In so doing, man first shapes himself and then subsequently labors to create the world in the way he sees fit. This shaping of man and his world comes through a process of conflict: the<\/em>\u00a0dialectic<\/em>. For Marx specifically, alienation and oppression come when men, at least the majority of them, feel alienated from their creative labor. When one is unable to fully participate in the process of self-definition and self-creation due to economic constraints or exploitation, then alienation, oppression and degradation follow. To be alienated from the process of self-definition and self-creation is to be in need of liberation.<\/p>\n It was through the economic revolution of marxist Communism that this alienation from man\u2019s own labor was to be overcome and his liberation realized. But liberation did not come. Instead tyranny and carnage ensued. In the middle of the great Communist project, therefore, a new, more nuanced, Marxism, \u201cCritical Theory,\u201d proposed a better solution to man\u2019s alienation than the strictly economic Marxism of the 19th century.<\/p>\n The second-wave critical theorist, J\u00fcrgen Habermas, posited that one of the main reasons classical Marxism failed was Marx\u2019s overemphasis on man as homo faber<\/em>. Man is not only productive, man is also social. It is not, according to Habermas, only or primarily man\u2019s labor that constitutes his identity. It is also his social relations and the moral nature of those relations.<\/p>\n Habermas, writing in the second half of the 20th century, argues that Marx was too \u201cbedazzled\u201d (see Jacob Klapwijk, Dialectic of Enlightenment<\/em><\/a>, 71) by the 19th-century\u2019s mechanization of production to see in their right light these other, fundamental components of man\u2019s identity. Marx was too mono-focal in his analysis of human identity, and while he did not totally neglect the social nature of man, he failed to see properly that man is more than the work of his hands. As such economic liberation is not sufficient for man to be truly liberated. More would be required than just a dialectic of materialism. Thus, between Hegel\u2019s idealism and Marx\u2019s materialism, there is social reality.<\/p>\n Habermas, therefore, sees the human person as constituted by two features: the productive and<\/em> the social, or the \u201cinteractive\u201d(Klapwijk, 69). Further, given this ontology of the person, Habermas\u2019 critical theory argues there are two types of knowledge that flow from it. From man\u2019s self-constitution through his labor, he receives \u201cproductive knowledge.\u201d We might call this a kind of ability knowledge or skill knowledge\u2013 the \u201cknow-how\u201d required to do a thing well in some practical way. The second type of knowledge comes as man tries to constitute himself through social interaction. Habermas labels this \u201creflective knowledge.\u201d Both of these ways of knowing are governed by man\u2019s engagement with nature and with each other, respectively.<\/p>\n In looking at the present state of modern industrialized nations, however, Habermas realized that while much of man\u2019s engagement with nature has been successful, meaning man has<\/em> asserted himself over nature, gaining productive knowledge and dominance, still, radical improvements of material conditions and the means of production have failed to liberate man from his existential bondage. Man is still alienated from himself in spite of his conquest of nature as homo faber<\/em>. Something is missing in man\u2019s historical movement toward total liberation. Something other than his productivity looms.<\/p>\n Habermas maintains that in spite of the incredible welfare for material needs that modern, liberal societies have produced, still \u201cLiberation from hunger and misery does not necessarily converge with liberation from servitude and degradation\u201d (Klapwijk, 71). In short, even if we are fully supplied with abundant food, above adequate housing, financial stability and enough discretionary wealth to sustain a steady supply of leisure, we continue to experience alienation from our authentic selves. We still desire a freedom that the wealth of nations simply cannot provide. 21st-century American culture, the most decadent in human history, testifies to this fact in glaring fashion.<\/p>\n Since man is constituted by these two things: his labor vis-a-vis his natural environment and his interaction within society, the only thing that remains in places like America, Canada and Europe is to be liberated socially<\/em>. As such, there must be a shift from Marx\u2019s focus on the means of production to a focus on social relations. However, before social relations can be reconstituted \u201cin a rational way,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0our social identities must first be established. To establish our social identity, however, we must deconstruct what critical theorists call \u201cideology.\u201d<\/p>\n Ideologies of the past prevent us from progressing in the process of self-construction. They do this by proposing beliefs and values as objective, universal and fixed. In short, ideologies effectively tell us what we are and how we should act in virtue of that. According to critical theorists, these universalizing ideologies cannot stand, if we are to experience liberation.