こにしき(言葉・日本社会・教育)

関西学院大学(2016.04~)の寺沢拓敬のブログです(専門:言語社会学)。

読書ログ:Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction

Bronner, Stephen Eric. (2011) Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction. (Very Short Introductions) Oxford University Press.

買った1ヶ月後に新版が出てしまった。以下は旧版のログです。

Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)


Introduction: what is critical theory?

批判理論の立ち位置: それ以前の世代(カントやヘーゲル)で啓蒙・進歩・合理性といった考え方を根本的に批判すること

いわゆる伝統的なマルクス主義とも違い、経済決定論や経済発展段階説(最終的な社会主義の勝利)を信奉しない。むしろ、以下のようなマルクスの社会哲学に注目する。

They highlighted its critical method over its systematic claims, its concern with alienation and reification, its complicated relationship with the ideals of the Enlightenment, its utopian moment, its emphasis upon the role of ideology, and its commitment to resist the deformation of the individual. (p.2)

伝統的の左翼とは違い、批判理論は、科学技術による進歩、普通教育、民衆による政治という「望ましい」理念そのものを批判的にまなざす。 (背景:1930s- 社会主義革命を成し遂げたソ連に対する幻滅、ファシズム

The Frankfurt School registered this historical shift by subjecting long-standing leftist beliefs in the inherently progressive character of science and technology, popular education, and mass politics to withering interrogation.

FSの認識論上の批判対象

  • Phenomenology
  • Positivism

クリティカルリアリズムとの接点を考える上でも重要。

They saw two main culprits: phenomenology, with its set ontological claims about how individuals experience existence, and positivism, with its demand that society be analyzed according to the criteria of the natural sciences. Both were attacked for treating society in a-historical terms and eliminating genuine subjectivity. (p.4)

重要概念:疎外と物象化

Pioneering studies of alienation and reification had already been undertaken by Western Marxists during the 1920s, but the Frankfurt School provided a unique sense of how these complex categories impacted upon individuals in advanced industrial society. (p.4)

Illusions associated with the Enlightenment, uncritically accepted on the Left, thus required reexamination and modernity itself invited critique. (p.5)


Chapter 1. The Frankfurt School

「初期・共産党員らのグループ → ホルクハイマーらによるフランクフルト学派の立ち上げ」という歴史的経緯

But this group would fade into the background, and the general orientation of the Institute would change in 1930. That was the year in which Max Horkheimer brought together the new inner circle for what would become known as the Frankfurt School. (p.9)

The inner circle

規範理論と経験的研究のギャップをいかに埋めるかが課題

...bridge the gap between normative theory and empirical work. (p.11)

フロム

マルクーゼ

His signature work, One-Dimensional Man (1964), virtually brought critical theory to the United States and, through its citations, introduced many young intellectuals to the Frankfurt School.

ベンヤミン

アドルノ

Adorno wove these themes into his own all-embracing philosophical narrative. But he was also engaged in empirical research. Adorno’s studies of radio and television, which illuminated the ideological impact of what most considered simple entertainment, complemented his work on the authoritarian and conformist tendencies of modern society. (p.17)

ハーバーマス

The later writings of Habermas, by contrast, are increasingly enmeshed in analytic philosophy. They insist upon the need for grounding claims, formulating systemic arguments, and providing ontological characterizations of nature and science. (p.18)

Coda

一枚岩ではない中での共通点。

But they all shared a commitment to the same cluster of themes and concerns. No member of the inner circle ever identified freedom with any system, collectivity, or tradition―and all of them were skeptical about establishmentarian modes of thinking. (p.18)


Chapter 2. A matter of method

マルクス主義の思想的系譜:ルカーチ・ジェルジュ、カール・コルシュ、

Critical theory had, after all, arisen within the framework provided by Western Marxism. Communists like Georg Lukacs and Karl Korsch―who had been involved with the Institute from its inception―were among its leading representatives. (p.20)

「議会を通じた改革」に懐疑的な運動重視のインテリは、資本主義のイデオロギー的機能を深刻に見る。西洋マルクス主義者にとって、史的唯物論は(科学的理論ではなく)運動を方向づける重要な理論

these activist intellectuals stressed the role of ideology in maintaining capitalism (p.20)

All of them [= Western Marxists] interpreted historical materialism as a theory of practice that should prove less descriptive than proscriptive. (p.22)

