Lecture 1 - Introduction, Honneth

Question 1

Twofold of critical theory

Answer 1

talks about what is going wrong in society and how to fix it

Question 2

Background Frankfurt school:

Answer 2

• Institute for social research
• Closed by Nazis
• Fled to US (California) and back after WWII

Question 3

Historical context Frankfurt school

Answer 3

• Historical: interbellum
• Cultural/economical: Hollywood (roaring 20’s) and stock market crash (30’s)
• Philosophical: Marxism/german conservatism
• Political: hegemony of liberalism, rising antisemitism, and emergence of Nazism/communism
•  Collective disappointment: how could enlightenment produce this (such turmoil in world as seen above)?

Question 4

Dialectic of enlightenment

Answer 4

• Made Frankfurt school the Frankfurt school
• Horkheimer’s ideological manifesto
• Critical theory is not scientific theory: it does not aim at knowledge as an objectified product, has emancipatory aim to emancipate from what society is now
• Aim: immanent form of social criticism, human emancipation through consciousness and self-reflection (eg changing the world by thinking it differently)

Question 5

Enlightenment as a myth

Answer 5

Enlightenment is parallel to Odysseus outsmarting everyone: with use of rationality, you can get best of both worlds (..)

Question 6

Dialectic of enlightenment key points:

Answer 6

• Explaining disappointment of enlightenment
• Central thesis: myth is already enlightenment, and: enlightenment reverts to mythology (stories that we tell ourselves)
• Economical: increase of productivity which creates more just world also affords a more disproportionate advantage for those controlling it
• Culturally: art is becoming business
• Politically: political actors are not actually that, they just represent economic verdicts passed long ago

Question 7

Axel Honneth: social pathology of reason, main points of critical theory:

Answer 7

• Idea of historically effective (=develops over time) reason (unity of single rationality in the diversity of established convictions)
• Social-theoretical negativism: lack of socially effective rationality because of pathological deformation by capitalism (ex: film industry)
• We have to overcome social suffering caused by a socially deficient rationality (=instrumentality, reason as means to an end)
• Maintenance of most highly developed standard of rationality (rational universal) needed to reach a successful form of socialization
• All members of society need socially effective rationality for self-actualization / meaningful life (individual level)

Question 8

Sources of these main points by Honneth:

Answer 8

• Kant: immanent norms of enlightenment, antiauthoritarianism
• Hegel: rational universal, unity in difference (less personal than kant)
• Marx: critique of capitalism, alienation, commodity fetishism, false consciousness
• Nietzsche: critique of rationality/power
• Freud: analysis of myths, repression, suffering; attentive in the way we symbolically constructs ourselves (link to central thesis), only attentive to ill people (social deviants)
• Weber: increasing complexity of society  more knowledge and more specialization  fractured society  some to speak to the extent of all  disenchantment (effect of instrumental reason, not able to oversee all of society)

Question 9

Rational universal by Hegel

Answer 9

• = universal and rational principle, objectified in laws and institutions, is required for cooperative self-actualization (rational universal also outlives us)
• Concept of common good agreed in order to relate their individual freedom to one another cooperative
• Anthropological presupposition: humans are intersubjective, they seek to affirm their existence through mutual recognition (= intersubjective agreement)

Question 10

Pathological deformation of reason by capital(ism) (Marx):

Answer 10

• Commodity fetishism: human relations perceived as economic relations between objects, real relations to commodity are hidden
• Alienation (4: labor, product of labor, nature, others and oneself): subjective experience of disconnection
• False consciousness: misconstruction of causes of suffering / real character of social conditions
• Anthropological presupposition: human beings are productive beings shaping course of history through labor

Question 11

Suffering and emancipatory interest (Freud):

Answer 11

• Psychoanalysis explains the absence of revolutionary upheaval, unconscious drives keep subject attached to their domination
• Idea of unconscious dominating us is complete opposite of Bacon
• Superego is individual interpretation of rational universal
• Suffering reveals the emancipatory element, it appears as something to be freed from
• Anthropological presupposition: humans bound to their own non-substitutable life through unconscious complexes of drives (not wrong, but it is wrong to believe that you can and constantly miss something)

Question 12

Way of practicing critical theory

Answer 12

Instead of starting with the individual to solve problems, critical theory poses to start with the universal / collective. There must be emancipatory aim, which presupposes rational agency (even in oppressive systems).