<\/p>\n Dutch philosopher Jacob Klapwijk explains this \u201cproblem\u201d of ideology in his book\u00a0Dialectic of\u00a0Enlightenment:\u00a0Critical\u00a0Theory and the Messianic Light<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n Ideology is the very force that\u2013deceptively but effectively\u2013 restricts communication, puts a legal stamp on the prevailing relationships of labor and authority, and gives society its outward appearance. Ideology blocks the self-formative process of humankind.<\/p>\n Klapwijk, 71<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For Habermas, and his Frankfurt School predecessors, ideology must be dismantled in order for man to find his true freedom. Only critical thinking, and critical theorizing, is capable of doing this. Those who do not follow in the process of critical theorizing are stuck in ideology. They are opponents of those working toward liberation. They are adversaries to humankind\u2019s project of self-formation and self-attained freedom. They are \u201cideologues\u201d drowning out the genuine cry for freedom.<\/p>\n Habermas, being a good German, does not desire however to oversee the dismantling of ideology in a personal sense. Inevitably, those trapped in ideology would be accepted by those seeking to dismantle it. There would be a kind of social reconciliation between the warring factions\u2013 factions that, by this time, have become politically polarized. The reconciliation of those stuck in ideology and those who are engaged in the critical dismantling of it, will occasion the dawn of something like a new\u00a0Aufkl\u00e4rung\u00a0<\/em>(Klapwijk, 73)\u2013 a second Enlightenment.<\/p>\n One could call this a type of \u201cHegelian reconciliation,\u201d as ideologues holding on to traditional theories and critical theorists advancing radical critiques of traditional values and knowledge, come together to form a new social paradigm. The conflict that comes before the merging of the two, however, is not pleasant. It is painful and possibly even violent.<\/p>\n Of course we all know, especially that psychologists have now confirmed it (he wrote sarcastically) that forgiveness and reconciliation are very therapeutic for the human species. And so too did Habermas see this social dialectic as akin to a freudian process of psychological healing:<\/p>\n The theory itself amounts to a therapy\u2026.Habermas\u2019s favorite illustration of this is Freudian psychology. In essence, what happens in psychoanalysis is that a \u2018process of enlightenment\u2019 is initiated and the patient is driven to \u2018self-reflection\u2019\u2026.The patient has to call to mind the repressed conflicts of the past [e.g., in America: slavery, Jim Crowe, woman\u2019s suffrage, historical oppression of Native Americans, etc.] that have previously been coming to expression only in disturbed communication and divorced symbolism, in misconceptions and obsessions. By this means the patient can be freed from repression.<\/p>\n Klapwijk, 74<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In America today this dynamic plays out quite frequently. We are told, for example, that it is the socially<\/em> white, conservative, heterosexual, cis-gender, religious male who is essentially the patient in the freudian relation. Alternatively, the critical race or gender or queer theorist is the therapist. And this is regardless of whether they, the critical theorist, are personally white, heterosexual, cis-gender, male or religious.<\/p>\n And so the basic set-up is this: the non-white, liberal, non-heteronormative, gender neutral or queer theorist will inevitably forgive their ideologue counterpart who, in the past, has oppressed them on account of his hitherto believed to be fixed and universal ideology. In doing so, a new paradigm of reconciliation will be realized and man can reconstitute himself once again. Of course, in the new paradigm it will not be mankind<\/em> reconstituting himself,<\/em> but \u201citkind\u201d reconstituting \u201citself\u201d or \u201cpersonkind\u201d reconstituting \u201cpersonkindself,\u201d or something like that.<\/p>\n But this process is all dependent on two very crucial factors: first, the white, conservative, heteronormative, male, cis-gender ideologue must be willing to admit their guilt and repent of their ideological sins. After all, these sins did not remain in the abstract historically. They took on real, concrete form (which, in many instances is an undeniable fact). That said, it could also be the case that the ideologue repents but their critical theorist counterpart refuses to forgive. So whether or not Hegelian forgiveness and reconciliation can occur is dependent on responses from both ideologue and critical theorist. For the new social paradigm to emerge there must be some kind of asking for and granting of forgiveness.<\/p>\n There is only one small problem with this picture however: it is patently false. History just isn\u2019t like this and neither is humanity. Klapwijk implicitly demonstrates the problem with critical theorist thinking when he points out a paradox in the Frankfurt School\u2019s analysis of social systems. The paradox shows critical theory\u2019s central problem: it is self-defeating.