西洋マルクス主義の上記のような考え方に影響を与えたのが、カール・コルシュ。コルシュは、マルクス主義のあらゆる科学的理解を退け、マルクス主義をそれ自身が歴史的条件に規定された哲学の一形態として対象化し、ドグマ化から解放した。

ホルクハイマーは、"Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937) の中でこの考え方を受け継ぎ、いかなる哲学も歴史条件に規定されていないものはなく、したがって、自身を中立的・客観的だと見なす哲学は、欺瞞的であると論じた。ここから、「客観性への根本的批判」という批判理論の根本アイディアにつながっていく。

Traditional theory was, therefore[,] neither as neutral nor as reflective as its advocates tended to believe. Social interests were hidden within the philosophical discourse and, if only for this reason, the established approaches could not simply be dismissed out of hand. (p.23)

その流れで、アンチ実証主義

Materialism in the form of positivism and its offshoots was condemned for dismissing subjectivity and ethical concerns while analyzing society through categories and criteria derived from the natural sciences. Metaphysics was, by contrast, castigated for ignoring the philosophical relevance of the material world ... (p.24)

To be sure, scientific rationality was considered the more pernicious of the two by the Frankfurt School. (p.24)

Highlighting the context for practice thus became a core concern for the new interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School. In turn, this led its members to reject the traditional separation between facts and values. // Critical theory would treat facts less as isolated depictions of reality than as crystallized historical products of social action. The aim was to understand a fact within the value-laden context wherein it assumes meaning. (p.24)

知識社会学の影響(カール・マンハイム)。

All of these works evince the influence of the sociology of knowledge whose leading figure, Karl Mannheim, held seminars in the Institute for Social Research. (p.27)

Critical theory can be understood as presenting a version of the sociology of knowledge with a transformative intent (p.28)

As communism turned totalitarian, however, the Frankfurt School became disillusioned, and its critique of the reification process intensified. (p.28)

批判理論・フランクフルト学派が、マックス・ヴェーバーから受けた影響。(とくに、ヴェーバーの合理性に対するへの懐疑)

a new form of materialism infused with critical reflection, a capacity for fantasy, and the prospect of resisting an increasingly bureaucratized world.


Chapter 3. Alienation and reification

カール・マルクス『経済学・哲学草稿』( Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844) 出版の衝撃。 1932年、マルクスの遺稿が出版され、若き日のマルクスの思想が明らかになったことで、当時の通俗的マルクス主義理解が動揺し、フランクフルト学派も大いに影響を受けた(もちろん60年代後半の急進的インテリも)。

The roots of unhappiness

若きマルクスの思想を話の枕に、以下、「疎外」 (alienation) 概念の系譜を跡づける。(ヘーゲルマルクスヴェーバー

人間性が生産物・分業体制いかに支配されるか、そのマルクスなりの理論化。

If religion produces a situation in which humanity is dominated by the products of its brain, which is what Marx learned from Ludwig Feuerbach, then, under capitalism, humanity is dominated by the products of its hands. (p.40)

Maximizing profits also requires the division of labor whereby each member of the working class is separated from others on the assembly line, kept from learning other tasks and developing his or her full potential, and conceptualizing the product that is ultimately being produced.

Inverting this “inverted world”―an idea that Marx borrowed from Hegel―is possible only by abolishing what in Das Kapital is termed “commodity fetishism.” Or putting it somewhat differently, abolishing alienation calls for abolishing reification.

マルクス1844草稿』出版以前に疎外をめぐる問題を検討した先駆的人物、ヴェーバー。(「職業としての学問」1917)

The young Marx had sketched this vision. Insofar as his writings were unknown prior to 1932, however, the seminal influence on Lukacs and later on other critical theorists in formulating (if not solving!) the problems of alienation and reification was Max Weber. (p.42)

The ability to grasp the whole would vanish; what the Germans call the disciplinary idiot would supplant the intellectual; and ethics would be relegated to a domain outside of science and political life. Weber imagined the future as a bureaucratic iron cage―even if he never explicitly used the term so often associated with him―that would ever more surely marginalize authentic subjectivity.

