Traditional+and+Critical+Theory


 * Culture/Ideas/Identity: Constructivism and Critical Theory **


 * Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in //Critical Theory: Selected Essays// (New York: Continuum, 1972), pp. 188-243 **

__ Background: __ Critical theory was first defined by Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. Horkheimer wanted to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxian theory, critiquing both the model of science put forward by logical positivism and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism ( [|Link] ). Horkheimer focused on a more encompassing critique of modernity that posited a growing disjunction between instrumental reason and critical reason. The former was exemplified in the cult of efficiency and ease that for Horkheimer diminished the space of traditional bourgeois autonomy. The latter represented the progressive side of Enlightenment thought and foregrounded about questions the goals of human labor and the nature of the good society ( [|Link] ).

· Theories have become too mathematical and rationalized · The individual can see himself as passive and dependent, but society, though made up of individuals, is an active subject, even if a nonconscious one · The existence of society is founded on oppression, not on free individuals · Bourgeois economic mode – the activity of society is blind and concrete, individuals abstract and conscious. The bourgeois economy a function of __excessive friction__ · “The collaboration of men in society is the mode of existence which reasons urges upon them, and so they do apply their powers and thus confirm their own rationality. But at the same time their work and its results are alienated from them, and the whole process with all its waste of work-power and human life, and with its wars and all its senseless wretchedness, seems to be an unchangeable force of nature, a fate beyond man’s control.” (308) · Considers the overall framework which is conditioned by the blind interaction of individual activities (that is, the existent division of labor and the class distinctions) to be a function which originates in human action and is therefore a possible object of planful decision and rational determination of goals · Critical thinking motivated by the effort to transcend the tension and to abolish the opposition between the individual’s purposefulness, spontaneity and rationality, and those work-process relationships on which society is built o Man as in conflict with himself until this opposition is removed · Its subject is a definite individual in his relation to other individuals and groups, in his conflict with a particular class, and the resultant web of relationships with the social totality and with nature · Difference between __traditional and critical theory__: o Traditional defines universal concepts under which all facts in the field in question are to be subsumed o Critical theory not satisfied to relate concepts of reality by way of hypotheses · Critical theory believes in the idea of a reasonable organization of society that will meet the needs of the whole community · Critical theory begins with the idea of the simple exchange of commodities and moves on to using all knowledge available o An exchange economy will lead to a heightening of social tensions which can lead to wars and revolutions · Future of humanity depends on the existence of the critical attitude, which contains elements from traditional theories and declining culture
 * Theory **
 * Critical Theory **