Commercium

Critical Theory From a Cosmopolitan Point of View

Brian Milstein

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781783482856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a ‘postnational’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a ‘cosmopolitan point of view.’ Drawing on Kant‘s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas‘s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a ‘commercium’ of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologies and crises in present-day world society.

Part I

Habermas’s Critical Theory of Society

The idea of linking cosmopolitanism to critique is not a new one. It was Kant’s motto that we should never be content to submit our understanding, our conscience, or even our diet to the direction of others—that we should dare to seek knowledge for ourselves.1 We have our duties to society as private individuals, but each of us also has the capacity to take up the role “of a scholar” in public debates through which we pursue our collective enlightenment. Kant viewed the public use of reason as the quintessential medium of philosophical critique against official channels of power. Thus it is hardly surprising that he included in his essay on perpetual peace a “secret article” calling upon state officials to heed the maxims of philosophers by keeping an ear to the arguing public. Only by taking note of the standpoint of the critical public can state administrators liberate themselves from the constraints of raison d’état, where the “free judgment of reason” is liable to be corrupted.2 For Kant, the dialogue between critique and power remained integral to his cosmopolitan vision.

The original Frankfurt School was less interested in questions of cosmopolitanism than in the paradoxes of capitalist development. In the 150 years between Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment?” and Max Horkheimer’s seminal essay on “Traditional and Critical Theory,” the social landscape of modernity changed dramatically, giving rise to more complex, penetrating, and subtle forms of social power that the earlier philosopher could have scarcely foreseen. Yet Horkheimer initially understood his own project of a “critical theory of society” to be a continuation of the Kantian pursuit of enlightenment, even as he noted the inadequacies of his predecessor’s approach.

To Horkheimer, the very enterprise of pursuing knowledge had been overtaken, compartmentalized, and subjugated to the false consciousness of the capitalist division of labor.3 If the problem for Kant was the political repression of knowledge by state censors, for Horkheimer it was the corruption of knowledge as such at the hands of an increasingly technocratic way of life. Under the guise of “objectivity” and “value-neutrality,” practitioners of the positive social sciences fancied themselves as observers of, but not participants in, the society they analyzed, and they denied any need for philosophical reflection on their social-scientific enterprise. Their theoretical viewpoint remained restricted to the technical manipulation of “facts” deemed relevant to a given area of specialization. Horkheimer’s argument was that, far from granting them an objective and value-free “view from nowhere,” these specialized sciences were themselves products of a historically evolved division of labor, and they played crucial roles in maintaining and reproducing it. The abandonment of philosophical reflection only prevented them from situating themselves reflexively in relation to the social whole in which they operated and from understanding how their activities contributed to it.4

But Horkheimer held the modern philosophical tradition equally responsible for the reification of knowledge that plagued industrial society. In his view, the main culprit was the “transcendental ego,” the idea of an isolated consciousness whose capacities for reason are drawn from a plane beyond social practice. Introduced by Descartes and perfected by Kant, this model of the individual seeks self-consciousness by distancing itself from social reality, directing its contemplative energies inward, toward individual meaning and purpose, while accepting “society” as an external, inexplicable given.5 For Horkheimer, modern philosophy and positive social science have become accomplices in the disengagement of knowledge from society and theory from practice. They have grown to disregard the situatedness of thought and action in the historical constitution of society, remaining blind to the ways society produces the very reality it employs them to interpret.

Horkheimer’s idea for a critical theory of society demanded a standpoint on knowledge that is both empirically engaged and capable of reflecting upon its own origins, which seeks to comprehend society for the purposes of transforming it through action. It proceeds as a continuation of the Kantian project of a critique of reason, only instead of searching for transcendental limits of what human beings may know, do, and hope for, the task is now aimed at the actualization of reason as it unfolds within the development of society.6 This requires critical theory to be, in Thomas McCarthy’s words, “doubly reflexive.” It must be reflexive from the point of view of society’s participants, in terms of the “emancipatory potential” that is available to them yet unrealized at a given stage of historical development. Yet it must also be reflexive in relation to the practice of social science itself, its underlying assumptions and their origins, and its function as a producer of knowledge that feeds into the reproduction of society.7 Critical theory cannot afford to be purely contemplative or purely empirical. Theory and practice must be combined in the activity of the investigator, who retains a constant skepticism of received concepts, interrogates the historical conditions of their emergence, and locates them in the functional organization of society: “His presentation of societal contradictions is not merely an expression of the concrete historical situation but also a force to stimulate change.”8

Horkheimer understood the tasks of critical theory from a squarely Marxist-Hegelian point of view: the subject who stands as both participant and observer of social processes can take up these roles only from a point of view internal to the movement of history, a history permeated by contradictions and crises. Any theory concerned with human freedom and well-being cannot rest satisfied with adapting to social reality “as is”; it must continuously struggle to uncover the human capacities to change that reality, however modest they may be. As we shall see, critical theory accepts that many modern social structures are heavily entrenched to the point that they cannot be substantially altered without unraveling society altogether. This does not excuse us, however, from testing their limits.

Habermas’s approach to critical theory, which will be the subject of chapter 1, can be broken down into two key components. The first of these is his emphasis on the participant’s perspective, which can itself be broken down into a “Hegelian” and a “Kantian” moment.9 The Hegelian moment consists in the irrevocable situatedness of human thought and action: human beings enter the world and form conceptions of themselves only in relation to a social reality that preexists them. This social reality shapes their basic concepts, attitudes, and capabilities vis-à-vis the world they encounter, and there is no way to fully escape it. Against this Hegelian moment stands the Kantian one, the moment of autonomy. Even though we can never fully escape social reality, we still retain some ability to reflect on it, challenge it, and possibly even transform it. We can criticize, we can say “no,” we can pursue alternatives to what is handed down to us. The participant’s perspective consists in an ongoing dialectic between these two moments.

Against the participant’s perspective stands a second, more critical perspective, which we might call the “Marxian” moment in his thought. The critical perspective involves specifying those aspects of social reality that have “detached” themselves from the world of participants in such a way that they appear no longer answerable to those who originally set them in motion. They have come to appear a “second nature.” Under certain conditions, these structures may even come to “colonize” the lifeworlds of participants, narrowing their points of view and their capacities to act freely and instigating crisis situations that threaten the very integrity of their social world. The task of a critical theory of society is to attempt to recover some level of control over these runaway processes.

I will argue that the basic outline and central concepts of Habermas’s approach to critical theory are indispensible for a critical theory conceived with a cosmopolitan intention, but not without reconstruction and expansion. In chapter 2, I will show how many of the shortcomings in Habermas’s approach emerge in his more recent writings on cosmopolitanism. A large part of the problem comes from the fact that Habermas, like so many theorists before him, developed his central concepts using the assumption of a self-sufficient, autarkic society with pregiven boundaries. As a result, he never fully developed the resources to theorize outside of the institutional framework of the democratic nation-state. Moreover, he never considered how boundaries themselves could be theorized using his own theory of communicative action. Using Habermas’s understanding of critical theory as our point of departure, by the end of chapter 2 we will be able to specify the requirements of a critical theory conceived with a cosmopolitan intention as follows:

• It must aim to comprehend the sum of individuals who share the earth in common not as mere subjects but as participants in the construction of world order—that is, as communicative actors who are capable of claiming ownership of the way they coexist in community with one another.
• It must aim for a critical reconstruction of the modern state system as it has evolved historically, with emphasis on what forms of power and constraint it imposes on the ability of participants to claim ownership of the way they share the ea...