Abstract

Since its emergence in Marx by way of German idealism, what has come to be known as critical theory has remained powerfully appealing while being plagued with fundamental problems which its more sophisticated proponents have to some extent recognized and wrestled with. I shall connect these problems to a serious equivocation within critical theory concerning the kind of theory it aims to be, an equivocation which can be traced to Marx and which has manifested itself in different ways throughout the tradition of critical theory. My central objective is to indicate that what critical theory sees as its defining theoretical move in fact gives rise to the equivocation and is the ultimate source of its persistent and most vexing problems.