The best there is - Millennium: Journal of International ...



The best there is? Communication, materialism, and the future of Critical IR Theory

Matthew Fluck mattfluck@

Work in progress – please do not cite without author’s permission.

Reworking the critical project requires normative and sociological accounts of more inclusive communication communities which introduce unprecedented forms of dialogue between the radically different.

Andrew Linklater[1]

If speculation on the state of reconciliation were permitted, neither the undistinguished unity of subject and object nor their antithetical hostility would be conceivable; rather, the communication of what was distinguished. Not until then would the concept of communication, as an objective concept, come into its own. The present one is so infamous because the best there is, the potential of an agreement between people and things, is betrayed to an interchange between subjects according to the requirements of subjective reason.

Theodor Adorno[2]

Introduction

Of the many social and political theories which the critique of Positivism introduced into the discipline of International Relations (IR), one of the most influential has been the Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s influence has been manifested in accounts of the links between knowledge and interests and in attempts to outline the ways in which emancipatory transformation could be pursued in world politics.[3] The key to the latter task as it has been taken up in Critical International Relations Theory (CIRT) has been the Habermasian idea that international political arrangements should be enable procedures of free and rational communication through which publics can participate in the generation of political norms and decisions.[4] This paper re-examines the idea that progress in world politics must be based upon enhanced intersubjective communication by comparing the popular Habermasian position with that of Theodor Adorno, Habermas’s predecessor in the Frankfurt School.

Adorno has received relatively little attention in IR, where it is commonly assumed that his fear of instrumental reason – means-ends rationality oriented towards technical control – led him to abandon the pursuit of emancipatory praxis in favour of an obsession with aesthetics.[5] On this view, by identifying communicative action as the basis of the non-instrumental political praxis Habermas succeeds where his predecessor failed.[6] However, the statement quoted above suggests that Adorno might have had rather more to say on these matters – praxis and communication – than IR theorists have generally given him credit for: he insists that Critical Theory’s search for ‘the best there is’ must focus not on communicative interaction between subjects but rather on the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity.

In what follows, we shall examine the idea that Critical Theory should focus on subject-object relations rather than intersubjective communication and consider its implications for CIRT. To focus on an old and seemingly esoteric debate extracted from the past of the Frankfurt School might seem to represent an unnecessary distraction from the empirical and praxeological tasks which Habermasian theorists and other critical IR scholars have been keen to pursue after the critique of Positivism.[7] However, Adorno’s comments about communication, subjectivity, and objectivity concern precisely the nature and scope of the praxis which the Critical Theorist should promote.[8] Whereas Habermas identifies a distinct form of communicative action according to which subjects aim to reach mutual understanding, Adorno suggests that without ‘communication’ between subject and objects (the nature of which we shall discuss towards the end of this paper) such communication will remain within the domain of ‘subjective’ (i.e. instrumental) reason. This is a question of praxis and therefore of great significance for attempts to identify communicative action as a progressive resource in world politics.

CIRT has devoted surprisingly little consideration to the relationship between subjectivity (or intersubjectivity) and objectivity. It will be argued below that this is in part a result of the way in critical scholars in IR assumed that the concept of objectivity is inextricably tied to Positivism and unreflexive Marxism. This led them to skip over the questions about subjectivity and objectivity highlighted by Adorno and in doing so they advertently generated a spectre which has since returned to haunt them. Rather than turning straight to a discussion of Adorno’s Critical Theory, the paper will describe how this spectre of objectivity is apparent in three different theoretical interventions in IR. First, Norman Geras argued that the concern with dialogue would always lead back to a Marxian position, since reform of the existing economic system was required if free and equal participation in discourse were to be possible.[9] Second, Critical Realists have accused post-positivist theories such as CIRT of succumbing to an ‘anthropocentrism’ according to which they mistakenly assume that the world can be understood primarily by means of an examination of the characteristics of knowing subjects.[10] Third, Andrew Linklater, formerly one of the foremost advocates of a Habermasian approach to world politics, has recently turned away from the emphasis on intersubjective communication to a theory built around a philosophy of human corporeality and physical vulnerability. This new departure in CIRT reflects his sensitivity to the fact that the Kantian project pursued by Habermas can tend towards the arbitrary elevation of certain aspects of perceived rational subjectivity.[11]

It will be argued here that the plausibility of each intervention can be explained if we turn to Adorno’s assertion that the relationship between subject and object must be central to Critical Theory. Each points to the problems which are generated by theoretical attempts to detach human experience or subjectivity from objectivity or materiality. The refusal of such ‘purified’ reason is key to Adorno’s Critical Theory and emerges from his insistence on the interdependence of subject and object.[12] From this perspective, any attempt to identify a form of reason which is set free from objective social forces and materiality will lead back into that form of instrumental rationality which assumes it can detach itself from the world. As a result, it will necessarily fail to address the question of praxis. Adorno directs us to a tradition of critical theorising which maintains that none of the achievements of enlightened reason can be separated from their ‘dirty’ underbelly.[13] Such an attitude is at odds with the insistence of so much CIRT on the need to focus on new forms of international praxis. At the same time, and despite this negativity, Adorno’s notion of communication between subjectivity and objectivity, of ‘objective’ communication, does point towards a particular understanding of practical reason – a reformed materialist ‘objective reason’ or ‘objective communication’. The paper concludes by considering this more positive approach which, by maintaining a true sensitivity to human needs and diversity, remains sensitive to the impulse which lies behind the turn to communication in IR whilst pointing to an alternative future for CIRT.

