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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
In contradistinction both to positivist empiricism and to the essentialism of “traditional” political thought, the paper delineates an approach to political study and theory stressing the critical interrogation between inquirer or participant and the experienced world. The approach—which relies chiefly on existential phenomenology and recent writings of the Frankfurt School— is illustrated and explicated in three contexts: those of philosophical anthropology, of epistemology, and of ethics and political action. With regard to the conception of “human nature,” critical theory refuses to equate man either with a reactive mechanism or with pure consciousness, preferring to treat him as an embodied creature concerned (in Heidegger's terms) with the sense of his existence. In the domain of epistemology, the sketched outlook deviates from simple “mirror” doctrines by emphasizing the experiential underpinnings of cognition and the need for continuous symbolic articulation. Concerning ethics, the perspective opposes both cognitivist and noncognitivist formulas in favor of the critical reconstruction of standards implicit in everyday life. The concluding portion of the paper indicates the relevance of such standards for practical politics and contemporary democratic theory.
1 See, e.g., Germino, Dante, Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political Theory (New York: Harper & Row, 1967)Google Scholar.
2 The above comments are not directed against ontology as such, but only against an objectivistic or deterministic ontology which (in Heidegger‘s terms) levels Being into the world of objects. For a critical appraisal of metaphysical realism or “ontological determinism” compare Jung, Hwa Yol, “Leo Strauss’ Conception of Political Philosophy: A Critique,” The Review of Politics, 29 (10 1967), 492–517 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also his communication to the editor in American Political Science Review, 67 (09 1973), 964–965 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, In Praise of Philosophy, trans. Wild, John and Edie, James M. (Evanston: North western University Press, 1963), p. 41 Google Scholar. As he added: “Each of us is expiating for his youth. This decadence is in accord with the course of our history. Having passed a certain point of tension, ideas cease to develop and live. They fall to the level of justifications and pretexts, relics of the past, points of honor; and what one pompously calls the movement of ideas is reduced to the sum of our nostalgias, our grudges, our timidities, and our phobias.”
4 For a general comparison of the two currents compare my “Phenomenology and Marxism: A Salute to Paci, Enzo,” in Phenomenological Sociology: Issues and Applications, ed. Psathas, George (New York: Wiley, 1973), pp. 305–356 Google Scholar. More recently I have tried to indicate in more detail the similarities and divergencies between existential phenomenology and Habermas's version of critical theory; see “Einleitung” and “Epilog” in Malerialien zu Habermas' “Erkenntnis und Interesse” (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), pp. 10–21, 418–432 Google Scholar.
5 See, e.g., Horkheimer, Max, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in his Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J. et al. (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), pp. 188–243 Google Scholar. Regarding the Frankfurt School compare Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973)Google Scholar; Schroyer, Trent, The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory (New York: Braziller, 1973)Google Scholar; and regarding Lukács, Georg his History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Livingstone, Rodney (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), esp. p. 1 Google Scholar.
6 In Praise of Philosophy, pp. 4–5, 38, 58. Commenting on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty noted at another point: perpetual beginner, which means that he takes for granted nothing that men, learned or otherwise, believe they know. It means also that philosophy itself must not take itself for granted, insofar as it may have managed to say something true; that it is an ever-renewed experiment in making its own beginning; that it consists wholly in the description of this beginning, and finally, that radical reflection amounts to a consciousness of its own dependence on an unreflective life which is its initial situation, unchanging. “The philospher. as the unpublished works declare, is a given once and for all.” Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith, Colin (New York: Humanities Press. 1962), p. XIV Google Scholar.
7 See In Praise of Philosophy, p. 63; Ricoeur, Paul, History and Truth, trans. Kelbley, Charles A. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), p. 12 Google Scholar.
8 For examples of positivist (behavioralist) and realist postures compare Eulau, Heinz, The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics (New York: Random House, 1963), pp. 3–11, 133–138 Google Scholar (“Introduction: The Root is Man.” “Epilogue: The Goal is Man”): and Miller, Eugene F., “Political Philosophy and Human Nature,” The Personalist, 53 (Summer 1972), 209–221 Google Scholar.
