Providing specific support from the readings, explain the strengths and weaknesses you perceive across the body of the critical theorists’ work. Attempt to include examples from all three of the theorists read.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Horkheimer and his associates would fail to offer a specific account of the mechanisms for social change and who, precisely, the agents of such change would be. Exactly how the critical theorist was to enlighten the class “in whose service he thinks” was a question that remained unanswered. The closest Horkheimer gets is asserting that the task of the critical theorist is “to reduce the tension between his own insight and oppressed humanity in whose service he thinks” (Horkheimer 1972:221) or claiming that “truth becomes clearly evident in the person of the theoretician” (ibid.:216), This neglect would in turn heighten the sense of pessimism that pervaded the critical theorists’ political outlook. This pessimism stemmed more directly from what they saw as the changing nature of domination. It was not the exploitation inherent in capitalism that was responsible for the oppression of humanity but rather forms of thought, and in particular, the totalitarianism of reason and rationality. Students will select specific passages from the readings they feel best exhibit a weakness they perceive in this perspective.