Communication and IR Theory

The appeal for international theorists of a theory based around intersubjective communication is, in many respects, easy to understand. It offers a clear path away from the philosophical critique of Positivism conducted by the first Critical Theorists in IR and towards an empirically and practically oriented but normatively sophisticated critical approach to world politics. Comparing its achievements with those of Marxism, Andrew Linklater suggests that the advantages of Habermas’s theory lie in two areas: it offers a ‘more adequate’ account of social reality and ‘an improved normative standpoint’.[14] In general terms, regarding the first contribution, Habermas’s identification of the importance of action oriented to mutual understanding offers a means of providing an account of international political behaviour richer than one which assumes the priority of either strategic interaction or, as was the case with an earlier generation of critical scholars, interaction with nature through labour.[15] To this extent it is ‘more adequate’. At the same time, Habermas introduces the idea that universal values can be pursued procedurally through the discursive interaction of subjects. On this view, moral cognition is possible (we can have knowledge of values and norms) but not in the sense of knowing some transcendent set of rules or rights emerging from ‘natural law’. Habermas therefore offers the possibility of a less abstract normative yardstick with which to assess international political arrangements than that provided by traditional rights-based theories.[16] As James Bohman has pointed out, this is because the right to participate in deliberation is a sort of ‘right to have rights’; in contrast with liberal rights, it does not simply represent a guarantee of political freedom but rather aims at the right to participate in the exercise of creative public reason manifested in decision making processes through which new rights and institutions might be constructed.[17]

The fertile ground which Habermas’s communicative Critical Theory provides for international theorists is apparent in the work of those who have drawn upon it. One of the best-known examples is Andrew Linklater’s The Transformation of Political Community. Linklater formulates an account of the evolution of political community from a global perspective and in doing so of the normative resources which could be been drawn upon to overcome the mutual exclusion which characterises relations between communities.[18] He believes that modern forms of citizenship contain a dialectical potential as a result of which they continually point towards their own expansion, and thereby to the means of overcoming arbitrary exclusion.[19] In the past this dynamic of inclusion led to the expansion of citizenship within states to encompass groups previously excluded on the basis of their class, gender, or race. This process occurred as a result of recognition of the possibilities for expanding citizenship in three dimensions: the possibility of its becoming more universal by widening the sphere of participants; the possibility of its becoming more sensitive to difference by recognising the ways in which citizenship can do violence to minority or peripheral cultural identities; the possibility of its becoming more equitable by addressing material inequalities. Together these elements of transformation point to the desirability and possibility of an ongoing emancipatory ‘triple transformation’ of political community.[20]

Linklater argues that in the modern globalised world this triple transformation must be carried out at a transnational level. However, in pursuing this task we must be aware of the dangers apparent in the past shortcomings of emancipatory philosophies. Whilst he sees Kant and Marx as the fathers of the struggle against arbitrary exclusion, he argues that both were insufficiently sensitive to cultural differences and failed to recognise the potential violence of the universalistic dimensions of their theories.[21] For this reason, Linklater draws on Habermas’s discourse ethics to advocate the substitution of procedural universals for universalistic interpretations of the good life. According to this approach, no single way of life is proposed as the goal or template for all others to aim at; given the ‘distorting lens of language and culture’ we cannot hope to identify the ‘truth’ which would underpin such a goal. Rather, following Habermas, the traditional desire for universality should be replaced with the pursuit of ‘wider communities of discourse to make new articulations of universality possible’.[22] Appeals to truth and universality are not to be totally abandoned, rather we must recognise that ‘o]nly through dialogue with other cultures can progress be made in separating merely local truths from those with wider acclaim’.[23] Thus Kant’s kingdom of ends and Marx’s transformation of capitalism into communism are to be replaced by an ongoing procedure based on the discussion of claims of universal scope.[24] Such a procedure is orientated by the ideal of a ‘universal communication community’ in which all inhabitants of the world would be free to participate in dialogue which aims to increase mutual understanding.[25]

Other IR theorists, especially in Germany, have drawn on Habermas’s theory in order to describe international decision-making processes and negotiations. For example, Thomas Risse argues that the theory of communicative truth-seeking behaviour can supplement rational choice and social constructivist perspectives to generate a more complete account of processes of negotiation in international politics.[26] His contribution forms part of the wider ‘ZIB debate’ between rational choice theorists and constructivists within German IR over whether the former can adequately explain interstate cooperation.[27] Risse describes instances – diplomacy at the end of the Cold War and international discourse about human rights – where he believes cooperation can be explained primarily on the basis of Habermas’s theory of communicative action oriented towards reaching mutual understanding.[28] Risse suggests that when they engage in such action, practitioners are open to changing their preferences and values in a manner which rational choice theorists cannot account for. For some International Political Theorists, communicative action represents a way in which the emerging global public sphere can begin to play a part in shaping political decisions, norms, and institutions.[29]