9 Harris, Karsten, “Martin Heidegger: The Search for Meaning,” in Existential Philosophers: Kierkegaard to Merleau-Ponty, ed. Schrader, George A. Jr., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), pp. 171, 185 Google Scholar. Compare also Fahrenbach, Helmut, “Heidegger und das Problem einer ‘philosophischen’ Anthropologie,” in Durchblicke: Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag (Frankfurt-Main: Klostermann, 1970), pp. 97–131 Google Scholar.
10 Heidegger, , An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Manheim, Ralph (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 29–30 Google Scholar. As Palmer, Richard E. comments: “Questioning, then, is a way that man contends with and draws being into showing itself. It bridges the ontological difference between being and the being of beings.” Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 150 Google Scholar.
11 See In Praise of Philosophy, p. 44; and Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Dreyfus, Patricia A. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 66 Google Scholar (“Hegel's Existentialism”) and 72 (“The Battle over Existentialism”). Compare also his statement that man is “like an open notebook in which we do not yet know what will be written”; The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. Edie, James M. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 6 Google Scholar.
12 Jung, Hwa Yol, “The Radical Humanization of Politics: Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Politics,” Archiv für Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie, 53 (05 1967), p. 239 Google Scholar.
13 Lukács, Compare, History and Class Consciousness, pp. 186–190 Google Scholar; also my “History and Class-Consciousness: Georg Lukács' Theory of Social Change,” Politics and Society, 1 (11 1970), 113–131, at 129 Google Scholar.
14 See Bloch, Ernst, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp. 1959), vol. I, pp. 4, 225, 327 Google Scholar; Subjekt-Objekt: Erläuterungen zu Hegel (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1962), p. 471 Google Scholar. Compare also Gross, David, “Ernst Bloch: The Dialectics of Hope.” in The Unknown Dimension: European Marxism Since Lenin, ed. Howard, Dick and Klare, Karl E. (New York: Basic Books, 1972), pp. 107–130 Google Scholar: and Furter, Pierre, “Utopia and Marxism according to Bloch,” Philosophy Today, vol. 14 (Winter 1970), pp. 236–249 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Habermas, , “Anthropologie,” in Fischer-Lexikon: Philosophie ed. Diemer, Alwin and Frenzel, Ivo (Frankfurt-Main: Fischer, 1958), pp. 19, 21, 32–33 Google Scholar. Compare in this context also Jay, Martin, “The Frankfurt School's Critique of Marxist Humanism,” Social Research, 39 (Summer 1972), 285–305 Google Scholar; and Lenhardt, Christian K., “Rise and Fall of Transcendental Anthroplogy,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2 (09 1972), 231–246 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Compare on the above points my “Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology: Implications for Role Theory and Politics,” Inquiry, 17 (Spring 1974), 49–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Regarding the notion of man as a “crooked timber” or an “anthropology of disproportion” see also Ricoeur, Paul, Fallible Man (Chicago: Regnery, 1965)Google Scholar, and his essay “The Antinomy of Human Reality and the Problem of Philosophical Anthropology,” in Readings in Existential Phenomenology, ed. Lawrence, Nathaniel M. and O'Connor, Daniel (Englewood Cliff's: Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 390–402 Google Scholar.
17 The heuristic importance of theoretical models or frameworks has been stressed primarily by Popper, Karl R. and his school; e.g., in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1959)Google Scholar. In a more radical departure from orthodox positivism, other philosophers of science have come to view the community of investigators as a “context of discovery” shaping the successive “paradigms” of inquiry (but with a bent to treat this context as a sociological or psychological environment); see, e.g., Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962; 2nd ed., Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970)Google Scholar: and Hanson, Norwood R.. Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1958)Google Scholar. For the controversy between the Popper school and Kuhn's, approach compare Criticism anil the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
18 See Husserl, Edmund, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, ed. Landgrebe, Ludwig, trans. Churchill, James S. and Ameriks, Karl (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. xxi–xxii Google Scholar (“Translator's Introduction”).
19 Heidegger, Compare, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward (New York: Harper & Row, 1962)Google Scholar; also On Time and Being, trans. Stambaugh, Joan (New York: Harper & Row, 1972)Google Scholar.
20 See Merleau-Ponty, , Phenomenology of Perception, pp. viii–ix, xiii, xv Google Scholar; also “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences,” in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, pp. 13, 16–17, 19, 21 Google Scholar.
21 See Merleau-Ponty, , The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Lefort, Claude, trans. Lingis, Alphonso (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 103 Google Scholar.
