Traditional Theory vs Critical Theory
Mapping the differences through Max Horkheimer’s work
In the 1930s, a group of German intellectuals responded to the rise of fascism and communism in Europe by founding the so-called Frankfurt School. This research institution sought to explain how human beings could be freed from oppressive power systems. Arguing that the “Enlightenment paradigm” had failed to secure liberation for humanity, members of the Frankfurt School worked to explain its flaws and map out a successful alternative.
The answer to the question of how human beings might achieve one or another form of emancipation will depend on one’s conception of the social (as well as the social sciences themselves) and how they ought to study the human subject. Consequently, the Frankfurt School was deeply interested in the foundations of social science. In his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory, Frankfurt School philosopher Max Horkheimer opposed the positivist social science of his day, outlining an alternative method called critical theory.
The crux of Horkheimer’s critical theory is that positivist social science — dubbed “traditional theory” — is incapable of emancipating the human subject. Instead, humanity is properly studied through the lens of critical theory, which has the ability to emancipate us through a normative critique of society’s contradictions. For Horkheimer this normative critique is broadly construed, referring to any “human activity which has society itself for its object.” While Horkheimer’s conception of traditional theory is too broad to be glibly equated with the Enlightenment paradigm, Horkheimer nonetheless sees positivistic methods like traditional theory as the culmination of the pursuit of Enlightenment.
As a result, we can explore the Enlightenment’s failure to emancipate humanity through Horkheimer’s critique of traditional theory.
According to Horkheimer, traditional theory is significantly flawed because it fails to consider the ways in which scientific research is shaped by social activity, namely: the social division of labor. In traditional theory, scientific research is not seen as the product of social activity because of its aspirations for mind-independent objectivity. According to traditional theorists, scientific research is objective — its methods are not determined by social circumstances, but purely through reason.
Traditional theory, in other words, bases its claim to objectivity entirely on the Cartesian subject-object distinction. According to this binary, a subject can be what it is independently of anything external to it; the external world can be doubted, but subjectivity is certain — the famous Cartesian cogito. However, if the subject can be what it is independently of anything beyond its borders, then the subject’s knowledge is not socially constituted, but something given.
Horkheimer attacks this Cartesian subjectivity as a form of bourgeoisie ideology. According to Karl Marx, ideology is the set of beliefs that the ruling class uses to justify the current relations of production. For Horkheimer, likewise, the idea of the Cartesian subject is an ideological element that pushes us to think we are completely free and autonomous, while in reality our freedom is limited by the capitalist mode of production. Against the “false consciousness of the bourgeoisie savant,” Horkheimer delineates how scientific research is socially constituted.
First, Horkheimer observes that the pursuit of science mirrors modern production techniques. For instance, a scientist, just like a factory owner, is concerned with matters of efficiency.
Secondly, Horkheimer points out that the general needs of society determine the research aims of the sciences. For example, scientists might study the properties of certain chemicals to further industrial ends.
Thirdly, and most importantly, Horkheimer argues that scientific research is just a part of the social division of labor. In the division of labor, labor is specialized — each laborer works on a small part of the problem and then shares the fruits of their specialized capabilities with the others.
Thus for Horkheimer the “savant” of traditional theory accumulates a library of theoretical knowledge so that laborers in other areas may borrow from it, showing how scientific research is socially constituted. Indeed, Horkheim states that the very delineation of these areas of labor is historically determined by the current mode of production.
By refusing to acknowledge the socially constituted nature of science, traditional theory cuts science off from any emancipatory potential it may have. The traditional theorist inadvertently replicates the structures of capitalist society by pursuing science without questioning how capitalism shapes this pursuit. Under the traditional view, science becomes an “unreflected consciousness” whose predictability only emerges from the replication of capitalist structures. In other words, traditional theory limits scientific research to mere Weberian instrumental rationality.
Traditional science has a set of goals and a means by which to accomplish them, but it doesn’t question the justness of these goals in the first place. For Horkheimer, this is the irony of modern rationality; our reason gives us the power to organize society, but we become slaves to that rationality, a cog in the machine of means-end chains. In Marxist terms, the scientist becomes alienated from his activity — he turns a part of himself into an “other.”
In contrast, Horkheimer believes that he has opened the door to emancipation by viewing sciences, and by extension, social sciences, through the lens of critical theory instead. Under critical theory, science is shaped by the social division of labor, which is itself a form of human activity. By viewing it as such, one realizes that its goals can be consciously determined by us. Once we grasp that we can determine the ends of science, we can free ourselves from the contradictory alienation of traditional theory and restore reason to the service of human ends. Instead of replicating the structures of capitalism, we can begin exploring new possibilities for science, including new possibilities for how the social sciences define the human subject. According to Horkheimer, this is the essence of emancipation.
