Critical Thinking for Transformative Justice

The Critique of Ideology
The Frankfurt School's work cannot be
fully comprehended without equally
understanding the aims and objectives of
critical theory. Initially outlined by Max
Horkheimer in his Traditional and
Critical Theory (1937), critical theory
may be defined as a self-conscious social
critique that is aimed at change and
emancipation through enlightenment,
and does not cling dogmatically to its
own doctrinal assumptions. The original
aim of critical theory was to analyze the
true significance of "the ruling
understandings" generated in bourgeois
society, in order to show how they
misrepresented actual human interaction
in the real world, and in so doing
functioned to justify or legitimize the
domination of people by capitalism. A
certain sort of story (a narrative) was
provided to explain what was happening
in society, but the story concealed as
much as it revealed. The Frankfurt
theorists generally assumed that their
own task was mainly to interpret all the
other areas of society which Marx had
not dealt with, especially in the
superstructure of society.
Horkheimer opposed it to "traditional
theory", which refers to theory in the
positivistic, scientistic, or purely
observational mode – that is, which
derives generalizations or "laws" about
different aspects of the world. Drawing
upon Max Weber, Horkheimer argued
that the social sciences are different from
the natural sciences, inasmuch as
generalizations cannot be easily made
from so-called experiences, because the
understanding of a "social" experience
itself is always fashioned by ideas that are
in the researchers themselves. What the
researcher does not realize is that he is
caught in a historical context in which
ideologies shape the thinking; thus theory
would be conforming to the ideas in the
mind of the researcher rather than the
experience itself:
“
The
facts which
our senses
present to us
are socially
performed in
two ways:
through the
historical
character of the
object perceived
and through the
historical
character of the
perceiving
organ. Both are
not simply
natural; they
are shaped by
human activity,
and yet the
individual
perceives
himself as
receptive and
passive in the
act of
perception.
”
For Horkheimer, approaches to
understanding in the social sciences
cannot simply imitate those in the natural
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