22 Compare Apel, Karl-Otto, “Technognomie: Eine erkenntnis-anthropologische Kategorie,” in Konkete Vernunft: Festschrift für Erich Rothacker (Bonn: Bouvier, 1958), pp. 61–78 Google Scholar; “Sprache und Wahrheit in der gegenwärtigen Situation der Philosophie,” Philosophische Rundschau. 7 (Fall 1959). 161–184 Google Scholar: and “Einleitung: Transformation der Philosophie,” in Transformation der Philosophie (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), vol. I, pp. 9–76 Google Scholar.
23 Compare Habermas, Jürgen, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Shapiro, Jeremy J. (Boston: Beacon Press. 1971), pp. 196–197 Google Scholar; also my “Reason and Emancipation: Notes on Habermas,” Man and World, 5 (02 1972), 79–109 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 On the above, see Habermas, , “Introduction: Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theory and Praxis,” in Theory and Practice, trans. Viertel, John (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973 Google Scholar; translation of the 4th rev. edition of Theorie und Praxis of 1971), esp. p. 19 Google Scholar; also my “Critical Theory Criticized: Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests and Its Aftermath,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2 (09 1972), 211–229 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently, Habermas has formulated a discursive or “consensual” theory of truth, according to which truth and valid knowledge emerge from a universal discourse and exchange of propositions—propositions which are virtually uncontaminated by experiential bias. Compare his “Wahrheitstheorien,” in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Festschrift für Walter Schulz (Stuttgart: Neske Verlag, 1973), pp. 211–265 Google Scholar.
25 For a historical sketch of past distinctions between types of knowledge (including the dichotomy between natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften) and their relationship to political inquiry compare my “Political Science and the ‘Two Cultures.’” Journal of General Education. 19 (01 1968), 269–295 Google Scholar.
26 Compare, e.g., Schutz, Alfred, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. Walsh, George and Lehnert, Frederick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Garfinkel, Harold, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967)Google Scholar; Blumer, Herbert, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969)Google Scholar; O'Malley, John B., Sociology of Meaning (London: Human Context Books, 1972)Google Scholar; Natanson, Maurice, ed.. Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, two vols. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. For a critical review of divergent approaches to social inquiry see Habermas, Jürgen, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften: Materialien (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp. 1970)Google Scholar.
27 The above presentation relies both on Jürgen Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests and on the lecture of 1965 with the same title which is reproduced in the Appendix, pp. 301–317.
28 For an argument closely akin to Habermas's typology see Apel, , “Szientifik, Hefmeneutik, ldeologie-Kritik: Entwurf einer Wissenschaftslehre in erkenntnis-anthropologischer Sicht,” Man and World, 1 (02 1968), 37–63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 See Habermas, , “Labor and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel's Jena Philosophy of Mind ,” in Theory and Practice, pp. 142–169 Google Scholar.
30 Heidegger, Being and Time, Sections 41–42; Ricoeur, , History and Truth, pp. 4–5, 213 Google Scholar. For the reference to Heidegger I am indebted to Theodore Kisiel's essay “Habermas' Purge of Pure Theory: Critical Theory without Ontology?” (forthcoming).
31 Merleau-Ponty, , “The Philosopher and Sociology,” in Signs, trans. McCleary, Richard C. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 99, 101–102, 110 Google Scholar. As he added (p. 98): “We need neither tear down the behavorial sciences to lay the foundations of philosophy, nor tear down philosophy to lay the foundations of behavorial sciences. Every science secretes an ontology; every ontology anticipates a body of knowledge.”
32 Merleau-Ponty, , “Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis: Preface to Hesnard's L'Oeuvre de Freud,” in The Essential Writings of Merleau Ponty, ed. Fisher, Alden I. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), pp. 81, 84–86 Google Scholar.
33 Compare Ricoeur, , “Ethics and Culture: Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue.” Philosophy Today, 17 (Summer 1973), 163 Google Scholar; also “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” Social Research, 38 (Autumn 1971), 529–562 Google Scholar, and Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
34 Oppenheim, Felix E., Moral Principles in Political Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 166 Google Scholar. The above comments are not meant to belittle the difference between noncognitivism and realism, but merely to suggest similarities between positivists and realists in respect to cognitivism. Compare, e.g., Wright, Bruce E., “A Cognitivist Program for Normative Political Theory,” Journal of Politics, 36 (08 1974), 675–686 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Compare, e.g., Toulmin, Stephen E., An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1950)Google Scholar; also Edwards, Paul, The Logic of Moral Discourse (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955)Google Scholar.
