As euthanasia has become a widely debated issue in many Western countries, hospitals and nursing homes especially are increasingly being confronted with this ethically sensitive societal issue. The focus of this paper is how healthcare institutions can deal with euthanasia requests on an organizational level by means of a written institutional ethics policy. The general aim is to make a critical analysis whether these policies can be considered as organizational-ethical instruments that support healthcare institutions to take their institutional responsibility (...) for dealing with euthanasia requests. By means of an interpretative analysis, we conducted a process of reinterpretation of results of former Belgian empirical studies on written institutional ethics policies on euthanasia in dialogue with the existing international literature. The study findings revealed that legal regulations, ethical and care-oriented aspects strongly affected the development, the content, and the impact of written institutional ethics policies on euthanasia. Hence, these three cornerstones—law, care and ethics—constituted the basis for the empirical-based organizational-ethical framework for written institutional ethics policies on euthanasia that is presented in this paper. However, having a euthanasia policy does not automatically lead to more legal transparency, or to a more professional and ethical care practice. The study findings suggest that the development and implementation of an ethics policy on euthanasia as an organizational-ethical instrument should be considered as a dynamic process. Administrators and ethics committees must take responsibility to actively create an ethical climate supporting care providers who have to deal with ethical dilemmas in their practice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Make'em Laugh, Make'em Laugh, Make'em Laugh! The Laughing Consciousness Laughing: No Laughing Matter The Joke of Critical Theory Lights Please! References.

The article critically reviews the Incongruity Theory of Humor reaching the conclusion that it has to be essentially restructured. Leaving aside the question of scope, it is shown that the theory is inadequate even for those cases for which it is thought to be especially well suited – that it cannot account either for the pleasurable effect of jokes or for aesthetic pleasure. I argue that it is the resolution of the incongruity rather than its mere apprehension, which (...) is that source of the amusement or aesthetic delight. Once the theory is thus restructured, the Superiority Theory of Humor and the Relief Theory can be seen as supplementary to it. (shrink)

Now in its second edition, this collection is an intelligent, accessible overview of the entire Critical Theory Tradition, written by one of the leading experts on the subject. Filled with original insights and valuable historical narratives, this work is a contribution that furthers the idea and spirit of critical theory as it weaves together a narrative from a series of examinations of the thoughts of many of the most important left Western intellectuals of the twentieth century. (...) Covering the work of major philosophical thinkers such as Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas and revisiting the contributions of lesser-known figures such as Karl Korsch and Ernst Bloch, Bronner measures the writing of these theorists against each other, postmodernist philosophers and the critical tradition reaching back to Hegel, and then connects the history of critical theory with important historical events and develops in the twentieth century. Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists presents new insights useful to experienced scholars and offers clear summaries for students making this book an ideal introduction to the debates surrounding one of the most important intellectual traditions of the 20th Century. (shrink)

_The Handbook of Critical Theory_ brings together for the first time a detailed examination of the state of critical theory today. The fifteen essays provide analyses of the various orientations which critical theory has taken both historically and systematically in recent years, expositions of the new perspectives which have begun to shape the field, and reflections upon the direction of critical theory.

Over the last decade, Axel Honneth has established himself as one of the leading social and political philosophers in the world today. Rooted in the tradition of critical theory, his writings have been central to the revitalization of critical theory and have become increasingly influential. His theory of recognition has gained worldwide attention and is seen by some as the principal counterpart to Habermass theory of discourse ethics. In this important new volume, Honneth pursues (...) his path-breaking work on recognition by exploring the moral experiences of disrespect that underpin the conduct of social and political critique. What we might conceive of as a striving for social recognition initially appears in a negative form as the experience of humiliation or disrespect. Honneth argues that disrespect constitutes the systematic key to a comprehensive theory of recognition that seeks to clarify the sense in which institutionalized patterns of social recognition generate justified demands on the way subjects treat each other. This new book by one of the leading social and political philosophers of our time will be of particular interest to students and scholars in social and political theory and philosophy. (shrink)

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School--Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst--have persistently defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy (...) Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resouce we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future. (shrink)

A critique of contemporary critical theory that traces transformative shifts in the discipline during the twentieth century and argues for a reformulation of critical theory in order to ensure the legacy of its political project.