To varying degrees, the greater empirical and historical ‘adequacy’ of accounts of world politics which draw on the idea of communicative action is combined with recognition of the normative potential which seems to accompany it. However, it would be a mistake to assume that contributions in these two areas exhaust the significance of the theory of communicative action. Any proper understanding of the significance of Habermas’s theory for IR must take into account the fact that Critical Theory is a response to a particular set of philosophical and political problems which emerge from recognition of the entwinement of theory and practice, knowledge and interests, facts and values. A key concern of the Frankfurt School has been to highlight the way in which scientific knowledge is, contrary to its self-perception, tied to a particular set of interests and form of practice.[30] The members of the School have noted that the decline death of reflection which accompanied the rise of science has allowed theory to become complicit in blindly instrumental practices, with the result that society comes to be ruled by structures oriented towards the control of populations and to be characterised by the ‘loss of meaning’ according to which social institutions and action are deprived of any connection to the values and experiences of those whose interests they are supposed to serve. Recognition of these issues was central to the critique of Positivist Neo-Realism in IR from which the concern with communication would emerge.[31]

The members of the Frankfurt School took up the task of explaining how it might be possible to identify non-instrumental theoretical perspective aware of its own relationship to practice and of its role in creating the facts of social life, and also a form of practice which did not blindly follow the path set down for it by instrumental reason. The task is one of identifying a different form of knowing – knowledge as a practice, and a practice which is consciously epistemic – compatible with the recognition that the world of theory and of objects cannot be separated.[32] Habermas’s predecessors in the Frankfurt School found this to be a particularly difficult task. They faced a situation in which those who were supposed, according to the Marxian tradition, to reveal the truth of the capitalist system in practice, the proletariat, repeatedly failed to carry out the task allotted to them. In those instances where Marxists did achieve power, the result was all too often repression and terror. At the same time, Marxist theory often seemed to degenerated into dogmatism, scientism, and ideology. Under these circumstances, the possibility of revealing and acting upon the truth of the capitalist totality appeared to diminish until it was all but invisible.[33] The idea that theory and practice could be easily merged was discredited.

The Marxian tradition of which the Frankfurt School were a part seemed to have been left with no basis on which to conduct critique or identify the sources of practical transcendence, and therefore of emancipatory political activity. That is to say, the possibility of truth, of some position from which to achieve the trans-subjective validity of normative and critical claims, all but disappeared. One of Habermas’s explicit concerns as a member of the Frankfurt School and (for much of his career at least) Marxian thinker has been to find a means of overcoming the lack of foundations for emancipatory political transformation that supposedly consumed the work of his predecessors. At the same time, he has been keen to criticise those (generally poststructuralist) philosophers he believes have succumbed to relativism and conservatism.[34] He set about achieving his goals by linking truth and universality to the pragmatics of linguistic communication, arguing that the participants in communication must necessarily raise validity claims which could potentially be assessed by the other participants. Moreover, communicators must have an implicit understanding of the conditions under which such claims could be redeemed – the ideal speech situation in which all relevant actors are free to participate, can do so free from constraints, and are united in the aim of reaching understanding.[35] He believes that the communicative, interactive dimension of human activity was neglected by the focus of previous Critical Theorists on subject-object relations and the realm of production, and that this explains why they were unable to solve the theory-praxis problem. Habermas characterises this as a paradigm shift from the ‘philosophy of the subject’ to ‘the philosophy of language’.[36]

Habermas’s theory of communicative action is, then, at least as concerned with identifying how a socially grounded, practical and moral claim to truth might be re-established as it is with providing an ‘more adequate’ account of social reality.[37] Likewise, it does not offer a set of abstract normative principles with which to assess political arrangements so much as an account of those aspects of existing practice which might be drawn upon in pursuit of moral cognition.[38] Habermas introduces communicative activity because he believes it is a form of epistemic practice, of practical reason which contains a universalistic, transcendent potential which can provide the basis for a rejuvenated critical social theory and for progressive political praxis. On this view the political theorist does not stand apart from the world and legislate for it, but must participate in the communicative action in question.[39] She should not hope to identify the goals of political practice so much as the procedures through which consideration and pursuit of those goals might takes place.

