If Raymond Geuss didn’t exist, we would need to invent him. Geuss proves that one can write about philosophy - continental philosophy even - without recourse to excessive jargon and obfuscation. Many of us trained in the Anglophone tradition of analytic philosophy (think: David Hume, G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, etc.) give continental philosophy a wide berth due to its stereotypically vague and impenetrable prose. Of course, much of the difficulty in reading continental philosophers (Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and so on) is simply due to stylistic differences compounded by poor translations. Many of the topics covered by analytic and continental philosophers overlap and their respective insights are complementary. People ensconced in both traditions would do well to cross the artificial divide between them.
Enter Geuss’ book on critical theory. ‘The Idea of A Critical Theory’ is the second in a series published by Cambridge University Press designed to make European philosophy more accessible to an English-speaking audience. The first was Charles Taylor’s work ‘Hegel and Modern Society’. This is fitting, for the critical theorists of the twentieth century trace their intellectual heritage back to Hegel through Marx. As Geuss makes clear in his introduction, critical theory builds upon the work of these two great German philosophers. Enough stage-setting. Just what is critical theory, and why should you care about it?
Critical theory is a ‘reflective theory’ that gives people knowledge about themselves, in order to produce enlightenment and emancipation (freedom). Critical theory claims to provide individuals with insights into their real interests and demonstrates how these interests are being frustrated or thwarted by society. Armed with this knowledge, agents can use critical theory to restructure society in ways more conducive to human flourishing and well-being. You see the connection now with Marx, right? Critical theory absorbs Marx’s maxim that the point of philosophy is not merely to interpret the world, but to change it.
But before we can change society, we need to know what our real interests are and how they are being thwarted. In summary: our real interests are those that we would agree are our interests if we had perfect knowledge and were raised in optimal conditions. These real interests are frustrated by society’s dominant ideology, which disguises the particular interests of the social elite as the interests of society in general. Critical theory, by engaging in ideologiekritik (ideology criticism) exposes the dominant ideology for what it is by showing it to be false, functioning to legitimise oppressive social structures, and originating in the particular experiences of the ruling class. These criticisms can be respectively characterised as epistemic, functional and genetic.
Geuss’ book first explains what ideology is and how it can function to obscure, thwart, or prevent the formation and realisation of our real interests. From there, Geuss examines what our ‘real interests’ might be and how they can be discovered or uncovered by critical theory. Personally, I think reversing the order of explanation makes more sense. I first want to know what my actual interests are. Without this knowledge, why would I be motivated to engage in ideologiekritik? Indeed, the claim that critical theory can provide us with deeper knowledge about our true desires is the selling-point of its entire intellectual enterprise. Let us see whether it can deliver.
How are we to know our real interests? The idea that we can be deluded about what we really want is central to critical theory. Geuss gives the example of an alcoholic who lacks a desire to stop drinking. Of course, it is easy to see how one might fall into this problem. An alcoholic can be ignorant of the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption, or hold false beliefs about the health effects of alcohol. By correcting these beliefs, an alcoholic can be brought to realise their ‘true interests’, i.e. that they seek help to stop drinking.
This, of course, is an uncontroversial example. When applied to everyday people, it is hard to escape the feeling that critical theory is motivated by cultural and intellectual elitism. It is one thing to disagree with someone’s behaviour and self-described interests, it is quite another to suggest that they are suffering from some ideological delusion. How can critical theory justify its very strong claim that most people are suffering from ‘false ideological consciousness’? As flagged earlier, Geuss distinguishes two approaches for uncovering our ‘real interests’: the perfect knowledge approach and the optimal conditions approach.
