Critical Theory and Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Marinopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Major Trend ◽  
Political Epistemology ◽  
Science And Research ◽  
Key Questions

The book makes a critical comparison of fundamental trends in modern epistemology with the epistemological concerns of critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It comprises five chapters, which refer to phenomenology, structuralism and poststructuralism, modernism and postmodernism, systems’ theory and critical realism.It follows the course of development of modern epistemology, considering basic conceptions such as dialectics, theory and practice in science, and the potential for a political epistemology based on the arguments of critical theory. It can certainly be used as a textbook because each chapter tallies with a major trend in modern epistemology, and provides a concrete analysis of the comparison it draws with the work of leading figures of the Frankfurt School such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas.The present volume addresses the reader of political theory, epistemology, social theory and it also raises key questions on methodology in science and research. Therefore, it can prove beneficial for students, researchers and academics that deal with issues of theory, practice, and method in science. The contents of the volume were meticulously constructed in order to be of practical use both for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and each chapter includes basic graphs that condense the basic argument for each thematic circle on modern epistemology and methodology.The book contains unpublished critique and information provided to the writer in recent interviews she conducted with Jürgen Habermas (providing analysis on systems theory), William Outhwaite and Stefan Müller-Doohm (both the latter clarified issues and contributed valuable information on critical realism and the Frankfurt School, respectively).

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Marinopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
First Century ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Epistemology

Critical Theory and Epistemology is a comparison of the major epistemological concerns in the twentieth century with critical theory of the Frankfurt School. I focus on modern epistemology as a theory of and about science that also addresses the social and political aims of scientific enquiry.The critique that the book deploys on the epistemological tendencies of late modernity suggests that the main distinction between Kant and the critical theorists lies in their understanding of rationality. Such a critique can be characterized as the ‘battle’ of modern epistemology for or against the scientifically, socially and politically rational. Thus, arguments of modern epistemology, as articulated by phenomenology, structuralism, poststructuralism, modernists and postmodernists, systems’ theory and critical realism, can certainly be considered ‘modern’ in historical terms, but in essence their concerns are of a pre-modern and pre-scientific nature. In such a manner, we come closer to understanding what constitutes the scientific, philosophy, truth, and whether modern epistemology paves the way for a political epistemology in the twenty-first century.

Varieties of Critique in Sociological Theory and Their Methodological Implications for Social Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Delanty
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
Marxist Approach ◽  
Micro Analysis

The notion of critique, as in the idea of a critical theory of society, is in urgent need of clarification both theoretically and methodologically. At least five major uses of the term can be found within sociological theory, the positions associated with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School from Adorno to Habermas and Honneth, Bourdieu's critical sociology, critical realism, Foucault's genealogical critique, and various notions of critical practice, most notably the work of Boltanski and Thévenot. It is possible to detect a movement from the Hegelian-Marxist approach towards interpretative conceptions of critique, leading to a pluralisation of critique and a shift from macro to micro analysis. A theoretical clarification of the notion of critique in these approaches offers a basis for a new and more rigorous methodological application of critique in social research.

Critical Theory in Research

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Icarbord Tshabangu ◽  
Stefano Ba' ◽  
Silas Memory Madondo
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Critical Race Methodology ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
The Difference

Based on critical theory, this chapter focuses on the first generation of Frankfurt School (mainly to authors such as T.W. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, and W. Benjamin). For discussing methodology in research, these authors are considered more representative than the younger generation (e.g., Habermas and Honneth) mainly because of the renewed interest in the direct critique of society and because of the failure of the younger generation to produce empirical research. The proponents of critical theory establish connections between theory and practice, in the sense that the social content of research must have human dignity at its centre. The difference between method-led and content-led research is discussed and considered central for this kind of approach to empirical research. Feminist research methodologies and critical race methodology are considered as closely associated with critical theory. These different approaches have developed autonomously from critical theory and are not directly related to it. However, feminist research methodologies and critical race methodology are expounded here because of their similarities to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School aimed at providing an emancipatory approach to empirical research.

scholarly journals Paradoxes of Rationalisation: Openness and Control in Critical Theory and Luhmann's Systems Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-148
Author(s):  
Jan Overwijk
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Sociotechnical Systems ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Technical Reason ◽  
Political Reason ◽  
And Control

For the Critical Theory tradition of the Frankfurt School, rationalisation is a central concept that refers to the socio-cultural closure of capitalist modernity due to the proliferation of technical, ‘instrumental’ rationality at the expense of some form of political reason. This picture of rationalisation, however, hinges on a separation of technology and politics that is both empirically and philosophically problematic. This article aims to re-conceptualise the rationalisation thesis through a survey of research from science and technology studies and the conceptual framework of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. It argues that rationalisation indeed exhibits a logic of closure, namely the ‘operational closure’ of sociotechnical systems of measurement, but that this closure in fact produces the historical logics of technical reason and, paradoxically, also generates spaces of critical-political openness. This opens up the theoretical and practical opportunity of connecting the politically just to the technically efficient.