This interpretation of Habermas’s theory explains why it has been so appealing to international theorists. For Critical IR Theorists and deliberative International Political Theorists it has provided the means with which to deal with the aftermath of the collapse of the Positivist ‘view from nowhere’ in which it became necessary to elaborate on the connection between epistemic and political practices. At the same time, the collapse of the ‘view from nowhere’ seemed to bring with it the threat of relativism – once the sociality of knowledge had been granted, it became difficult to identify a perspective from which the critical project could be pursued.[40] Habermas’s understanding of communication has the advantage of recognising that truth claims are raised and must be justified in the context of particular discourses, whilst insisting that some level of practical epistemic context transcendence is necessary for communication to take place at all; there is a certain pragmatically and contextually grounded context-transcending power to be found in discourse. The turn to communication seems to provide a means of dealing with the theoretical awareness of contextualism and the actual plurality of the globalised world.[41] Thus, Linklater finds it useful to appeal to the communal discursive identification of ‘more universal truths’ as opposed to merely local because it is possible to argue that this procedural universalism will not do violence to difference. For James Bohman, Critical Theorists should adopt an even more pragmatic communicatively oriented perspective than that advocated by Habermas in order to deal with the plurality of perspectives.[42] The normative and praxeological advantages of discursive praxis lie in its apparent ability to reconcile universality and difference with a form of ‘practical knowledge’. It’s ability to identify a form of epistemic practice which seems to escape instrumental reason seems to provide a way of avoiding the dead-end in which early Critical Theorists supposedly became trapped.[43]

Communication Breakdown

Given the strengths of the communicative turn in IR, what are we to make of Adorno’s claim that communication between subjects cannot be the route to peace and reconciliation? The passage quoted at the start of this paper suggests that he anticipated the appeal of paradigm shift to communication which his colleague was beginning to set in motion. Adorno seems to be offering a warning to future Critical Theorists that it would solve none of the problems which concern them – especially the rule of instrumental reason. The suggestion that Critical Theorists should focus on relations between subjectivity and objectivity is, however, at odds with the prevailing attitude amongst Critical IR Theorists, who have tended to accept the story of a straightforward progression from the first to second generation of Frankfurt School Critical Theory.[44] From this perspective, Adorno’s critical philosophy is hobbled by his fear of all-encompassing instrumental reason which blinds him to the progressive side of Enlightenment reason.

Even if IR theorists had engaged with Adorno’s philosophy in any depth, the environment which emerged with the critique of Positivism in IR was particularly inhospitable to the notion that Critical Theory should concern itself with relations between subjectivity and objectivity. The early Critical Theorists in IR – Linklater, along with Richard Ashley and Robert Cox – detected a ‘scandalous anti-humanism’ in the ‘objectivism’ of Positivist scholars.[45] Theoretical attempts to identify the facts about an objective reality were associated with the quest for technical control and therefore with political domination. The task of the critical scholar was perceived to be that of breaking down the distinction between subject and object and thereby reintroducing normative questions to the study of IR. Significantly, the critique of objectivism extended to Marxism as well as to Positivism. The lifeless economism and complicity in domination of much Marxian theory was traced to its concern with human relations with objectivity and to the belief that the Marxian theorist was a scientist pursuing objective truth.[46] Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that critical IR scholars were attracted to those theories – not only Habermas’s Critical theory, but also poststructuralist theories and, to an extent, Antonio Gramsci’s reworked Marxism – which did away with the idea of a subject-object relationship altogether and replaced it with a largely linguistic relationship between subjects through which objective reality was constituted.

Whilst post-positivist criticisms of the objectivism of Positivism and orthodox Marxism were justified, however, the general turn away from the question of subjectivity and objectivity has proved unfortunate. It has generated a series of problems for Habermasian CIRT. Taken individually each of these problems is far from conclusive. Viewed as a series, it becomes apparent that the same general difficulty keeps emerging, albeit in different forms. The first intervention came in response to The Transformation of Political Community. As we saw above, Linklater calls for a ‘triple transformation’ of political community according to which it comes to be defined by greater universalism, greater sensitivity to difference, and greater material equality. On the Habermasian view, communication provides a means of negotiating between universality and difference in world politics, whilst material wellbeing matters because it is a precondition of participation in communication.[47] However, responding to Linklater’s book, Norman Geras argued that if the materially disadvantaged are to become participants in the discursive shaping of world politics as Linklater wishes, if a universal communication community is going to be properly pursued, it will not be enough to attempt to create institutions which foster inter-communal discourse. Rather, the global system of production would have to be reformed, since it is this which will continue to prevent the poorest of the world’s inhabitants from participating in discourse. [48]

The result for discourse ethics is a near paradox; the pursuit of universal communication cannot take place solely on the basis of the communicative negotiation between universality and cultural difference. Rather, as Geras suggests, ‘a truly dialogic perspective leads straight back into the social theory inaugurated by Marx’.[49] That is to say, genuine dialogue cannot be pursued theoretically by means of the focus on communication, or praxeologically through discourse alone, but rather requires an understanding of human relationships with materiality in theory and reform of those relations in practice. This would in turn, involve a return to an concern with subject-object relationships in addition to those of interaction and intersubjectivity.