Apocalypse and metaphysics

ロシア革命および社会主義共産主義の西欧への浸透を受けて、当時、共産党によって「疎外」問題が解決されるだろうという楽観的な期待があった。

Only a communist vanguard, whatever the empirical consciousness of the actual proletariat, was considered capable kind of bringing the world of alienation to an end. (p. 44)

マルクス主義的と(不当にも)見なされていたルカーチの再評価:

History and Class Consciousness became the target of intense criticism. Viewing the proletariat (or, better, the communist party) as the subject-object of history was considered a utopian outgrowth of idealism―not Marxism. It was generally believed that Lukacs had exaggerated the role of consciousness to the detriment of economics and that his work took little account of concrete goals and the institutional constraints on action. With the publication of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, however, many of Lukacs’s arguments received belated justification. (p.44)

分析哲学への接近

Habermas made the “linguistic turn.” // Critical theory thus took its first steps into the arena of analytic philosophy. (p.47)

Looking backward

1930年代においてマルクス主義がどのように理解されていたかが、フランクフルト学派の思想的端緒を理解するうえで重要。

Today a statement like Pachter’s [= the publication of Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in 1932: this is the end of Marxism.] sounds strange. But it made sense in the context of the 1930s. Marxism was still understood as an all-embracing philosophical system with scientific foundations and teleological guarantees.


Chapter 4. Enlightened illusions

左翼によるおそらく最初のモダニティ批判:『啓蒙の弁証法』(私家版が1944年、一般的な出版が1947年)。近代的な諸概念(科学的合理性、進歩、啓蒙など)を根底から問い直す。

The illusion of progress

歴史的にも実践的にも、啓蒙主義的概念にコミットしていた左翼だが、1930年代以降にヨーロッパを襲った惨状を目の当たりにし、進歩(そしてそれを可能にする近代という時代)に対する幻滅に襲われた。

反ユダヤ主義と差異消失への欲望(『啓蒙の弁証法』第5章)。モダニティは差異・多様性を標準化するもの:

Anti-Semitism is viewed as an expression of humanity’s “second nature” with anthropological roots. Horkheimer and Adorno insist that there has always been something “different” about the Jews. If modernity is increasingly and repressively standardizing individuality, then the encounter with difference and autonomy will logically generate a resentment born of unconscious envy. Such resentment marks the anti-Semite. (p.53)

The key to the book is the way in which the historical critique of the Enlightenment is turned into the lever for an anthropological interrogation of progress. (p.54)

Having begun with an assault on religious dogmatism, however, instrumental rationality turned its power against all nonscientific precepts and normative claims. These included ethical values associated with the Enlightenment

進歩、自由、合理性、自律性 (autonomy) に対する「近代的」楽観 → 幻滅 → 根本的な批判へ

Progress is not what the good bourgeois has always said it was: the growth of moral conscience and the improvement of humanity. Quite the opposite: autonomy and ethical norms get obliterated. Actual progress is a movement from the bow and arrow, as Adorno later liked to say, to the atom bomb. (p.56)

Fascism finds its roots in the Enlightenment. This photograph shows Goethe's beloved oak tree in the Buchenwald concentration camp. (Figure 5; p. 57)

The retreat from history

啓蒙の弁証法』は、啓蒙主義や科学的合理性、実証主義 (positivism) が、ファシズムと親和的であることを思想的に詳細に論じたもの。ただし、当時のファシスト政権が科学的合理性を最重要視していたわけではないし、当時の実証主義者がファシズムに親和的だったわけでもない。 もっとも、同書が注目していたのは個々の事例というよりは弁証法的プロセスだった。とはいえ、歴史的事実―啓蒙と疎外の関係を例証する事実―をめぐる考察がない。このように歴史を捨象するのは、彼らが批判してきた「思考の物象化」にほかならないのでは?

What next?

本書の続編で "positive dialectical doctrine" を論じたいという思いがあったようだが、結局実現しなかった。


Chapter 5. The utopian laboratory

Anticipating utopia

ファシズムのルーツとしての「西洋近代」をめぐる分析。そしてオルタナティブとしての critical realism

[Lukacs maintained that] fashionable avant-garde trends helped create the cultural preconditions in which fascism could thrive. Lukacs’ alternative was a form of “critical realism” perhaps best exemplified in the works of Honore de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, and Thomas Mann. (p.65)

[Ernst] Bloch also defended expressionism for its utopian sensibility and its vision of the new man.

