| Review of: | The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory edited by Fred Rush |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Pieter Duvenage |
| Reviewed in: | Constellations |
| Date accepted online: | 02/11/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 14, Issue 02, Pages 292-301 |
Book Reviews
It is no easy task to provide a representative picture of a complex intellectual tradition like Critical Theory, but this is exactly what Fred Rush and his team of collaborators set out to do. Part of the problem is that it is not easy to provide a clear definition of Critical Theory.
Since its inception in the 1920s, Critical Theory in the narrower sense has undergone many changes, both within and between generations. It has become common to divide Critical Theory roughly into three generations. The first generation, including figures such as Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Fromm, and Pollock, were not always in agreement. The second generation, dominated by the towering figure of Habermas, has positioned itself in many ways opposite the first; while the third generation, consisting of Axel Honneth and others, is still finding their way in the post-Cold War era of cultural plurality and the end of "grand narratives" (337). Against this background, Critical Theory could be characterized by a certain diversity and plurality that contribute to its richness, but also pose barriers for understanding and orientation. The challenge is then, according to Rush, to respect the richness (the diverse intellectual influences on Critical Theory as well as the technical vocabulary of each thinker), but also to focus on the core philosophical concerns that are shared by Critical Theory as an intellectual tradition (1-2).
Rush organizes the book in three parts. The first part (chapters 1-8) is more historical. Chapters 9-11 are more systematic, dealing with issues such as mass culture, politics, and the relation between Critical Theory and poststructuralism. Finally, there are two chapters (12 and 13) that are also systematic, but with the explicit aim of showing the continued relevance and future prospects of Critical Theory.
Rush opens the more historical part of the compilation with his own contribution on the conceptual grounding of early Critical Theory. He starts with Horkheimer's defense of Critical Theory within a broad Marxist and Kantian framework (9-10). Rush then provides an interpretation of Horkheimer's inaugural lecture, with its distinction between different kinds of idealism and materialism, and his very important 1937 essay on the difference between traditional and critical theory. Apart from Horkheimer, Rush also sketches Marcuse's and Adorno's early conceptual grounding of Critical Theory in close relation to Horkheimer, but with important nuances (27-35). Although this is a fine introductory chapter, it tends to be a bit technical and based on well-known material. Michael Rosen's chapter concentrates on the complex relationship between Benjamin and Adorno. It is a fine scholarly essay, but does not bring forward anything substantially new about their disagreements (43). Eventually, Rosen makes a distinction between Adorno's Hegelian-Marxist versus Benjamin's Kantian-Marxist aesthetics (53-55). Julian Roberts, on his part, focuses on one of the seminal texts of Critical Theory, Horkheimer and Adorno's
In his systematic-historical reconstruction of the concepts of revolution and dialectic in Critical Theory, Raymond Geuss indicates how these concepts (especially the former) had a hold on European imagination for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (104). With regard to revolution, Geuss refers to aspects such as radical change, necessity and prediction, directionality, and the role of Marx and Lenin. When it comes to dialectics, he traces this concept from Marx and Lenin to Marcuse and Adorno (130-36). For Geuss too, Adorno was not just a pessimist thinker, but also glimpsed the possibility of the good life in an emancipated society: everyone should have enough to eat, "be able to be different without anxiety," and be free from the principle of productivity (135). Jay Bernstein then provides a masterly reconstruction of Adorno's aesthetic theory. He first defends philosophical aesthetics as a theory of reason, then moves on to explore the complex relationship between Marxism and aesthetics (139-45). He then sketches accounts of the double character, nature, and the truth content of art. These classical themes in Adorno indicate for Bernstein a modernist art that fosters conceptions of knowing, reasoning, and acting that go against their rationalized versions.
Moishe Postone focuses on the relation between Critical Theory and political economy, a theme neglected in most of the secondary literature. The issue here is the epochal transformation of capitalism in the first part of the twentieth century, which comes down to a supersession of a liberal capitalism by a new bureaucratized or state capitalism (165-66). Postone reconstructs the important debates between Pollock, Neumann, and Kirchheimer on state capitalism, law, and the Marxian concept of labor. He ends his contribution with a brief sketch on the transformation of political economy in Critical Theory after 1937 (181-90). In the last of the historical chapters, Habermas finally makes his entrance. Kenneth Baynes does not use the opportunity to situate Habermas with regard to his forerunners. Rather, he focuses more narrowly and technically on Habermas's "Kantian pragmatism." Baynes writes: "Habermas's philosophical career can easily and instructively be read as a succession of attempts to appropriate the achievements of Kant's critical philosophy without being drawn into his commitment to a 'philosophy of the subject"' (194). Baynes then spends the rest of his chapter discussing the links between Habermas's Kantian pragmatism and his theory of communicative reason and discourse ethics.