Mezirow and the Theory of Transformative Learning

2018 ◽  
pp. 120-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Transformative Learning Theory ◽  
Transformation Theory ◽  
Emancipatory Learning ◽  
Recognition Theory ◽  
New Generation

Mezirow's theory of transformative learning has always relied on the work of Jürgen Habermas in order to give it a sound theoretical base. This chapter outlines Mezirow's theory of transformative learning attending to its reliance on critical theory which contributes important concepts such as domains of learning, emancipatory learning, critical reflection, and the discourse of communicative action. This chapter explores how the work of Habermas and elements of his critical theory not utilized by Mezirow enhance the rigor of Mezirow's work. An argument is made that allows us to interpret transformative learning theory as a critical theory. As a new generation of Frankfurt School scholars create the next iteration of critical theory, the implications of Axel Honneth's recognition theory are identified for the theory and practice of transformative learning. The communicative turn of Habermas and the recognition and emancipatory turns of Honneth contribute significantly to the evolution of transformation theory.

Critical Theory in Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-88
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Critical Race Methodology ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
The Difference

Based on critical theory, this chapter focuses on the first generation of Frankfurt School (mainly to authors such as T.W. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, and W. Benjamin). For discussing methodology in research, these authors are considered more representative than the younger generation (e.g., Habermas and Honneth) mainly because of the renewed interest in the direct critique of society and because of the failure of the younger generation to produce empirical research. The proponents of critical theory establish connections between theory and practice, in the sense that the social content of research must have human dignity at its centre. The difference between method-led and content-led research is discussed and considered central for this kind of approach to empirical research. Feminist research methodologies and critical race methodology are considered as closely associated with critical theory. These different approaches have developed autonomously from critical theory and are not directly related to it. However, feminist research methodologies and critical race methodology are expounded here because of their similarities to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School aimed at providing an emancipatory approach to empirical research.

Critical International Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Devetak
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Civil Government

Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory’s prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory’s reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory: An Intellectual History defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.

Anarchist, Antisemit, Aufklärer? Vier Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Nietzsches Philosophie und Politik

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 296-311
Author(s):  
Paul Stephan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Four new publications provide an overview of the relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophical thought and his political commitments. Together they highlight the true complexity of Nietzsche’s politics, since some of his ideas can be adapted to anarchist and right-wing positions as much as, for instance, to Frankfurt School critical theory. At the same time, these contributions underscore the limitations of a strictly positivist, or philological approach, since any assessment of Nietzsche’s politics cannot be detached from the political faultlines of the present.

scholarly journals The Frankfurt School and the authoritarian personality: Balance sheet of an insight

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110059
Author(s):  
Geoff Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Balance Sheet ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Other ◽  
Authoritarian Personality ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
School Research

Frankfurt School critical theory is perhaps the most significant theory of society to have developed directly from a research programme focused on the critique of political authoritarianism, as it manifested during the interwar decades of the 20th century. The Frankfurt School’s analysis of the persistent roots – and therefore the perennial nature – of what it describes as the ‘authoritarian personality’ remains influential in the analysis of authoritarian populism in the contemporary world, as evidenced by several recent studies. Yet the tendency in these studies is to reference the final formulation of the category, as expressed in Theodor Adorno and co-thinkers’ The Authoritarian Personality (1950), as if this were a theoretical readymade that can be unproblematically inserted into a measured assessment of the threat to democracy posed by current authoritarian trends. It is high time that the theoretical commitments and political stakes in the category of the authoritarian personality are re-evaluated, in light of the evolution of the Frankfurt School. In this paper, I review the classical theories of the authoritarian personality, arguing that two quite different versions of the theory – one characterological, the other psychodynamic – can be extracted from Frankfurt School research.

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