Of course, Linklater recognises that discourse could not occur without sufficient levels of material wellbeing.[50] However, Geras’s criticisms suggest that the imbalance in Linklater’s theory of transformation is in fact a problematic one; that which is presented as a precondition external to the communicative realm of freedom and rational autonomy turns out to be prior to communication and integral to freedom and to the ability to participate in the rational construction of one’s political environment. This suggests that reason and the pursuit of freedom cannot be reduced to the discursive pursuit of validity claims, but properly conceived of involve the very practices through which humanity interacts with nature sidelined by the turn to communication.

A similar discomfort is apparent in a second critique of CIRT. This emerges from the arguments of Critical Realists, who accept much of the critique of Positivism but argue that positions like that of Habermas reflect a problematic ‘anthropocentrism’.[51] Critical Realists suggest that the problem with Critical Theory, other post-positivist theories, and Positivism itself is that they attempt to understand political and social reality by reflecting on the nature of human knowledge. For Critical Realists this obscures the fact that for there to be any knowledge at all, there must be a reality which is independent of it. That is not to say that knowledge and epistemic activities play no part in constituting social reality – Critical Realists are not Positivists. However, at the same time, social reality both precedes the activities of any existing human beings – we are born into a world of pre-existing social structures – and exerts a causal power over them, affecting their ability to pursue their goals.[52] Together, these features show that IR theory must attempt to gain an accurate understanding of objective social structures rather than simply reflect on intersubjective epistemic practice.[53] The attempt to understand political reality in terns of an epistemic activity such as communication can then be seen to represent a form of subjectivist hubris which, given its failure to recognise the importance of real structures, is unlikely to achieve the emancipation it aims for. There are many problems with Critical Realism (its adherents display an excessive faith in science and a tendency to accept objectivity as it is currently experienced as a transcendental necessity rather than a political problem) but its criticisms of post-positivism do suggest that behind the faith in intersubjective epistemic practices such as discourse, there lies a misplaced confidence in the self-sufficiency of human reason.

The third intervention which points to the problematic implications of CIRT’s neglect of subject-object relations can be found in the work of Linklater himself, who in his more recent work has begun to doubt the Habermasian emphasis on communication as a basis for an account of moral progress in world politics.[54] In place of the emphasis on the progressive power of discursive practices he considers the neglected ethical potentialities which ‘arise from corporeality and embodiment’.[55] Linklater suggests that by examining reactions to the suffering which humans can experience as material beings, it might be possible for Critical Theorists to gain a greater understanding of moral learning processes and increasing levels of cosmopolitan solidarity in international society.[56] Unlike Geras or the Critical Realists, neither of whom display any interest in redeeming the Frankfurt School project, Linklater recognises the significant difference between the theory of early Frankfurt School theorists like Adorno and the communicatively oriented theory of Habermas. He points out that ‘critical investigations of world politics are largely guilty of neglecting the psychological and emotional dimensions of social conduct and moral interaction’.[57] Such dimensions are, Linklater argues, the bridge between the experiences of corporeal individuals and moral structures. They were central to the early Frankfurt School’s continuation of the Marxian materialist critique of idealism, according to which they analysed ‘the interplay between material structures or forces and the organisation of the libidinal and emotional dimensions of individual and collective selves.’[58] Significantly, given the concerns of this paper, he wonders whether ‘the ‘linguistic turn’ in critical social theory failed to capitalise on early Frankfurt School reflections on suffering and solidarity’.[59] He endorses the claim that Habermas has participated in a problematic ‘decorporealisation of Critical Theory’, a process which can be traced to the Kantian rationalism’s exclusion of things instinctive and impulsive.[60]

These three positions reflect diverse philosophies and different approaches to the critical project in IR. They are not presented here as decisive arguments against communicative CIRT – they express different theoretical positions which are not obviously compatible with one another.[61] When viewed together, however, they form a pattern which indicates that Habermasian Critical Theory might participate in the exclusion of a certain set of considerations which might be loosely grouped together under the heading ‘objectivity’. For Geras, at issue is the assumption that communicative action can be understood in theory and pursued in practice independently of the global capitalist economy. For Critical Realists, the problem is the notion that the world is produced through the epistemic activity of human subjects and the consequent failure to give adequate consideration to the objectivity of social structures. For Linklater, the material, corporeal aspect of human subjectivity has been repressed and with it the instinctual and emotional features of human experience through which it is incorporated into ethical belief systems.

Subjective Reason

Together, these three interventions suggest that a question mark hangs over the communicative turn taken by Critical IR Theorists and that problems emerge along the very axis of subject-object relations within which Adorno argued communication must be located. It seems that, as Linklater notes, something might have been missed in CIRT’s acceptance of the Habermasian ‘linguistic turn’. Having delayed engagement with his Critical Theory, we can now turn to Adorno to investigate what this might be.