This article challenges the urge within Actor-Network Theory, posthumanism, and the ontological turn in sociology and anthropology to dissolve analytical distinctions between subject and object, society and nature, and human and non-human. It argues that only by acknowledging such distinctions and applying a realist ontology can exploitative and unsustainable global power relations be exposed. The predicament of the Anthropocene should not prompt us to abandon distinctions between society and nature but to refine the analytical framework through which we can (...) distinguish between sentience and non-sentience and between the symbolic and non-symbolic. The incompatibility of posthumanist and Marxist approaches to the Anthropocene and the question of agency derives from ideological differences as well as different methodological proclivities. A central illustration of these differences is the understanding of fetishism, a concept viewed by posthumanists as condescending but by Marxists as emancipatory. (shrink)

Containing over 750 in-depth entries, this is the most wide-ranging and up-to-date dictionary of critical theory available. It covers the whole range of critical theory, including the Frankfurt school, cultural materialism, cultural studies, gender studies, film studies, literary theory, hermeneutics, historical materialism, internet studies, and sociopolitical critical theory. Entries clearly explain even the most complex of theoretical discourses, such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism. There are biographies of important figures in the (...) field, with feature entries for those who have heavily influenced areas of the discipline, e.g. Deleuze. -/- Entries are fully cross-referenced and contain further reading where appropriate. To provide extra information this edition features an appendix of recommended web links, which are accessible via the Dictionary of Critical Theory companion website, where they are also checked regularly and kept up to date. -/- Covering all aspects of the subject from globalization and race studies, to queer theory and feminism, this multidisciplinary A-Z is essential for students of literary and cultural studies and is useful for anyone studying a humanity subject requiring a knowledge of theory. (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1952.

Habermas’ critical theory is partly an attempt to identify the limitations of critique and emancipation as espoused in the first generation critical theory of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In their attempt to develop an interdisciplinary, reflexive, emancipatory and dialectical reason that is critical towards accepted realities, Horkheimer and Adorno in their monumental work The Dialectic of Enlightenment pictured a world trapped in instrumental rationality. Taking and revolutionizing traditional critical theory, Habermas argues that (...) reason entails both emancipator as well as instrumental possibilities. Through an exposition of Habermas’ critique of Horkheimer and Adorno in his discourse of modernity, this article argues that although Habermas successfully identifies the equation of the rational with the instrumental and offers an emancipator model in return; still he ends up not paying sufficient attention to aesthetic truth. (shrink)

Following Max Horkheimer, I will first attempt to reconstruct an anthropology that essentially wants to be understood as critical social research. I will then pursue the question of humanism in critical theory. In doing so, I want to show that a reference to a normatively substantive humanism does actually exist in critical theory. On the other hand, I want to show that this humanism is anything but unambiguously and systematically formulated but has been reflected and (...) articulated differently by different representatives of critical theory. The two examples I will refer to here are Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm. I will define Adorno’s humanism as ‘dialectical humanism’, whereas Fromm’s humanism could be described as ‘emphatic humanism’. My reading, however, attempts to interrogate the two positions as to their complementarity. Not ‘Adorno or Fromm’, but ‘Adorno and Fromm’ is the motto that guides me. Finally, I will relate this complementary reading of both approaches in such a way that the possibility of a ‘Critical Humanism’ can be derived from it, which above all also wants to be understood as a sociological research program. (shrink)

Traditions of thought remain vital and vivid if their borders are porous; they remain able to convey useful insights to understand our present, its roots in the past and its hints at new future perspectives if contaminations with other traditions are taken as a fruitful challenge and as a possibility of enrichment, not of jeopardy. Traditions of thought might be able to attract new followers if their models, criteria and methods are capable of transformation and amelioration. This view of traditions (...) is certainly inspired by John Dewey’s own understanding of philosophical and scientific processes of knowledge.1 His own thought can be indeed described as “open, unfixed, unreified”, entailing... (shrink)

_The Handbook of Critical Theory_ brings together for the first time a detailed examination of the state of critical theory today. The fifteen essays provide analyses of the various orientations which critical theory has taken both historically and systematically in recent years, expositions of the new perspectives which have begun to shape the field, and reflections upon the direction of critical theory.

