Immanent Critique

357 Pages·2021·1.762 MB·English

by  Titus Stahl

Immanent Critique
ESSEX STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY
Series Editors: Peter Dews, Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Essex; Lorna Finlayson, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex;
Fabian Freyenhagen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex; Ste-
ven Gormley, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex; Timo Jütten,
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex; and Jörg Schaub,
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex.
Essex Studies in Contemporary Critical Theory. This series aims to develop
the critical analysis of contemporary societies. The series publishes both sub-
stantive critical analyses of recent and current developments in society and
culture and studies dealing with methodological/conceptual problems in the
Critical Theory tradition, intended to further enhance its ability to address the
problems of contemporary society
The Political Is Political, Lorna Finlayson
The Spell of Responsibility, Frieder Vogelmann; translated by Daniel Steuer
Social Suffering: Sociology, Psychology, Politics, Emmanuel Renault; trans-
lated by Maude Dews
Critical Theory and Social Self-U nderstanding, Robin Celikates; translated
by Naomi van Steenbergen
Debating Critical Theory: Engagements with Axel Honneth, edited by Julia
Christ, Kristina Lepold, Daniel Loick and Titus Stahl
Immanent Critique, Titus Stahl
Immanent Critique
Titus Stahl
Translated with John-B aptiste Oduor
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
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Published by Rowman & Littlefield
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The book was first published by Campus Verlag under the German title “Immanente
Kritik” by Titus Stahl
Original © Campus Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2013
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International –
Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative
of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting
society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German
Publishers & Booksellers Association).
Copyright to the English translation © 2022 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Stahl, Titus, 1979– author. | Oduor, John- Baptiste, translator.
Title: Immanent critique / Titus Stahl ; translated with John-B aptiste Oduor.
Other titles: Immanente Kritik. English
Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2022] | Series: Essex studies
in contemporary critical theory | “Campus Verlag under the German title “Immanente
Kritik” by Titus Stahl Original, Campus Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2013.” |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021030042 (print) | LCCN 2021030043 (ebook) | ISBN
9781786601797 (cloth) | ISBN 9781786601810 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Social sciences—Philosophy. | Social sciences—Methodology. |
Critical theory. | Frankfurt school of sociology.
Classification: LCC H61.15 .S69 2022 (print) | LCC H61.15 (ebook) | DDC
300.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn. loc .gov/2021030042
LC ebook record available at https://lccn. loc .gov/2021030043
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Preface to the English Translation vii
1 Introduction 1
2 Social Critique 9
3 Interpretation and Immanent Critique 33
4 Immanent Critique and the Critical Theory of Society 75
5 Collective Intentionality 117
6 Norms and Social Practices 157
7 The Immanent Norms of Social Practices 197
8 The Possibility of Immanent Critique 229
9 The Critique of Reification 257
10 Conclusion: Social Conflict and Social Hope 283
Notes 289
Bibliography 329
Index 345
v

Preface to the English Translation
This book is a revised and substantially shortened translation of the mono-
graph Immanente Kritik, which was published in German by Campus in 2013,
itself a revised and substantially shortened translation of a PhD thesis that
I submitted in 2010. While a great amount of literature that covers related
issues has been published since the original text was written, I hope that
this text continues to offer an argument that is not available elsewhere, and
I remain convinced of the overall line of reasoning I defend. I have therefore
only made revisions where it became necessary in the course of shortening
the text and at some points where the original German version was less clear
than I had intended.
Throughout its various iterations, I have incurred many debts to those who
have supported the project. The PhD thesis could not have been written with-
out the unwavering support of my advisors, Axel Honneth and Nicholas H.
Smith, as well as Rahel Jaeggi and Jean-P hilippe Deranty. At the Frankfurt
Institute for Social Research and the Department of Philosophy at Goethe
University, Frankfurt, and at the Department of Philosophy of Macquarie
University, Sydney, I found a community of colleagues who have deeply
shaped me and the present book. Hannah Bayer, Robin Celikates, Kristina
Lepold, Jasper Liptow, Andreas Maier and Frieder Vogelmann were kind
enough to provide feedback on various iterations of drafts, from which I
learned a lot. I am also grateful for the questions and suggestions I received
at colloquia in Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and Sydney. In addi-
tion, I was fortunate enough to have been supported while working on the
manuscript by project funding from the Volkswagen Foundation and by a
Macquarie Research Excellence scholarship.
The English translation of the book was funded by a stipend from
the Geisteswissenschaften International program of the Börsenverein des
vii
viii Preface to the English Translation
Deutschen Buchhandels. Its publication would not have been possible with-
out the help of the editors of the Essex Studies in Critical Theory series. In
particular, I am deeply grateful to Fabian Freyenhagen and Frankie Mace at
Rowman & Littlefield and to the Campus editors for guiding the translation
project through a series of obstacles we could not have anticipated. John-
Baptiste Oduor took over the translation project at a critical moment, and I
am deeply grateful to him and to Carolyn Benson for invaluable help with
the manuscript.
As always, my greatest debt is to Babette. Without her, none of this would
have been possible.
Chapter One
Introduction
In September 1843, Karl Marx wrote a letter to his friend Arnold Ruge from
Bad Kreuznach, where he had married Jenny von Westphalen only a short
time prior. In it, he complained of the state of the philosophical social criti-
cism of their time. In the past, Marx wrote, philosophy had always been under
the sway of the idea that
philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-d esks, and
the stupid, exoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of
absolute knowledge to fly into it.1
Although Marx described it as an improvement that philosophy was over-
coming this dogmatic view of its own role, he notes that a certain ‘anarchy’
had broken out among the reformers of the day. This ‘anarchy’ prevailed
in particular in confusion over the proper content of philosophical critique.
In Marx’s view, however, these confusions were owing to methodological
progress, which he intended to bring to completion. This methodological
progress consisted in the development of a new form of critique. It is the
distinguishing principle of this new form of criticism, Marx writes, ‘that we
do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world
through criticism of the old one’.2
On Marx’s account, therefore, the new kind of critique does not proceed
dogmatically. It does not begin by developing normative or moral principles
purely theoretically, without reference to empirical reality, and then proceed
to apply these principles to the social world. Rather, this new form of criticism
takes social reality seriously and extracts the norms by which the ‘new world’
should be governed from this social reality itself. Such nondogmatic criticism
must thus understand itself as a critique that develops its critical principles
1