36 Compare, e.g., Hare, Richard M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952)Google Scholar and Freedom and Reason (London: Oxford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; also Hans Albert, “Ethik und Metaethik,” in Albert, and Topitsch, Ernst, eds., Werturleilstreit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), pp. 472–516 Google Scholar. For a critical comparison of descriptivism and prescriptivism see esp. Hudson, William D., Modern Moral Philosophy (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1970)Google Scholar.
37 To some extent, Aristotle and Kant may be said to typify the descriptive and prescriptive legacies in Western thought—provided that descriptivism is defined as an out-look tying norms to preponderant inclinations (happiness), and prescriptivism as a doctrine stressing duty and the adherence to universal imperatives.
38 Ponty, Merleau, “The Battle over Existentialism,” in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 75–77 Google Scholar; “The Primacy of Perception,” in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays) p. 25 Google Scholar.
39 Habermas, , Theory and Practice, pp. 253–282 Google Scholar.
40 Habermas, , “Der Universalitätsanspruch der Hermeneutik,” in Apel, Karl-Otto et al., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), p. 154 Google Scholar. An English version of the middle section of the essay (with slight alterations) appeared under the title “On Systematically Distorted Communication” in Inquiry, 13 (Autumn 1970), 205–218 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and as first part of a longer essay entitled “Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence” in Dreitzel, Hans P.. Recent Sociology No. 2: Patterns of Communicative Behavior (New York: Macmillan Co., 1970), pp. 115–130 Google Scholar. Compare also Paul Ricoeur, “Ethics and Culture: Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue,” and Kisiel, Theodore, “Ideology Critique and Phenomenology,” Philosophy Todav, 14 (Summer 1970), 151–160 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Habermas, , “Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen Kompetenz,” in Habermas, and Luhmann, Niklas. Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie—Was leistet die Systemforschung? (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), p. 141 Google Scholar. A preliminary draft of the essay in English appeared under the title “Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence” in Inquiry, 13 (Winter 1970). 360–375 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and as the second part of the essay “Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence” in Dreitzel, . Recent Sociology No. 2, pp. 130–148 Google Scholar. Compare also McCarthy, Thomas A., “A Theory of Communicative Competence,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 3 (06 1973), 135–156 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for a further development of Habermas's ethical and metaethical views the third chapter in his Legitimation Crisis, trans. McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press. 1975). pp. 95–143 Google Scholar.
42 See “Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft und die Grundlagen der Ethik,” in Apel, , Transformation der Philosophie, vol. 2, pp. 358–435 Google Scholar. For a more detailed portrayal of Apel's argument compare my “Toward a Critical Reconstruction of Ethics and Politics,” Journal of Politics, 36 (11 1974), 926–957 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 For the contemporary debate about “democracy” compare, e.g., Rejai, Mustafa, Democracy: The Contemporary Theories (New York: Atherton Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1967)Google Scholar. Regarding the notion of a “concrete Utopia” compare Ernst Bloch, Geist der Utopie (1918; rev. ed. Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1964); also “Über die Bedeutung der Utopie” in Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie (Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 124–132 Google Scholar.
44 Merleau-Ponty, , Humanism and Terror, trans. O'Neill, John (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. xiv Google Scholar. As he adds: “In refusing to judge liberalism in terms of the ideas it espouses and inscribes in constitutions and in demanding that these ideas be compared with the prevailing relations between men in a liberal state, Marx is not simply speaking in iho name of a debatable materialist philosophy—he is providing a formula for the concrete study of society which cannot be refuted by idealist arguments.” Compare also Lefebvre, Henri, Everyday Life in the Modern World (New York: Harper & Row, 1968)Google Scholar.
45 Humanism and Terror, p. xviii. As Hwa Yol Jung observes: “In Merleau-Ponty's discussion of Machiavelli and Marxism, it becomes apparent that the political problem is the problem of power and humanity.” See his “The Radical Humanization of Politics,” p. 243.
46 Merleau-Ponty, , “A Note on Machiavelli,” in Signs, p. 211, 215, 223 Google Scholar.
47 In Praise of Philosophy, pp. 33, 46–47.
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