In this thesis, I address the metaphysical question `What is humour?' and the ethical question `When is humour immoral?' Consulting a dictionary reveals a circle of definitions between `amusement', `funniness', and `humour'. So I split the metaphysical question `What is humour?' into three questions: `What is amusement?', `What is funniness?' and `What is humour?' By critically analysing then synthesising recent research in philosophy, psychology and linguistics, I give the following answers: x amuses y if and only if: y is in (...) a non-serious, non-threatened, non-goal-directed state. y simultaneously activates two incompatible interpretations of x via unsound logic. sufficiently increases the psychological arousal of y. x is funny if and only if x merits amusement. x is humour if and only if the function of x is to merit or elicit amusement. Similarly, I split the ethical question `When is humour immoral?' into three questions: `When is amusement immoral?', `How does immorality affect funniness?' and `When is humour immoral?' By using, and, I give the following answers: Amusement is immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines, or to be immoral. Immorality negatively affects funniness. Humour-types are not subject to moral evaluation. Humour-tokens are immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines them to be immoral. This thesis contributes to the knowledge of the subject in two ways. First, by critically analysing and synthesising recent inter-disciplinary research, provides a more precisely specified definition of amusement than that in the philosophical literature. Second, research on humour, across all disciplines, conflates the three closely related but distinct concepts of humour, amusement and funniness. By providing a linear sequence of definitions,, and avoid the conceptual confusions that commonly occur. (shrink)

This handbook is the only major survey of critical theory from philosophical, political, sociological, psychological and historical vantage points. It emphasizes not only on the historical and philosophical roots of critical theory, but also its current themes and trends as well as future applications and directions. It addresses specific areas of interest that have forged the critical theory tradition, such as critical social psychology, aesthetics and the critique of culture, communicative action, and the (...) critique of instrumental reason. It is intended for those interested in exploring the influential paradigm of critical theory from multiple, interdisciplinary perspectives and understanding its contribution to the humanities and the social sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Lessons of TheoryJay PariniOne does not have to look far these days to find someone bashing literary theory, and in some respects it deserves it. Joseph Epstein, for one, has almost never tired of picking away at the motives of those who engage in literary theory: “The major impulse of theory was suspicion,” he has said. “In this regard theory gave that portion of (...) the professoriat who came through the sixties unfulfilled, and those younger professors—women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals—who chose to squeeze all they could out of their self-created status of victimhood, a large and lovely outlet for their resentment.” The irony is that one hears in this semi-hysterical cri de coeur the very suspicion that the author is supposedly complaining about. Mr. Epstein, neither female nor gay, apparently feels passed over. Inadvertently, he has become the Victim himself.Literary theory—or just “theory”—has frightened a whole generation of intellectuals into early mental retirement, mostly because they have not the stamina or will to enter into appropriate conversation with their younger colleagues. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the debate over theory has been this extension into the academy of what, in the sixties, used to be called the generation gap; indeed, many of the same dynamics seem to apply, with theorists pitting themselves against all forms of authority. “Never trust anyone under thirty” has been transmogrified into “Never trust anyone who doesn’t appreciate Foucault.”In the seventies, theory moved toward the center of the curriculum at most American graduate schools of literature, and it has remained in place for nearly a quarter of a century. The charge is often heard, perhaps with some justice, that students now spend more time reading [End Page 91] Foucault or Derrida than Shakespeare or Dante, and that this has created an imbalance. But even here, the situation is exaggerated; graduate students do indeed get a heavy dose of theory, yet one sees few undergraduate classrooms in the United States where anything resembling literary theory has displaced the teaching of canonical texts. For the most part what has happened is that the canon has been widened to include texts by previously overlooked writers—usually texts by women or minorities. Such a development hardly threatens to erase or even partially to occlude Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton.The charge that theory is unreadable is, for me, a more important criticism. (There’s a joke I like in this regard: Question: What do you get when you cross a deconstructionist with a mafioso? Answer: An offer you can’t understand.) Jargon has overwhelmed literary criticism to the point where the so-called Common Reader is now fiercely excluded from the conversations that take place in most professional journals and academic conferences, and the consequences of this exclusionary practice are profound. The most obvious effect is that serious literature itself, and thinking about literature and its place in the world, is removed from mainstream consumption. As a result, the general quality of our national discourse—in the arts as well as collateral areas, such as politics—is diminished.This said, I would still argue that an intellectual revolution of sorts has indeed occurred in the last thirty years, and that theory has permanently changed the ways that we—as readers and writers—go about our reading and, yes, our thinking. The peak of the battle over theory passed several years ago; in fact, we seem to have entered a “post-theoretical” moment, and so the time may have arrived for reassessing some of the lessons of theory. This “revolution” is pretty much a literal one: a turning of the wheel. But the wheel has been turning for a long time. Our ways of reading have been challenged almost continuously from the beginning of this century, when the belles-lettres style of criticism popular just after the Great War was dislodged by the philologists, and the philologists were attacked by the literary historians, and the historians were pushed temporarily to one side in the late forties and early fifties by the New Critics. And so forth. The history of criticism is simply a history of overturnings, or absorptions (I rather... (shrink)

