a universal consensus pertains only
to the institutional sphere, the ethical domain is instead characterized by a plurality of
views confronting each other across different life-systems. Benhabib’s views, by making
explicit several Habermasian assumptions, aim to countervail both post-structuralist
worries as well as post-modern charges of political action ineffectiveness of Critical Theory
models. Finally, Forst’s philosophical preoccupation has been that of addressing the
American philosophical debate with the specific aim of constructing an alternative
paradigm to that of liberalism and communitarianism. Forst’s attempt has integrated
analytic and continental traditions by radicalizing along transcendental lines some core
Habermasian intuitions on rights and constitutional democracy. In his collections of
essays, The Right to Justification, Forst suggests a transformation of the Habermasian “co-
originality thesis” into a monistic “right to justification”. This move is aimed at suggesting
an alternative and hopefully more coherent route of explanation for the understanding of
the liberal constitutional experience (Forst, [2007] 2014, see also Forst, [2010] 2011).
4. References and Further Reading
 Adorno, Theodor W. et al. The Authoritarian Personality, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950.
 Adorno, Theodor W. Eine Bildmonographie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003.
 Adorno, Theodor W. “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” (1951), in Arato, Andrew and
Eike Gebhardt (eds.). The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Continuum: New York, 1982.
 Brunkhorst, Hauke. Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community, trans. by J. Flynn,
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, [2002] 2005.
 Chambers, Simone. “The Politics of Critical Theory”, in Fred Rush Fred (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to
Critical Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
 Couzens, David and Thomas McCarthy. Critical Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.
 Ferrara, Alessandro. The Democratic Horizon. Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
 Forst, Rainer. “The Justification of Human Rights and the Basic Right to Justification. A Reflexive
Approach”, Ethics 120:4 (2010), 711-40, reprinted in Claudio Claudio (ed.). Philosophical Dimensions of
Human Rights. Some Contemporary Views, Dordrecht: Springer 2011.
 Forst, Rainer. The Right to Justification. Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice, New York, NY:
Columbia University Press, 2014.

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 Geuss, Raymond. The Idea of a Critical Theory. Habermas & the Frankfurt School, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1981.
 Habermas, Jürgen. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press, [1968] 1971.
 Habermas, Jürgen. “Questions and Counter-Questions”, Praxis International 4:3 (1984a).
 Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, vols. 1 and 2, Boston: Beacon Press, [1981] 1984b.
 Honneth, Axel. Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. by Kenneth Baynes.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, [1985] 1991.
 Honneth, Axel. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. by Joel Anderson.
Cambridge: Polity Press, [1986] 1995.
 Honneth, Axel. “The Intellectual legacy of Critical Theory”, in Fred Rush (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to
Critical Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
 Honneth, Axel. The Idea of Socialism: towards a Renewal, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2017.
 Horkheimer, Max. “Traditional and Critical Theory”, in Paul Connerton (ed.). Critical Sociology: Selected
Readings, Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1937] 1976.
 Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Continuum, [1947] 1969.
 Ingram, David. Critical Theory and Philosophy, St. Paul: Paragon House, 1990.
 Ingram, David and Julia Simon-Ingram. Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, St. Paul: Paragon House,
1992.
 Jay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
 Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, [1968], 1971.
 Marcuse, Herbert. “Philosophie und Kritische Theorie”, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung VI:3 (1937).
 Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, Boston:
Beacon Press, 1964.
 Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox, London: Verso, 2005.
 Rabinow, Paul (ed.). “Politics and Ethics: An Interview”, in The Foucault Reader, New York: Pantheon, 1984.
 Rush, Fred. Critical Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
 Wiggershaus, Rolf. The Frankfurt School, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995.
 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Routledge, 2001 [1st English edition 1922].

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