Critical Social Theory

1
Critical Social Theory

• Our age is the age of enlightenment, and to
  criticism everything must submit
• Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

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What is critical theory?

• The term is most closely associated with a
  multi-disciplinary group of historians,
  philosophers, and political scientists known as
  the Frankfurt School
• The researchers were affiliated with the Institut
  für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social
  Research) in Frankfurt, established in 1923.
• The group disbanded when the Nazis came in power
  in 1933, but was re-started in New York by
  Horkheimer and Adorno in the 40s as the New
  School of Social Research.

3
What is critical theory?

• Members include
• Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), sociologist and
  social psychologist
• Theodore Adorno (1903-1969), philosoper and
  musicologist
• Herbert Marcuse (1893-1970), philosopher
• Erich Fromm (1900-1980), psychoanalyst
• Federick Pollock, economist

4
What is critical theory?

• Influences
• German Idealist tradition, a critical
  philosophy initiated by Immanuel Kant in the 18th
  CenturyKants critical philosophy examined the
  conditions for the possibility of knowledge and
  ethics (from the perspective of individual
  knowers/actors)
• Marxs historical and social approach,
  specifically Marxs ideology critique. (Note
  members of the Frankfurt School are not orthodox
  Marxists!)

5
What is critical theory?

• In their interventions, members of the Frankfurt
  School tried to show that the proper use of
  reason can lead to emancipation.
• The root of this ambition can be traced back to
  the Enlightenment thinkers (including Kant and
  Marx) with their emphasis on freedom and autonomy

6
Kant and the conditions for the possibility of
knowledge

• Kant (1724-1804) wrote the Critique of Pure
  Reason in response to the challenge set by Humes
  empiricist philosophy

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Humes challenge

• Empiricism all concepts and justification of our
  beliefs are derived from sense experience
• Hume (1711-1776) distinguishes between two kinds
  of propositions
• Relations of ideas
• Matters of fact

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Relations of Ideas

• Consider Bachelors are unmarried adult males
• What is the subject in this example? The
  predicate?
• Does the predicate contain any new information
  that is not in the subject?

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Matters of fact

• Consider Fredericton is the capital of New
  Brunswick
• Wong is a left-footed, myopic philosopher
  without a lot of hair
• Do the predicates in these propositions contain
  new information that is not contained in the
  subject?

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Relations of ideas vs. Matters of fact

• How do we know propositions that are relations of
  ideas to be true?
• The negation of this kind of proposition yields a
  contradiction Bachelors are not unmarried adult
  males

• How do we know propositions that are matters of
  fact to be true?
• These propositions can be shown to be true/false
  with sense experience

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Relations of ideas vs. matters of fact

• Humes fork there are only two kinds of
  reasoning dealing with our ideasabstract
  reasoning involving relations of ideas (
  analytic) and experimental reasoning concerning
  matters of fact ( synthetic).
• If an argument does not utilize either type of
  reasoning then, for Hume, the argument is merely
  sophistry and illusion

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Humes challenge

• Remember that matters of fact are known through
  experience
• How do we know that the sun will rise in the
  east tomorrow or the billiard ball will not
  move the next time you strike it with your pool
  cue ?
• Is there a contradiction in denying that the sun
  will rise in the east tomorrow?

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Humes challenge

• How do we know that the ball will move when
  struck with the pool cue?
• Cause and effect
• But what is a cause for an empiricist?
• Constant conjunction of event A followed by event
  B

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Humes challenge

• Implications of the constant conjunction analysis
  of cause
• There is no necessary connection between event A
  and event B the conjunction between the two
  events may not hold in the future
• Humes challenge is that the conclusion of an
  inductive argument about future experience can
  always be false regardless of the number of
  observations we have made.

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Humes challenge

• Our inferences beyond past and present experience
  depends on the assumption that the future
  resembles the past, or the uniformity of nature.
• How do we know that the future resembles the
  past?
• Will we be committing a contradiction if we were
  to say the future will not resemble the past?

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Humes challenge

• It is important to note that Hume does not deny
  that we use inductive reasoning.
• For Hume, we are so psychologically constituted
  that we will continue to use induction
• His point is that we cannot offer a rational,
  i.e. philosophical, justification for induction.

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Answering Hume synthetic a priori

• Kant perhaps Hume is wrong and that there are
  truths about the world that can known a priori
• First, what does a priori mean?
• a priori is usually contrasted with a
  posteriori both make reference to how we come to
  know
• a priori independent of experience
• a posteriori by sense experience

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Kants response synthetic a priori
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Synthetic a priori

• Synthetic a priori propositions represent the
  conditions of the possibility of knowledge of the
  phenomenal world, i.e. of things as they appear
  to us.
• For Kant, we have no knowledge of the world of
  things in themselves (nouemenal world).
• Question how is the critical inquiry into the
  conditions of the possibility of knowledge an
  expression of freedom.

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Categorical Imperative

• Kant also held that the proper use of reason we
  can discover universal laws of human conduct
• Version 1 (Formula of Universal Law) Act only
  on that maxim whereby I can also will that it
  should become a universal law.
• Version 2 (Formula of Humanity) Act as to treat
  humanity, whether in your own person or in that
  of any other, in every case as an end never as
  a means only.