Brosio (social foundations of education, Ball State U.) describes and analyzes a number of philosophies that can provide a solid framework for the construction of critical, democratic educational theory and practice. Theorists discussed include the classical Greek thinkers, Marx, Dewey, the existentialists, liberationists, Freire, politics of identity thinkers, and postmodernists. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Nikolas Kompridis has recently argued that the future of critical theory depends upon a critical appropriation of Heidegger’s concept of ‘world disclosure’, and hence on a transformation of critical theory into a form of ‘world-disclosing critique’ oriented towards the future. This article engages in a critical dialogue with Kompridis' account of world-disclosing critique, arguing that critical theory should embrace it as an innovative way of retrieving the forgotten tradition of aesthetic critique of (...) modernity. (shrink)

This edited collection of original essays explores the irreducible role of aesthetic forms of experience and activity in the philosophies of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno.

Amy Allen presents Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment as a productive movement between a commitment to the project of reason and a sensitivity to the effects on reason of power and domination. Agreeing with the thrust of her paper, my response considers two questions that Allen’s paper opens up. The first asks how individuals might seek emancipation through reason, knowing that their reason cannot transcend contexts of power. The second asks how best to practise critical theory, given (...) that its analyses and categories cannot rid themselves of contexts of domination. To the first, I answer that Allen’s account of creative individual effort needs to be supplemented by the cultivation of an accommodating and welcoming culture, marked by the sorts of civic attitudes that Derrida and Habermas bring to their maturing relationship. Regarding the second, I extend Allen’s hopes for a post-Habermasian phase of critical theory, indicating four resources in contemporary French philosophy for its further development. (shrink)

It is a hallmark of the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory that it has consistently made philosophical reflection a central component of its overall project. Indeed, the core identity that this tradition has been able to maintain arguably stems from the fact that a number of key philosophical assumptions have been shared by the generations of thinkers involved in it. These assumptions form a basic ‘philosophical matrix’, whose main aim is to allow for a ‘critique of reason’, (...) the heart of the critique of modern society, which emphasises the collective, historically situated and naturalistically grounded nature of rationality. In this matrix, Feuerbach's place has been only a minor one. This paper aims to show that there is more to be retrieved from Feuerbach for critical theory than at first meets the eye. The first section identifies key conceptual features that are shared by the central authors of the Frankfurt School. They signal a collectivist and materialist shift from Kant to Marx via Hege.. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 5, Page 703-725, June 2022. In this article, I argue that Habermas’s method of rational reconstruction faces limitations when it comes to analysing newly emerging and contested political practices. As rational reconstruction aims to criticize existing practices by determining their normative meaning as reflected in the participants’ idealizing presuppositions, it reaches its limits where emerging and contested practices make it impossible to identify a shared self-understanding and a single participants’ perspective. Using the example (...) of membership politics, I argue that this is often the case where nationally constituted forms of politics become controversial or are fundamentally questioned. Building on the work of Benhabib and Fraser, I develop an alternative reconstructive method of plural reconstruction, which modifies the basic premises of rational reconstruction, adjusting it to emerging and contested political contexts. (shrink)

e paper seeks to evaluate the critical perspective on scientism and epistemological objectivism put forward by a version of hermeneutic phenomenology. It is a version that addresses the issues of the meaningful constitution of research objects in natural-scientic research. In opposing Habermas’ quasi- transcendental epistemology of the empirico-analytical sciences, the paper offers an attempt at interpretative investigation of the formation of knowledge- guiding interests in these sciences. e possibility of a “dialogical research of nature” is scrutinized.