It was suggested above that the significance of Habermas’s theory of communication arises from the solution its account of non-instrumental but context-transcending practical knowledge and reason seems to offer to the theory-praxis problem. Adorno can help with our assessment of Habermasian CIRT because he is concerned with the same questions as his successor – how can we maintain the achievements of enlightened reason in a way which can cope with the overlap between theory and praxis? In contrast with Habermas, however, Adorno is less immediately concerned with identifying a previously unrecognised form of praxis, than with explaining why it will prove difficult to do so. The difficulty in question is described at the start of Adorno and Horkheimers’ Dialectic of Enlightenment: whilst ‘the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty’ it is also the case that ‘the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant’.[62]

To modern ears, this claim can have an air of pessimistic hyperbole; despite the undoubted political and social problems of the modern life, progress is surely undeniable. It has and does occur in science, medicine, social welfare, international institutions, and in politics. Such a response is wide of the mark; Adorno’s point is simply that accompanying the undeniable achievements of modernity have been instances of appalling violence and increased domination and, second, that the task of Critical Theory is to explain this ‘dire proximity of progress and barbarism.’ [63] This form of critical theorising, which concerns itself with the dark side of society’s brightest achievements can be traced back to Marx’s critique of liberal politics in ‘On the Jewish Question’, where he describes how the liberal rights of the political sphere are dependent on economic exploitation.[64] It reflects a form of materialism which challenges the triumphalism of the modern subject by revealing its historical, social, and material underpinnings. This triumphalism is manifested both in the positivist assumption that the subject stands apart from the world, which is therefore assumed to be immutable, and in the idealist assumption that activity can be understood in terms of transcendental subjects alone.[65]

Adorno explains the pathologies of enlightened reason with an account of the rise of the modern subject. Underlying his philosophy is the reassertion – which pre-empts the Critical Realist identification of the epistemic fallacy – of objectivity against the figure of ‘dictator’ over things to which the modern subject has been elevated.[66] According to Adorno, it is a result of this elevation that Enlightenment descends into domination and violence. The failure of Enlightenment to deliver on its promise originates in the roots it shares with mythology – the desire to control nature. In Dialectic of Enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer provide an account of the manifestations of this desire in the various forms taken by man’s[67] relationship with nature, or in more abstract terms between subject and object, throughout history. They argue that in animistic religions this relationship is one of fear of nature’s Otherness and externality. At this stage, man can achieve some sort of control by means of practices of ‘magic’. In magic, images and dreams are not signs which correspond to natural objects, but are rather bound up with them by similarities and names; they are part of reality. It is by means of this mimesis, rather than the radical separation of the knowing subject from the world, that man relates to nature.[68]

At this stage, then, there are no radical distinctions between thought and reality, subject and object, no ‘sovereignty of ideas.’[69] Through his fear of the Other and the desire to control it, however, man begins to draw subject and object apart and then elevate the former over the latter. The demons and spirits which reflected the mystery of the unknown external world in animism, came to be intellectualised as ‘pure ontological essences.’[70] For example, in Ancient Greek religion the Olympic deities are no longer thought to be identical with the elements but rather have come to signify them. As a result, subject (god) and object (element) begin to separate. The gods are, in a sense, the concepts which represent the elements. In this way, being divides into logos within and the mass of all things without. Eventually the difference between man and god diminishes until man too stands as master over existence.[71] From this position he can manipulate nature according to his will. In this way ‘[m]yth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity’ over which man has control.[72]

Through this elevation of the subject, humanity has been able to establish technical control in both the natural and social worlds. However, in the process, as Marx recognised, it has been forgotten how much humans are themselves material (objective) creatures, part of the natural world. As a result, both society and nature are known only insofar as they can be manipulated. In modern positivist thought this ‘subjectivism’ is manifested in the detachment of language from reality which produces a closed ‘system of detached signs’.[73] Any attempt to transcend this system is seen as meaningless, at best being relegated to a ‘cognition-free special area of social activity’.[74] Positivism might believe itself to represent ‘the court of judgement of enlightened reason’, but this instrumental reason in fact maintains its power by means of a taboo placed on all reference to that which cannot be represented by ‘detached signs’ or concepts and thereby moulded into interchangeable units.[75] Conceptuality, which Adorno refers to as ‘identity-thinking’ – the idea that reality ‘goes into’ the subject’s concepts ‘without remainder’ – is the main ill of all subject philosophy.[76]

The process by which enlightenment elevates the subject to the status of dictator has always been a social one. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the possibility of separating subject and object first emerges with the division between master and labourer, and is perpetuated in modern times by the market logic which prioritises exchange value over use value, and therefore abstract interchangeability over the significance and value of particular objects.[77] It permeates politics by reducing individuals to the status of abstract subjects, as a result of which they become ‘the herd’ in which Fascism can find support.[78] At an individual level, despite liberal claims to the contrary, apparently free and rational Enlightenment subjects become incapable of genuine rationality. They share positivism’s mythic fear of anything which escapes the grasp of the concept:

The dutiful child of modern civilization is possessed by fear of departing from the facts which, in the very act of perception, the dominant conventions of science, commerce, and politics – cliché-like – have already moulded; his anxiety is none other than the fear of social deviation.[79]

Thus, the elevation of the subject over objectivity creates a society of reified structures from which it appears to be impossible to depart. Whilst they are in some sense real and causally efficacious, these structures are also illusory to the extent that they obscure the social tension on the basis of which they have been erected.[80] For Adorno, despite the appearance of freedom and rationality that has been created around modern subjectivity, modern society is defined by a contradiction; the process of enlightenment through which humanity has increased its power and freedom is based on repression which manifests itself in social domination.