Here, Horkheimer’s line of argument reveals another crucial difference between traditional and critical theory. In traditional theory, the criterion for truth is objectivity — correspondence to a mind-independent reality. Horkheimer believes he has shown this conception of objectivity to be impossible. But how can Horkheimer reject traditional theory without an objective basis for doing so? The answer is that rather than offering an objective critique of traditional theory, Horkheimer bases his rejection of traditional theory on a normative critique.
In a normative critique, one derives what ought not to be the case from what is the case. According to Horkheimer, critical theory allows for such a normative critique of society. In Horkheimer’s normative critique, we observe the descriptive fact traditional theory cannot be practiced because it contradicts its own ends.
From this descriptive fact, we arrive at the normative conclusion that traditional theory ought not to be made into an end for human beings. For the German philosopher, the issue with traditional theory isn’t exactly that it’s ‘wrong,’ but that traditional theory can’t be made into a norm for rational agents. By offering a normative critique of society, Horkheimer uses critical theory to transcend Cartesian dualism.
In addition to arguing that traditional theory cannot emancipate humanity because it views science as separate from social activity, Horkheimer also argues that traditional theory, through its methodological insistence on subsuming facts under universal concepts, is an improper way of studying the human subject. In traditional theory, the goal of subsuming facts under universal concepts is to establish a universal, systematic science — a mathesis universalis — under which all possible objects could be embraced. In traditional theory, the creation of these universal concepts is empirically oriented. By knowing all of the universal concepts, we can predict the behavior of any particular under any set of circumstances.
The holy grail of Enlightenment philosophes was the creation of a universal, systematic science that could predict human behavior with the same degree of precision as Newtonian mechanics, and the positivist social scientists of Horkheimer’s day could be considered descendants of this formalist tradition. Under traditional theory, the meaning of the human subject must be fixed and static; otherwise, the unpredictability of the human subject would prevent it from being subsumed under universal concepts.
The Enlightenment idea of necessity is closely related to this approach; philosophes understood necessity as the absolute, mind-independent predictability of an event. If we have a set of specific circumstances, along with rules for subsuming those circumstances under universal concepts, then the result ought to be a necessary prediction.
For Horkheimer, the fact that traditional theory leads social science to study the human subject as a fixed category is highly problematic. If the meaning of the human subject is fixed, then this constitutes a significant roadblock for the project of emancipation; for if the meaning of the human subject is fixed, then there is no reason to think that human activities wouldn’t be as well. However, if human activity is essentially unchangeable, then there is no way to create the social change that critical theory envisions.
Thus, for a critical theory of society to function, it must resurrect the notion of human possibility from positivist science. In other words, critical theory must show that humanity can become something other than what it already is. To accomplish this goal, Horkheimer radically reconfigures the traditional relationship between universals and particulars by introducing the idea of irreducible particularity. For Horkheimer, irreducible particulars are not completely subsumed by universals, but their meaning is related to them in some kind of way. As a justification for this more “fluid” approach to meaning,
Horkheimer asks us to consider the concepts and judgments of theory in isolation as they evolve. When we look at the history of theory, we can see that the meaning of a particular concept changes over time. However, throughout all of these theories, the object we are aiming to study has remained the same — the only difference is that the passage of time is causing us to accentuate new aspects of the same object. Thus, for Horkheimer, critical theory calls for a discursive logic in which a thing can change, yet remain the same. As the particular thing changes, it enters a kind of dialectical relationship with its universal; we interpret the universal in terms of the particular that is changing, and we interpret the particular that is changing in terms of the universal.
By looking at the relationship between universals and particulars dialectically, critical theory paves the way for human emancipation. Under the dialectical approach, the meaning of the human subject is not chained to a stable universal as it is in traditional theory; instead, the meaning of the human subject in relation to its universal can evolve along with the historical and temporal circumstances we investigate it from. By setting forth a discursive logic in which a thing can change yet remain the same, Horkheimer creates a basis for human possibility, and thus, a basis for human emancipation.
To the unfamiliar reader, Horkheimer’s essay might seem dense and obscure. However, in the spirit of critical theory, Horkheimer’s essay directly pertains to the concrete historical conditions we all find ourselves in. By rejecting traditional theory in favor of critical theory, Horkheimer makes liberation possible by putting human activity back under the control of humans.
In a contemporary discourse rife with discussions of class and identity, the prospect of a critical theory of society remains supremely relevant.