<\/p>\n First, critical theorizing does, on the one hand, provide a valid critique of the Western, capitalist system:<\/p>\n The Frankfurt scholars critical theory is first of all a razor-edged critique of Western society\u2026.their criticism has dug right under the foundations of those basic democratic structures of the so-called free world that were always taken for granted. Stripping away the ideological veneer compels society to think again about the aims of education, about the bases of law and the state, about the management of technology and the economy, indeed about the fundamental direction that Western culture and society have long been taking and that has proved to be more and more aggressive and imperious.<\/p>\n Klapwijk, 86-87<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anyone who has experienced the explosion of advocacy for critical race<\/a> or gender theory<\/a> and social justice<\/a> in the form of DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) in our schools and institutions, will see the basis for these political agendas in the earlier theorizing of the Frankfurt school philosophers Klapwijk references. The Frankfurt school called into question the entire foundation of Western society, just as critical race and gender theorists do today. However, being fair, and a much less political, the Frankfurt school philosophers also applied the same critical lens elsewhere, namely, to the very system seen as most antithetical to Western capitalism.<\/p>\n The Frankfurt scholar\u2019s criticism is directed no only against the Western world. It also includes a fierce indictment of left-wing state bureaucracies and collectivist systems in Eastern Europe or anywhere else where they occur, from Cuba to China. What is surprising about Neo-Marxist criticism in this connection is the claim\u2026that capitalism and left-wing systems are close relatives, offspring of the same stock. They may be adversaries on the economic plane, but as conceptions of society and culture they are both inspired by one and the same principle, the \u201cprinciple of domination.\u201d<\/p>\n Klapwijk, 87<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, the two major economic and social systems in the modern era most diametrically opposed to each other\u2013Capitalism and Marxist Socialism\u2013 are, at root, born of the same principle. Klapwijk points out that for many this is \u201ca painful observation.\u201d For on the one hand you have \u201cthousands of young seals\u2026killed by being battered to death so that their skins will not be damaged\u2026[being done] in the name of free commerce.\u201d While, on the other hand, you have \u201con the Killing Fields of Cambodia hundreds of young people battered to death in order to save bullets\u2026.[being done] in the name of a liberating revolution\u201d (87).<\/p>\n In short, there is something common to all men, something prior to the social system they develop and in which they live that is far deeper and far more innate to them than the principles of the system itself. There is something about us as creatures that, prior to any social structuring, including very different structuring, infects any project of socialization from the very start<\/em>. And this is what all men call \u201chuman nature.\u201d<\/p>\n The paradox of human nature means that no matter what system we build for ourselves, no matter how much we think we have found the way to goodness, truth, beauty and liberation, we eventually wind up where we started. This is regardless of how much the systems we construct contrast and how radical the redefinition of our selves seems to be.<\/p>\n Critical Theory, and any particular critical theory, is therefore self-defeating in that it claims, on the one hand, we alone are the sole producers and definers of our own identity and of the world in which we live. To define oneself and one\u2019s world is, supposedly, a liberating act. However, at the same time, any system we create and any definition we give ourselves, or our world, itself becomes worthy of critique. But, in being worthy of critique (a criticism that usually only comes after an exuberant body count and endless number of mass graves), this proves not only that we share something in common, something that exists prior to social theorizing or self constructing, but that this thing we share in common is, in fact, quite flawed.<\/p>\n And so all the historical evidence points to an anthropological reality that man is fundamentally defined by something prior to his theorizing about himself. Man is not infinitely malleable. Man cannot determine his own nature or the nature of his world. What the Frankfurt philosophers called \u201cthe principle of domination\u201d is, apparently, not something that man\u00a0chooses or constructs<\/em>\u00a0but instead something man\u00a0is<\/em>.<\/p>\nCritical Theory and Man as Social Creature<\/h2>\n
Critical Theory and The Need For Social Freedom<\/h2>\n
Critical Theory and Deconstructing Ideology<\/h2>\n
Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis: Or Hegelian Reconciliation<\/h2>\n
Critical Theory\u2019s Troubling Paradox<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1412\/2021\/11\/shutterstock_1933868810-300x200.jpg\")
The Self-Defeating Nature of Critical Theory<\/h2>\n