Critical Theory_A Very Short Introduction

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by Stephen Eric Bronner




  Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction

  Very Short Introductions available now:

  ADVERTISING Winston Fletcher

  AFRICAN HISTORY

  John Parker and Richard Rathbone

  AGNOSTICISM Robin Le Poidevin

  AMERICAN POLITICAL

  PARTIES AND ELECTIONS

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  THE AMERICAN

  PRESIDENCY Charles O. Jones

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  ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw

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  ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes

  ART HISTORY Dana Arnold

  ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland

  ATHEISM Julian Baggini

  AUGUSTINE Henry Chadwick

  AUTISM Uta Frith

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  BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

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  THE BOOK OF MORMON

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  BRITISH POLITICS Anthony Wright

  BUDDHA Michael Carrithers

  BUDDHISM Damien Keown

  BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown

  CAPITALISM James Fulcher

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  THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe

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  CHRISTIAN ETHICS

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  CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead

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  CLASSICS Mary Beard

  and John Henderson

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  CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore

  CONTEMPORARY ART

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  CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY

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  CRITICAL THEORY

  Stephen Eric Bronner

  THE CRUSADES Christopher Tyerman

  CRYPTOGRAPHY

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  DADA AND SURREALISM

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  DARWIN Jonathan Howard

  THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

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  DEMOCRACY Bernard Crick

  DESCARTES Tom Sorell

  DESERTS Nick Middleton

  DESIGN John Heskett

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  DOCUMENTARY FILM

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  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY

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  Brian and Deborah Charlesworth

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  THE FIRST WORLD WAR

  Michael Howard

  FOLK MUSIC Mark Slobin

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  David Canter

  FORENSIC SCIENCE Jim Fraser

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  FRENCH LITERATURE John D. Lyons

  THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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  GAME THEORY Ken Binmore

  GANDHI Bhikhu Parekh

  GENIUS Andrew Robinson

  GEOGRAPHY

  John Matthews and David Herbert

  GEOPOLITICS Klaus Dodds

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  GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

  Andrew Bowie

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  THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE

  NEW DEAL Eric Rauchway

  HABERMAS James Gordon Finlayson

  HEGEL Peter Singer

  HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood

  HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson

  HINDUISM Kim Knott

  HISTORY John H. Arnold

  THE HISTORY OF

  ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin

  THE HISTORY OF LIFE

  Michael Benton

  THE HISTORY OF

  MEDICINE William Bynum

  THE HISTORY OF TIME

  Leofranc Holford-Strevens

  HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside

  HOBBES Richard Tuck

  HUMAN EVOLUTION Bernard Wood

  HUMAN RIGHTS Andrew Clapham

  HUMANISM Stephen Law

  HUME A. J. Ayer

  IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden

  INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

  Sue Hamilton

  INFORMATION Luciano Floridi

  INNOVATION

  Mark Dodgson and David Gann

  INTELLIGENCE Ian J. Deary

  INTERNATIONAL

  MIGRATION Khalid Koser

  INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

  Paul Wilkinson

  ISLAM Malise Ruthven

  ISLAMIC HISTORY Adam Silverstein

  JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves

  JUDAISM Norman Solomon

  JUNG Anthony Stevens

  KABBALAH Joseph Dan

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  KANT Roger Scruton

  KEYNES Robert Skidelsky

  KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner

  THE KORAN Michael Cook

  LANDSCAPES AND

  GEOMORPHOLOGY

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  LATE ANTIQUITY Gillian Clark

  LAW Raymond Wacks

  THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS

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  LEADERSHIP Keith Grint

  LINCOLN Allen C. Guelzo

  LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews

  LITERARY THEORY Jonathan Culler

  LOCKE John Dunn

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  THE MARQUIS DE SADE

  John Phillips

  MARX Peter Singer

  MARTIN LUTHER Scott H. Hendrix

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  THE MEANING OF LIFE

/>   Terry Eagleton

  MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope

  MEDIEVAL BRITAIN

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  Ralph A. Griffiths

  MEMORY Jonathan K. Foster

  MICHAEL FARADAY

  Frank. A. J. L. James

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  THE NEW TESTAMENT AS

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  NOTHING Frank Close

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  NUMBERS Peter M. Higgins

  THE OLD TESTAMENT

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  ORGANIZATIONS Mary Jo Hatch

  PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close

  PAUL E. P. Sanders

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  Catherine Osborne

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  QUANTUM THEORY

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  RACISM Ali Rattansi

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  RELIGION IN AMERICA

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  RENAISSANCE ART

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  ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway

  THE ROMAN EMPIRE

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  ROMANTICISM Michael Ferber

  ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler

  RUSSELL A. C. Grayling

  RUSSIAN LITERATURE Catriona Kelly

  THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

  S. A. Smith

  SCHIZOPHRENIA

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  SCHOPENHAUER

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  SCIENCE AND RELIGION

  Thomas Dixon

  SCOTLAND Rab Houston

  SEXUALITY Véronique Mottier

  SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer

  SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt

  SOCIAL AND CULTURAL

  ANTHROPOLOGY

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  SOCIALISM Michael Newman

  SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce

  SOCRATES C. C. W. Taylor

  THE SOVIET UNION Stephen Lovell

  THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

  Helen Graham

  SPANISH LITERATURE Jo Labanyi

  SPINOZA Roger Scruton

  STATISTICS David J. Hand

  STUART BRITAIN John Morrill

  SUPERCONDUCTIVITY

  Stephen Blundell

  TERRORISM Charles Townshend

  THEOLOGY David F. Ford

  THOMAS AQUINAS Fergus Kerr

  TOCQUEVILLE Harvey C. Mansfield

  TRAGEDY Adrian Poole

  THE TUDORS John Guy

  TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN

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  THE UNITED NATIONS

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  THE U.S. CONGRESS

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  UTOPIANISM Lyman Tower Sargent

  THE VIKINGS Julian Richards

  WITCHCRAFT Malcolm Gaskill

  WITTGENSTEIN A. C. Grayling

  WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman

  THE WORLD TRADE

  ORGANIZATION Amrita Narlikar

  WRITING AND SCRIPT

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  AVAILABLE SOON:

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  CANCER Nicholas James

  EARLY MUSIC Thomas Forrest Kelly

  PAGANISM Owen Davies

  NUCLEAR POWER Maxwell Irvine

  For more information visit our web site

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  Stephen Eric Bronner

  CRITICAL

  THEORY

  A Very Short Introduction

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  Copyright © 2011 by Stephen Eric Bronner

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bronner, Stephen Eric, 1949–

  Critical theory : a very short introduction / Stephen Eric Bronner.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-0-19-973007-0 (pbk.)

  1. Critical theory. I. Title.

  HM480.B76 2011

  301.01—dc22 2010027472

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Printed in Great Britain

  by Ashford Colour Press Ltd., Gosport, Hants.

  on acid-free paper

  In memory of Ernst Bloch

  Contents

  List of illustrations

  Introduction: what is critical theory?

  1 The Frankfurt School

  2 A matter of method

  3 Alienation and reification

  4 Enlightened illusions

  5 The utopian laboratory

  6 The happy consciousness

  7 The great refusal

  8 From resignation to renewal

  Further reading

  Index

  List of illustrations

  1 Antiwar resisters

  National Archives />
  2 Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Jürgen Habermas

  Photo by Jeremy J. Shapiro

  3 The Tiller Girls

  Library of Congress

  4 Machine Age poster

  Library of Congress

  5 Goethe’s oak tree in front of the prisoner’s laundry at the Buchenwald concentration camp; illegal photo taken by inmate Georges Angeli

  Buchenwald Memorial Museum

  6 The Garden of Eden by N. Courier

  Library of Congress

  7 Audience at halftime of a football game

  Library of Congress

  8 A scene from Endgame by Samuel Beckett

  Royal Court Theatre

  9 Karl Marx’s grave site in London

  Author’s collection

  Introduction: what is

  critical theory?

  Philosophy has evidenced a subversive element from its inception. Plato’s Apology tells how Socrates was condemned by the Athenian citizenry for corrupting the morals of the young and doubting the gods. There was some truth to that complaint. Socrates called conventional wisdom into question. He subjected long-standing beliefs to rational scrutiny and speculated about concerns that projected beyond the existing order. What became known as “critical theory” was built upon this legacy. The new philosophical tendency was generated between World War I and World War II, and its most important representatives would wage an unrelenting assault on the exploitation, repression, and alienation embedded within Western civilization.

  Critical theory refuses to identify freedom with any institutional arrangement or fixed system of thought. It questions the hidden assumptions and purposes of competing theories and existing forms of practice. It has little use for what is known as “perennial philosophy.” Critical theory insists that thought must respond to the new problems and the new possibilities for liberation that arise from changing historical circumstances. Interdisciplinary and uniquely experimental in character, deeply skeptical of tradition and all absolute claims, critical theory was always concerned not merely with how things were but how they might be and should be. This ethical imperative led its primary thinkers to develop a cluster of themes and a new critical method that transformed our understanding of society.

  Critical theory has many sources. Immanuel Kant identified moral autonomy as the highest value for the individual. He provided critical theory with its definition of scientific rationality, and its goal of confronting reality with the prospects of freedom. Meanwhile Hegel understood consciousness as the motor of history, thinking as linked to practical concerns, and philosophy as “its epoch comprehended in thought.” Critical theorists learned to interpret the particular with an eye on the totality. The moment of freedom appeared in the demand for recognition by the enslaved and the exploited.

  Both Kant and Hegel incarnated the cosmopolitan and universal assumptions deriving from the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They relied upon reason to combat superstition, prejudice, cruelty, and the arbitrary exercise of institutional authority. They also speculated about the humane hopes expressed by aesthetics, the redemptive longings of religions, and new ways of thinking about the relation between theory and practice. The young Karl Marx went even farther with his utopian reflections on human emancipation.

 

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