The Habermasian reply to this account of subjective reason is, of course, that Adorno focuses on instrumental reason whilst remaining blind to the potential of intersubjective communicative rationality.[81] From Adorno’s perspective, however, this is no answer at all. As we have just seen, his point is not that there is no basis for progress in modernity – he insists that the development of modern subjectivity must be seen as an achievement[82] – but rather that that progress is accompanied by increased potential for domination and violence. Of course, it is at first difficult to see how the sort communicative action advocated by many Critical IR Theorists could have any negative implications. As we have seen, it seems to offer the possibility of a form of practical reason which can deal with the plurality or perspectives by which the modern globalised world is characterised whilst not surrendering universality and truth to relativism. However, it is not clear that it avoids the subjectivism described by Adorno. The reasons why have been described by Jay Bernstein, who argues that the emphasis on discourse is as scientistic as the Archimedean pretensions of Positivism; it aims to exclude ‘interference’ by those nonidentical factors peculiar to the life and experiences of particular subjects or those which are affective or corporeal.[83] Such considerations are relegated to the ‘cognition-free’ area of activity mention by Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Bernstein points out that the exclusion in question repeats that which liberal and Kantian theory attempt to enact when they ‘emphasises legal and juridical relations between individuals, but remain blind to other forms of relationships, familial, erotic, fraternal and the like’.[84] Adorno explains why such an attitude perpetuates the abstraction as a result of which the relationship of society to individual is experienced as a ‘weight’ and source of suffering.[85] Contrary to the hopes of many Critical IR Theorists, therefore, the pursuit of intersubjective communication provides no means of escape from scientism or instrumental rationality.

Adorno’s critique of subjective rationality confirms the fears reflected in the three responses to Habermasian CIRT examined in the previous section. The account of emancipatory praxis based on intersubjective communication displays praxeological (Geras), philosophical (Critical Realism), and normative-sociological (Linklater) shortcomings because it repeats the attempt to assert a purified subjectivity – ‘an interchange between subjects according to the requirements of subjective reason’.[86] Bernstein shows that this critique is not simply a matter of crude materialism in which the importance of economy, physical reality, and corporeality is asserted against that of culture and normativity. Rather, the suppression of objectivity is detrimental to relations between subjects because a politics based on intersubjectivity alone descends into a formalism and proceduralism remote from the interests and experiences of real human beings. Just such a concern has led Linklater to turn away from Habermas to the early Frankfurt School. It is for this reason that Adorno concludes his statement about the importance of understanding communication in terms of the relationship between ‘people and things’ by noting that ‘[i]n its proper place… the relationship of subject and object would lie in the realization of peace among men as well as between men and their other.’[87]

Objective communication

Although Adorno can help us to explain the problems with CIRT’s communicative turn, this negativist critique seems to support the assumption, prevalent in IR, that he has little of positive practical significance to offer CIRT. At the same time, in the passage quoted at the start of this paper he refers not simply to the betrayal of the ‘best there is’ to the ‘requirements of subjective reason’, but also to the positive goal of ‘agreement between people and things’, an ‘objective concept’ of communication, and to ‘peace among men as well as between men and their other’.[88] These comments suggest that despite his acute awareness of the obstacles facing attempts to identify a form of progressive practical reason, Adorno does have an account of emancipatory praxis in mind. If this is the case his theory might not only help Critical IR Theorists to recognise dangers which will inevitable accompany a communicative Critical Theory, but also to think about an alternative future for CIRT based on an alternative understanding of emancipatory praxis.

In order to understand what such an account might involve it is necessary to bear in mind two features of Adorno’s philosophy. The first is that he faces the obstacle raised by his recognition of the impossibility of a purified form of reason, one through which it might be possible to circumvent instrumental rationality. As we have just seen, the assertion of any such rationality by Critical Theorists will simply repeat the illusion of a purified subjective reason which explains the ‘proximity of progress and barbarism’ in the modern world. There is no way around the form of subjectivity which is complicit in domination. For this reason, Adorno asserts that it will be necessary to ‘work through’ the subject to arrive at a new form of praxis.[89] The second thing to note is that, just as Habermas’s Critical Theory is significant because of the account it provides of epistemic practice and practical reason, so Adorno’s is oriented towards the provision of such an account. He insists that abandoning the notion of truth altogether would represent surrender in the face of the account an unjust society offers of itself.[90] Moreover, as we have just seen, Adorno believes that a key feature of this self-image is the exclusion of certain matters from the realm of cognition.[91]