The perfect knowledge approach states that our real interests are whatever interests we would hold if we had perfect knowledge. The optimal conditions approach argues that perfect knowledge in abhorrent conditions would still lead to warped interests, therefore are real interests are those that would have developed in the most beneficial conditions. Of course, as Geuss points out, there is an unavoidable symbiosis between these two approaches: one cannot have perfect knowledge unless they have perfect freedom (optimal conditions), nor can one create perfect conditions unless they have perfect knowledge. It is therefore impossible to go from a state of deluded ideological servitude to a position of maximally enlightened self-awareness; we must progress slowly, by acquiring as much knowledge as is possible in our current circumstances.
The German philosopher and critical theorist Jürgen Habermas brings these two approaches together. For Habermas, truth is synonymous with consensus achieved under so-called ‘ideal speech conditions’. If agents are armed with perfect knowledge and are free to discuss a topic for an indefinite period of time, whatever judgement they reach is ipso facto the truth. Applied to critical theory, our real interests are those that we would agree are our real interests under ideal speech conditions - a combination of perfect knowledge and perfect freedom. This raises a host of interesting philosophical questions about what constitutes ‘freedom’. I will not delve into that discussion here, except to say that critical theorists take their account of freedom from the Enlightenment tradition, i.e. an autonomous agent pursuing their own vision of the good life. Let us now move to a discussion of ideology.
An ideology is a comprehensive world-view which orients people towards their society. It encompasses their cultural practices, religious and political beliefs, values, as well as their wants and desires. Critical theory adds the negative feature that ideologies systematically distort people’s understanding of their desires and their position within society. Ideologies do this by providing people with a false understanding of their interests, causing them to unwittingly act in ways that reproduce their own servitude. An example, drawn from Marxism, would be a member of the working-class falsely believing that lower taxes on the rich are in their own interests and voting for right wing parties that promise to lower taxes and cut government spending. How can critical theory show us that we are being deceived by ideology? Geuss lists a number of ways, but I will focus on just two.
First, ideologies often cause us to make ‘objectification’ mistakes. That is, we wrongly believe that something is objective and natural, and therefore outside of human control to change. An example, again drawn from Marxism, is bourgeois economists claiming that free markets are ‘natural’ and therefore the best and only way to structure our economies. In reality, markets are social constructions that are within our power to change (provided we have the political power and will to do so). So, one way that critical theory can expose our ideological delusions is to show us when we are making objectification mistakes. For instance, a critical theorist will point out that there is nothing ‘natural’ about capitalism and that we can change it if we want to. By exposing ideological delusions in this way, they supposedly lose their power over us.
Second, critical theory can show us that under ideal speech conditions, we would not accept our current world-view, which is in fact a product of false ideological consciousness. It can do this in a number of ways, either by first revealing our true interests and then demonstrating how they are presently frustrated, or by showing us that society’s dominant ideology has its origins in the particular interests of the ruling class. For example, a worker may realise that lower taxes are no longer in their interests once they learn that neoliberal economics furthers the interests of the rich at the expense of their own.
There is of course so much more to say about Geuss’ book and critical theory in general. I have necessarily omitted lots of detail; if critical theory still appears to make no sense, judge me rather than the theory. Geuss’ book is only 95 pages long (admittedly small print), so I would encourage anyone interested to read it.
I will conclude by saying that critical theory is not really that radical. It is always addressed to particular human agents embedded within a cultural and historical context. Critical theory progresses by identifying the vision of the good life that is contained within a particular culture, and then shows how its realisation is being prevented by the prevailing socio-economic and political order. It does not claim to have privileged access to transcendental human interests that apply across all societies in every time period. It is a work of cultural interpretation and internal criticism. To quote Geuss:
“Ideologiekritik is only possible if we can extract the very instruments of criticism from the agents own form of consciousness…ideology is said to have a ‘utopian kernel’ which is the task of the critical theory to set free. The positive task of the critical theory is to save the utopian content of the cultural tradition.”
In many ways, critical theory is an extension of the Enlightenment project: to create a society of rational and autonomous agents who pursue happiness without external coercion interference. Whether critical theory’s enlightenment origins help or hinder it, that is up to you.