Abstract
Among social theorists, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School is generally thought to be primarily Marxist in inspiration, and its connection to philosophy is often presented as antagonistic, or at least secondary1 This perception was particularly strong in the 1960s and 70s, when critical theory was viewed as a primary inspiration behind the rise of the worldwide radical social movements that came to be known as the New Left, and Marx’s exhortation to unite theory and practice came to occupy center stage in the reception and interpretation of the writings of the critical theorists.
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Notes
The importance of Marxism to critical theory is the central tenet of what remains perhaps the most influential account in English of the critical theory research program, David Held’s Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1980).
See especially p. 13. Cf. Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 1–2.
and Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, trans. by Michael Robertson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 715–71.
For a fine summary of Adorno’s conception of the role of philosophy within critical theory in general, see Simon Jarvis, Adorno: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 8–12.
For a perspective on the key differences between Adorno and Habermas, see J.M. Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life: Jurgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 29.
Garbis Kortian, Metacritique: The Philosophical Arguments of Jurgen Habermas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), p. 32.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by N. Kemp Smith (London: MacMillan, 1929), A424, B451.
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 47.
See Kortian A, Metacritique: The Philosophical Arguments of Jurgen Habermas, p. 30. Cf. Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. by Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 39–40.
See, for example, Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, 3rd edn (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979).
G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. by H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 23.
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© 2005 Philip Walsh
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Walsh, P. (2005). Introduction. In: Skepticism, Modernity and Critical Theory. Renewing Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505957_1
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