Thesis Critical theory diagnoses domination brilliantly but cannot say why it is wrong
Where it stands
I work as an economist at a bank in Valencia, and Marx, Rawls, Hobbes and Ibn Khaldun share a shelf at home. I'd like to press an old objection to critical theory and see whether it still bites.
Critical theory asks what a set of ideas does and whose position it serves. That's a powerful method. But diagnosing something as domination presupposes a standard by which domination is bad. Where does that standard come from?
The first generation, Horkheimer and Adorno, criticised modern reason itself as becoming an instrument of domination. But if reason is compromised, what are they criticising with? Adorno's later work has wonderful negative descriptions and refuses, almost on principle, to say what a good society would be.
Habermas saw the problem and spent decades trying to supply a ground: the norms implicit in communication aimed at mutual understanding, so that a valid norm is one all affected could agree to in rational discourse. That's a real answer. But it's a very procedural, very liberal one, and many critics say it gave away the radical edge.
So my thesis: critical theory is excellent at finding domination and has never settled on why it's wrong without borrowing a standard from the liberal tradition it criticises. Tell me I'm wrong.