共産主義の宗教的モチーフ、 ユートピア思想

the hope for equitable treatment and the constraint of arbitrary institutional power has always animated the strivings of the lowly and the insulted. (p.68)

様々な地域・様々な時代に、ユートピア的なものを希求する未完の企てが行われてきた(ブロッホのいう "utopian laboratory" )

The pacification of existence

マルクーゼもユートピア的なもののあり方を検討したが、そのアプローチはブロッホとは異なるもの。 マルクーゼ『エロス的文明』(Eros and Civilization):フロイト的な意味での自由(ユートピア?)への欲望が、文明によって抑圧され、その抑圧作用によって、私たちは irrational で destructive/violent なものと見なすようになってしまった。

Unable to deal with their guilt, the individuals living in advanced industrial society constantly reproduce the repressive values of the performance principle. (p.71)

some believed that [Marcuse's] ideas constituted a threat to the rational foundations of critical theory. // Jurgen Habermas’s “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’” (1968) offers a devastating attack on Marcuse and a very different point of view. (p.72)

フロムによるマルクーゼに対する批判。フロイトの問題点、心理学の守備範囲をまじめに考えよ、と。

Fromm had already questioned Freud’s metapsychological claims and instinct theory

What's missing?


Chapter 6. The happy consciousness

ヘーゲル:コンフォーミズムから抜け出ることができた自由な個人――言い換えれば、コンフォーミズムの happy consciousness を拒否し、unhappy consciousness に耐える個人――が進歩の源泉。 フランクフルト学派も (un)happy consciousness や conformist society に関しては同様の認識 → モダンライフや大衆文化(文化産業)に対する批判につながる

How the culture industry works

大衆文化・文化産業に対する警戒感。

[Mass media] standardize experience and undermine critical reflection. (p.79)

the culture industry integrates all opposition by its very nature.

フランクフルト学派の大衆文化批判は、一見すると、保守派・反動派のそれに通じるものがあった(例、オルテガ・イ・ガセット)。しかし、明確な違いは、フランクフルト学派は(伝統の復権を目指していたのではなく)群れたがる心を生み出す大衆文化が個人から変革の力を削ぐことを批判していた点にある

For the Frankfurt School it remained a matter of the “higher spirit” being doomed to misunderstanding or worse by a “herd” incapable of intellectually mastering its “will to power.” (p.81)

cultural criticism becomes the only source of resistance.

They were intent upon challenging the culture industry because it was standardizing experience and thereby rendering everyday people more and more receptive to tradition and authority. Material riches were, in keeping with the old bohemian and romantic idea, seen by the Frankfurt School as impoverishing the spirit. The happy consciousness was condemned because it was hollow and vapid. (p.82)

[Jurgen Habermas's] The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1961). ... The public sphere included all the activities and organizations capable of fostering public debate. (p. 82)

「否定」が意義を持つ文脈:完全な管理社会で抵抗は理論的にあり得ないので、 否定の弁証法しかオプションがない。(管理社会が完全でなければアクションの余地あり。)

If the totally administered society is truly total, and capable of integrating and domesticating all critical undertakings, then the prospects for political action are dim. Resistance as political practice is a worthless enterprise. The negation is the only available option, and negative dialectics must define the critical enterprise. ... negative dialectics and a theory of practice are mutually exclusive alternatives. (p. 84)

Tolerance and public life

近代社会・文化産業における tolerance →悪しき相対主義への警戒

Tolerance was apparently being extended to critics of the totally administered society. (p.85)

tolerance has turned into a bulwark for the status quo.

Tolerance as exhibited by the culture industry thus renders all truth claims relative---or, better, turns their acceptance into a matter of taste. Now it is not just beauty but truth that lies in the eye of the beholder.

マルクーゼ『一次元的人間』(「否定」の重要性)

this objective contradiction is not subjectively perceived as such. Political consciousness on the part of the working class is lacking due to the real failings of communism, the seeming affluence of Western capitalism, and---perhaps above all---the culture industry. (p.88)

“The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. ..."


Chapter 7. The great refusal

The new sensibility

1960年代以降、批判理論は、マルクス主義的理論から次第に「差異に対する敏感さ」 (a new sensibility) へ。→抵抗運動、拒否運動 (great refusal) への契機

art that rejected the familiar, the consensual, and the traditional. (p. 90)

surrealism as evoking a kind of “revolutionary intoxication” whose enemy was the everyday life of bourgeois society.