In this article I argue that the method of normative reconstruction that is underlying Freedom’s Right undermines Critical Theory’s aspiration to be a force that is unreservedly critical and progressive. I start out by giving a brief account of the four premises of the method of normative reconstruction and unpack their implications for how Honneth conceptualizes social pathologies and misdevelopments, specifically that these notions are no longer linked to radical critique and normative revolution. In the second part, (...) I demonstrate that abandoning forms of radical critique and normative revolution is internally linked to adopting this method, before arguing that Freedom’s Right entails no resources to account for why abandoning them does not amount to a deficiency. In the final part, I point out two problematic implications of turning away from radical critique and normative revolution for the very project Honneth pursues in Freedom’s Right. I show that Honneth’s own view about the limited scope of application of the method of normative reconstruction and his account of the dangers associated with social misdevelopments give us reasons to consider this method to be incomplete. Finally, I contend that the explanatory power of Freedom’s Right is dubious because methodological premises that form part of normative reconstruction lead Honneth to ignore relevant alternative explanations of processes of deviation and disassociation from norms of social freedom, which he characterizes as social misdevelopments. (shrink)

I provide a critique of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition by calling into question the extent to which recognitive relations are immune to the effects of social and economic power and their ability to shape consciousness and moral cognition. I maintain that as a theory of socialization, Honneth’s theory is inadequate to deal with the strong structural-functional forces that hold administrative-capitalist societies together. This has the effect of constituting subjectivity in particular ways, and this problem of the (...) constitution of the personality and consciousness of individuals vitiates the descriptive and normative claims of the theory of recognition. I end by considering an alternative way to view recognition and its role in promoting a form of critical subjectivity. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 48-64, March 2022.

"Dominick LaCapra is unequalled in his ability to bring theoretical concerns that are associated with literary theory to the attention of historians. He is responsible for enlivening the discipline of history and compelling historians to rethink their foundational assumptions, which normally go unquestioned."—Mark Poster, University of California, Irvine.

How a social science of big data would look like? In this article, we exemplify such a social science through a number of cases. We start our discussion with the epistemic qualities of big data. We point out to the fact that contrary to the big data champions, big data is neither new nor a miracle without any error nor reliable and rigorous as assumed by its cheer leaders. Secondly, we identify three types of big data: natural big data, artificial (...) big data and human big data. We present and discuss in what ways they are similar and in what other ways they differ. The assumption of a homogenous big data in fact misleads the relevant discussions. Thirdly, we extended 3 Vs of the big data and add veracity with reference to other researchers and violability which is the current author’s proposal. We explain why the trinity of Vs is insufficient to characterize big data. Instead, a quintinity is proposed. Fourthly, we develop an economic analogy to discuss the notions of data production, data consumption, data colonialism, data activism, data revolution, etc. In this context, undertaking a Marxist approach, we explain what we mean by data fetishism. Fifthly, we reflect on the implications of growing up with big data, offering a new research area which is called as developmental psychology of big data. Finally, we sketch data resistance and the newly proposed notion of omniresistance, i.e. resisting anywhere at any occasion against the big brother watching us anywhere and everywhere. (shrink)

This article employs the basic tenets of critical realism to provide a philosophical foundation for understanding and resolving the dualisms of activity theory. Its argument follows in four parts. First I develop an immanent critique that shows the problems within activity theory; it reveals that several dualisms were present from the onset, and further that an implicit ontology allows activity theorists to presuppose critical realism in practice. I claim that the historical development of activity theory (...) is marked by attempts to resolve contradictions, which are signalling devices pointing to the need for theoretical expansion. To shed light on attempts to mend dualisms, I then introduce the notion of a ‘patch’ because it functions as a mechanism that sustains dualisms and gaps in practice. An omissive critique identifies the key omitted element that causes the dualisms; namely, the omission of a critique of Humean philosophy and classical empiricism. Finally,, after effectively isolating and explaining the source of dualisms, I prepare the ground for a protoexplanatory critique to rectify them. (shrink)

Displaying an impressive command of complex materials, Seyla Benhabib reconstructs the history of theories from a systematic point of view and examines the origins and transformations of the concept of critique from the works of Hegel to Habermas. Through investigating the model of the philosophy of the subject, she pursues the question of how Hegel´s critiques might be useful for reforumulating the foundations of critical social theory.