Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)

This book reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality. This book argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management, leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. The first half of the book demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. The second part of the book constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drive toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis. Descent of the Dialectic will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy, political theory, social theory, and critical theory. Cover Endorsement Page Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph Table of Contents Preface Introduction Part 1: Nihilism and the Descent of Dialectics Chapter 1: On Dialectical Reason and Its Descent 1.1 Cybernetic Society and the Nihilist Vision 1.2 The Critical Edge of the Dialectic 1.3 Dialectics and the Metaphysical Structure of Reason 1.4 Toward a New Enlightenment Chapter 2: Reification as an Ontological Concept 2.1 The Reification Problem in Modern Philosophy 2.2 Reification as a Totalizing Process 2.3 The Social Field of Reification: Praxis and Social Reality 2.4 The Subjective Field of Reification: Normative Entanglement 2.5 Reification of the Self: A Psychoanalytic Approach 2.6 Ontological Coherence and Anti-Reification Chapter 3: Value Irrationality and the Failures of Deliberative Democracy 3.1 The Rational Autonomy Orthodoxy 3.2 Value-Orientations and Epistemic Warping 3.3 Three Basic Kinds of Deliberative Failure 3.4 Social Structure and the Value Constitution Thesis Chapter 4: On the Concept of Social Pathology 4.1 The Concept of Social Pathology 4.2 A Basic Framework for Critical Social Ontology 4.3 Grounding Evaluative Criteria for Social Pathology 4.4 Macro and Micro Katabolic Dynamics Part 2: Dialectics, Ontology, and Phronetic Criticism Chapter 5: Negation without Ontology: Rethinking Adorno’s Late Philosophy 5.1 Adorno’s Negativism as Critical Solipsism 5.2 Hegel, Marx, and the Metaphysical Structure of Reason 5.3 Critical Social Ontology and Immanent Critique Chapter 6: Ontologizing the Dialectic: Lukács and the Foundations for Marxian Ethics 6.1 The Domestication of Critical Theory 6.2 From Moral Epistemology to Social Ontology 6.3 The Teleological Structure of Human Agency 6.4 Toward a Renewed Paradigm for Critical Theory Chapter 7: Toward an Ontology of Social Relations 7.1 Robust and Defective Relations and the Nature of the Self 7.2 Expanded Autonomy: Social Structure and Self-Development 7.3 The Objectivity of Ethical Value 7.4 Fromm’s Theory of Relatedness and Contemporary Critical Theory 7.5 The Ethical Implications of Social-Relatedness Chapter 8: Critical Social Ontology and the Practice of Phronetic Criticism 8.1 On the Possibility of Objective Values 8.2 An Ontology of the Social 8.3 Outline of a Critical Social Ontology 8.4 Constitutive Categories of Critical Social Ontology 8.5 Power and the Geometry of Social Forms 8.6 The Ontological Foundations for Critique and Judgment: Phronetic Criticism 8.7 Phronetic Criticism as Immanent Critique Bibliography Index This book reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality. This book argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. The first half of the book demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. The second part of the book constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drives toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis. Descent of the Dialectic will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy, political theory, social theory, and critical theory.