Ideology Critique from Hegel and Marx to Critical Theory

In the postscript to Traditional and Critical Theory,1 Max Horkheimer writes that critical theory must be understood as the heir to German idealism. More specifically, Horkheimer ties the project of a critical theory of society to a watershed moment in the history of philosophy that has come to be known as the Copernican turn — namely, Kant’s insight that the objects of human knowledge and experience are inextricably tied to our spontaneous, productive activity. In binding the objects of experience to human activity, Kant sets in motion an entire project of critique in which what is continually subject to scrutiny is the very form and capacity of reason itself. Critique becomes, in essence, a form a self-critique, one in which reason itself is continually put on trial. However, this immediately creates a paradox for the very project of critique: in putting reason on trial, reason stands as both the accused and the judge in the case of its own legitimacy, for reason is both the object of critique and the very activity that makes critique possible. As the heir to German idealism, this paradox comes to define the critique of ideology, and cuts to the very heart of the methodology of critical theory. To dwell a little longer on Horkheimer’s suggestion, we can discern a second and connected sense in which critical theory can be understood as the heir of German idealism. The critique of reason, for Kant and even more emphatically for his successors, was essentially a project that aimed to understand the actuality of human freedom — the critique of reason is at once the demonstration of rational life as a free life. In the attempt to demonstrate the actuality of freedom, it was Hegel who first turned from the critique of pure reason to the critique of reason embedded in social, historical reality, and it is this move that has been definitive for critical theory from Marx all the way up to the present. With Hegel, idealism effectively becomes social philosophy and critique becomes inseparable from social critique.2 In the transformation of the critique of reason into the critique of social reality, the critique of ideology has become an indispensable method for assessing the extent to which a form of life — at once a social formation and an actualization of reason — can enable or block the realization of freedom for its members. The critique of ideology becomes necessary as soon as reason ceases to be pure reason, as soon as the actuality of freedom becomes wedded to social reality. In what follows, I explore and defend ideology critique as a method for critical theory whose operation is best understood as descended from the project of the critique of reason. Tracing this genealogy is necessary for two reasons: First, it allows us to understand what critical theory calls the dialectics of immanence and transcendence (the classic problem of being embedded in the social reality we want to criticize according to a non-external standard) as a structural feature of ideology critique, which, contrary to popular opinion, need not be overcome. Rather, this essential characteristic of ideology critique is common to all modes of critique that accept a socialized and historicized version of the Copernican turn. Second, by turning to Hegel and Marx in particular, what becomes evident is that the dialectics of immanence and transcendence must be understood more concretely as the dialectics of life and self-consciousness, a relation that defines the universal form of rational, free activity. Specifically, I will argue that there is an important structural parallel between Hegel’s concept of the Idea and Marx’s concept of species-being that allows us to view the problem of immanence and transcendence as it arises in ideology critique in a new light. Understanding the relation between life and self-consciousness is crucial for ideology critique because what ideologies distort is the relation between self-consciousness and life, a relation that is fundamental to the actualization of human freedom. In distorting this fundamental relation, ideologies characteristically turn the conditions of freedom into agents of repression, asserting transcendent authority over our most basic life activities and social reality itself. As a working definition, we can say that ideologies are at once social practices and forms of rationality that distort the relation between life and self-consciousness and block the full actualization of human reason and freedom. Ideologies are thus social pathologies, wrong ways of living.3 My argument will proceed in four parts. In the first part, I outline the fundamental logic behind the dialectics of immanence and transcendence and show how this logic defines ideology critique. After affirming that the dialectics of immanence and transcendence are unavoidable for critique, I turn in part two to an analysis of two central concepts that illuminate this method as the dialectics of life and self-consciousness: what Hegel calls the Idea, and Marx’s conception of Gattungswesen (species-being). In part three, I turn to the ways in which ideologies operate by distorting the relation between self-consciousness and life, and part