In the more systematic part of the collection, Simone Chambers provides a fine overview of the issue of politics in Critical Theory. She begins by stating that it has become commonplace to point out that Horkheimer and Adorno have no politics. Their politics of "engaged withdrawal" is closely related to their ambiguous position with regard to the Enlightenment (220-23). In many ways, Marcuse shares this skepticism in his politics of the "great refusal" (224-28). Habermas's less critical position with regard to the Enlightenment tradition is interpreted by Chambers via its politics of constitutional design and procedural theory of deliberative democracy (229-32). She ends her chapter with reference to Axel Honneth's politics of recognition and his debate with Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib (237-43).
Hauke Brunkhorst, for his part, discusses the differences between Horkheimer and Adorno, on the one hand, and Habermas, on the other, with regard to contemporary mass culture. As Rush indicates, the thesis of "enlightenment as mass deception" eventually steers Horkheimer and Adorno's reception of mass culture in a direction where the revolutionary tendencies of culture remains in the background. With Habermas, the analysis move closer to its Marxist point of departure, toward political democracy and the democratic public sphere (5).
Beatrice Hanssen interprets the tension-filled relation between Critical Theory and post-structuralism by considering Habermas and Foucault. Normally this tension is presented through Habermas's theory of communicative action and its normative validity claims, on the one hand, and the antifoundationalism of poststructuralism, on the other (280). Part of this interpretation results from Habermas's tendency to draw a line from Nietzschean aestheticism via Horkheimer and Adorno to poststructuralism (285). Hanssen also sketches Habermas's analysis of political and aesthetic modernity (286-93), before she turns to Foucault's early Nietzschean phase which eventually moved to a greater appreciation of Kant (293-306). Finally, through a fine reading of Benjamin, Hanssen proposes a fragile space of theoretical reconciliation between Foucault and Habermas with regard to the concepts of rescuing and consciousness-raising critique (304-6).
The final two chapters focus in a systematic manner on the present and possible future relevance of Critical Theory. Here we have two voices from the so-called third generation of Critical Theory, Stephen White and Axel Honneth. White considers the status of Critical Theory as a distinctive research program in the social sciences, both past and present. His argument, basically, is that Critical Theory can, when appropriately revised, constitute a defensible, critical social science (310). He bases such a revision on two intellectual sources: Habermas's attempt to articulate a systematically critical approach to social inquiry since 1970 and pragmatism (311). White then contextualizes his argument in terms of a specific social science, political science. Here the argument is that Critical Theory has a substantial edge when it comes to a comparison with a competing research tradition such as rational choice theory (312). Honneth focuses on three aspects of the intellectual legacy of Critical Theory that need a creative answer in the present. Firstly, he refers to a socially deficient reason (or social pathology of reason) that all the major theorists of Critical Theory respectively try to come to terms with (338-45). He then argues that the answer to deficient social reason differs in liberalism and communitarianism (338-45). Honneth then provides a sociological explanation of a deficient reason via capitalism (345-52). Finally, he sketches possible alternatives that lead to a concept of emancipation appropriate to our time (352-57).
Fred Rush has edited a useful companion to Critical Theory. Although some of the contributions have more merits than others, all are well researched and of high scholarly quality. But there are also some shortcomings. In many ways, Rush missed the opportunity to present a more coherent picture of Critical Theory in all its complexity to the extent that his very short introduction does not really provide a good background to the three generations of Critical Theory or sufficiently introduce the different contributions. Secondly, the coherence of the companion is compromised by the selection of contributions. While essays 1 to 7 deal mainly historically with the ideas of first generation (Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse), Habermas only makes his entry in chapter 8 in a very technical discussion. One could argue that Habermas is partially present in chapters 9-13, but given his enormous ambitious attempt to reformulate and reinterpret Critical Theory, one expects a greater focus on his work. Thirdly, it has been mentioned that Critical Theory can be defined in a narrow and broader way. There is a lot about Critical Theory in the narrow sense in this companion, but little on its relationship with critical theory in the broader sense, including feminism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory. On the whole, Rush's companion leaves a scattered impression. Not even the useful bibliography at the end can remedy this feeling when one looks back at a project that could have ended differently.