The Critical Theory of Social Research

The critical theory has derived from Marx and Kant. They used the term ‘critique’ when forming their philosophical speculations. Marx used it in his book ‘Das Capital-A Critique of Political Economy’ and Kant has used the term in his three critiques; The ‘Critique’ of pure reason, The ‘Critique’ of Practical Reason and ‘The ‘Critique’ of Judgment.’ 

Critical theory of social research is discussed with the ideas of Marx and Freud. It criticizes both positivist approach and interpretive approach. It criticizes positivist approach for its inability to focus on the meaning of human actions and it criticizes the interpretive approach for being more subjective and for being relativist. This approach goes beyond the surface level illusions and it uncover the real structures in this material world as it could be helpful to the people to change the conditions and to build a better world. Moreover, it has broad meaning in the context of the history of social sciences. Critical theory can be considered as a philosophical assessment and a critique of the society. It is believed that it is possible to reveal and challenge to the power structures by applying knowledge from social science and humanities. 

Sociology and critical philosophy is affected to the critical theory and the western Marxist philosophy of the Frankfurt school. Actually, Frankfurt school is a school of social theory along with an analysis of the critical philosophy. Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adarno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin and Eric Fromm were the people who contributed a lot to the critical theory from the Frankfurt school whereas Lukas, Gramsci and Habermas have been influenced the modern critical theory. It has mentioned that,“Frankfurt School and Critical Theory: if the terms evoke more than just the idea of a particular paradigm in social science, they will trigger memories of a string of names-starting with Adarno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas-and associations with the student movement of the 1960s, the ‘positivist dispute’, the critique of culture-and perhaps also German émigrés, the Third Reich, Jews the Weimar Republic, Marxism and psychoanalysis’ (Wiggershaus, 1986, p. 1).

Therefore, it becomes clear that critical theory is more than one piece of academic history or a school of thought. The intellectuals in the Frankfurt school of thought believed that Marx’s views need to be subjected to a radical revision to bring them to the modern context. They criticized Marx for not giving enough attention to the influence of culture in the context of modern capitalist society.  

Max Horkeimer was the person who first defined critical theory in his essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory.’ He was critical towards the society because he thought that traditional theories can be used to explain things. There are two main concepts in critical theory. They are,

-Critical theory is concerned about the historical specificity of the society

-Critical theory recovers the understanding of the society by incorporating all the main social sciences (sociology, geography, economics, anthropology etc.)

‘Critique’ is considered to be a part of knowledge systems. It mainly rejects the knowledge, which is given by the sciences that follows the positivist methodology. It is claimed by the positivist approach that science is ‘the source of knowledge’. It is mentioned that the critical theory of sociology is differ from the other positivist analytical sciences with the objective, structural system etc. Marx view was generally accepted in the context of critical theory. It says that the main objective of a social theory should be to criticize the incidents of the society. Critical theory is defined with Marxist approach. Both approaches accept that it is meaningless to describe the society. Despite the other views, it claims that the requirement is to change the society. 

Critical theory aims to change the society instead of describing the world. It studies how people see the world. It criticizes the attempt of legalizing the wrong ideologies. In addition, it studies how the facts derived from empirical sciences suppress the individual and the community. As it has mentioned by Max Horkheimer, critical theorists aimed to enslave the human beings and to liberate themselves.

Frankfurt school is a school of social theory and critical philosophy. They were critical towards positivism. 

Conclusion 

Critical theory is a novel approach against other dominant methodologies. Their attempt should be admired because it addressed a practical issue. By describing the world no new knowledge will be introduced. Nevertheless, if we critically look at the society with the thought of changing the society, it will generate new critical knowledge. Being critical is not about criticizing everything. However, it helps to avoid mere acceptance of the things. Therefore, it can be said that critical theory has become a unique approach in the methodology of social sciences.

Bibliography

Abraham, F., & Morgan, H. J. (1985). Sociological Thought form Comte to Sorokin . Madras: Macmillan India Limited.

Brown, S., Collinson, D., & Wilkinson, R. (Eds.). (1998). One-Hundred Twenthieth-Century Philosophers. New York: Routledge.

Pratt, V. (1978). The Philosophy of the Social Sciences. New York: Methuen and Co.

Wiggershaus, R. (1986). The Frankfurt School. (M. Robertson, Trans.) Cambridge: Polity Press.