Environmentalism, animal rights, and an assault on male chauvinism were outgrowths of the new sensibility. (p.91)

Embracing the negation

思想の背景をなした芸術運動 → 美学と政治の接点

Countless Impressionists, Cubists, Expressionists, Futurists, Dadaists, and Surrealists sought to experience the world anew. ... they launched an assault upon everything associated with the “realistic” purposes of art in the name of the utopian imagination and the liberation of individuality. Resistance shifted from the political to the cultural realm. Or, in the case of the Frankfurt School, the moment in which critical reflection provided by philosophy blends with the experiential intensity highlighted by aesthetics.(p.94)

アドルノの組織化=政治運動への警戒感。全体主義に打ち勝つ唯一の「個人の尊重」。そして、政治的芸術に対する批判(保守的な嫌悪ではなく、全体主義-党派性に対する警戒感から)

Adorno expressed his contempt for those who say “enough talking already.” (p.94)

He [=Adorno] always believed that the idea of a politically engaged literature is a contradiction in terms. It can offer neither critique of the totality (since the artwork is always partisan in its politics) nor any meaningful utopian vision (since genuine happiness always stands beyond objectification). (p.95)

Aesthetic Theory (1969) projects notions of subjectivity, freedom, and utopia that resist all objectification.

Its true aim is not to create a shared understanding of the world ...but, instead, to intensify experience. (p.96)

Adorno's Negative Dialectics (1966)

Belief in the march of progress has been invalidated by the triumph of totalitarianism. Conceptualizing the individual in universal terms was a mistake from the beginning. (p.97)

Chapter 8. From resignation to renewal

A critical theory of society

実証主義論争

The spirited “positivism debate” of the 1960s between the Frankfurt School and its more scientifically inclined rivals ... Advocates of critical theory, however, usually tend to underestimate the methodological importance and practical implications of viewing scientific truth claims as provisional and open to revision in light of future research. (p.107)

エルンスト・ブロッホの1940年代の宇宙論的自然観(”Nature is seen by Bloch as irreducible to its empirical constituents”)→後の科学観の刷新(e.g. 生態学におけるエコシステム)

The politics of enlightenment

実質的なエピローグ部分。この節から最後まで、著者の主張――啓蒙を否定するという伝統的見解を考え直すべし――が続く。

The implication is clear: invigorating the transformative purpose of critical theory calls for revising its primarily negative view of the enlightenment legacy. (p.108)

Human rights, tolerance, cosmopolitan ideals, (and even science) are most everywhere under siege---or, at least, contested---by forces of religious fanaticism, cultural provincialism, and authoritarian reaction. (p.110)

批判理論は、次の3つの観点(啓蒙の良い点)をちゃんと認めるべし(pp.111ff):

  • 啓蒙的理念は、権威主義に反対する運動である
  • 啓蒙を構成する諸規範は、そもそも批判的性格を有している
  • 啓蒙をめぐる原理は、多元主義 (pluralism) を促進する ("Only insofar as the liberal rule of law is operative is it possible to speak about the free and practical exercise of subjectivity.")

文化産業にもクリティカルな発展があるよ、文化産業なめんな、 的な話。

However, there is nothing stagnant about the culture industry. Its aesthetic and technological inventions have been astonishing. (p.112)

Insisting that genuine art must somehow contest the ontology of false conditions is nostalgia for the seminar room masquerading as radicalism.

With its abstract preoccupations, however, the Frankfurt School strips resistance to those ideas of any material referent.

アウラ消失は疎外とも解釈できるが、クリティカルなもの (it employs critical reflection to foster existential and political awareness) とも解釈できる

The loss of aura can intensify feelings of alienation and the appeal of reactionary movements intent upon providing an illusory sense of belonging. But the erosion of aura can also open the work to critical reflection or what Benjamin termed “a heightened presence of mind.” (p.113)

大衆文化を全否定するのではなくクリティカルな契機を見出すべし、的な。

Entertainment and reflection are not always mutually exclusive. Alternative media and cyberspace offer new options for progressive forces. (p.114)

The transformative impulse

[Horkheimer] hoped that critical theory would become a kind of public philosophy rather than yet another academic specialty that catered to an audience of experts. If this is still the goal, then critical theorists need to stop using the style of a tax form and abandon a one-sided analysis of mass culture based on the proposition that popularity---or clarity---is somehow inherently detrimental to the radicalism of a work. (p.115)

フランクフルト学派が、C. Wright Mills The Sociological Imagination (1960) に及ぼした影響:"private troubles into public issues.”