It seems that what we might expect from Adorno is an account of practical cognition in which it is not purified of objectivity, but encompasses corporeality, nature, and the non-conceptual. This would be a form of objective reason in contrast with the subjective reason described above. Before describing what practical objective reason might involve, we should remind ourselves of the sort of critical theorising which Adorno is engaged in. We saw above that in rejecting of purified rational subjectivity Adorno follows Marx by seeking to explain how modern Enlightenment values are complicit in alienation and domination. For the same reason, like Marx, Adorno was deeply suspicious of theoretical attempts to make prescriptions for political action; the assumption that the theorist is in a position to make prescriptions and the insistence that theory must point directly to practice reflects the dictatorial attitude of the modern subject and will repeat the abstractions outlined above.[92] The first thing Adorno can teach CIRT is, then, that it should resist demands that begins to formulate programs for the reform of world politics.

There is, however, another, more positive lesson to be learned from Adorno’s Critical Theory. Whilst he was adamant in his rejection of ‘praxism’, Adorno still maintained that the Critical Theorist should ‘consider the proper organisation of society’.[93] In keeping with the precision which characterises his writing, this consideration is contrasted with the suggestion that the Critical Theorist ‘should be so presumptuous as to tell people how to act.’[94] Because he aims to address the theory-praxis problem with an account of practical cognition, some of the clearest signs as to what Adorno’s consideration points to emerge from his conception of truth. This is the result of three features of that conception in particular: (i) that it is ‘emphatic’; (ii) that it must involve subject-object relations; and (iii) that it is ‘unintentional’.[95]

Regarding (i), truth is emphatic in the sense that it cannot be detached from the needs of corporeal, objective subjects.[96] In particular, it is an expression of the way in which the current experience of objectivity is one of suffering under a weight.[97] The desire for ‘correspondence’ which characterises traditional understandings of truth really reflects the subject’s desire to be reconciled with alienated objectivity. Therefore, properly understood and carried out, the pursuit of truth is the practical pursuit of a society based on a new relationship between subject and object.[98] The scientific ideal of adequacy between subjective theoretical terms and objective reality cannot be detached from this more fundamental ideal of a society in which subject and object are reconciled – a ‘true society’.[99]

This brings us to (ii). Because of the impossibility of successfully prioritising either term, truth must involve the practical articulation of relations between subject and object. As we have seen, the prioritisation of the subjective or the exclusion of the objective can only be achieved though an illegitimate process of purification. At the same time, Adorno points out that prioritising the objective will lead to a similarly harmful denial of the way in which subjective interests shape any understanding of reality.[100] He describes how any final attempt to define subject or object should be avoided, since ‘defining’ assumes that something objective is capture by means of a concept and the two halves of this equation are precisely what is at stake in any investigation into subjectivity and objectivity.[101] Rather, the Critical Theorist should analyse the terms and the relationship between them as a ‘historical sediment’.[102] This historicisation means that both terms, and the relationship between them, enjoy a sort of dual existence. For example, we find that the distinction between subject and object is both true and false. The subject-object distinction itself is ‘true’ to the extent that ‘in the cognitive realm it serves to express the real separation, the dichotomy of the human condition, a coercive development’. It is ‘false’ because ‘the resulting separation must not be hypostatised, not magically transformed into an invariant’.[103] Emphatic truth reflects the rejection of this hypostatisation.

Finally, we might wonder what the emphaticness of truth and interaction between subject and object entail in theory and in practice. This brings us to point (iii) – the unintentionality of truth. The pursuit of ‘correctness’ about the ‘real’ world is not an option for Adorno since it assumes that the aim of inquiry should be that of somehow ‘capturing’ reality with our concepts. For Adorno, nonidentity, rather than identity and conceptuality, is the ultimate locus of truth. This means that truth can only be identified by looking to the contradictions which the suppression of material nonidentity gives rise to in intellectual, cultural, and social phenomena. That is to say, we must look for the marks left upon social and cultural phenomena by that which escapes our concepts.[104] From this critical perspective, truth must be ‘unintentional’.[105] ‘Intentionality’ is a philosophical concept which refers to the power of minds to be about things and of ideas and concepts to represent them. The term has its roots in the Latin term intention which referred to what we would now call ‘concepts’.[106] Truth is ‘unintentional’ for Adorno in the sense that it does not lie in the correspondence of subjective ideas and concepts with reality, but rather in the way in which the nature of underlying reality is expressed in various cultural artefacts, philosophical ideas, and social and political institutions. Such expression reflects the sort of interaction between subject and object which he advocates.

The idea of unintentional truth has, at one level, much in common with the orthodox Marxist appeal to objective economic activity lying beneath the social and cultural superstructure of society.[107] It is not Adorno’s aim, however, simply to reduce social and cultural phenomena to some material substructure; such a move would simply replicate the dictatorial arrogance of subject philosophy and thereby obscure the experience of living in modern society. Most importantly, such a view of truth would be at odds with the relationship of truth to the needs and interests of vulnerable, corporeal human beings. Rather, Adorno suggests that such phenomena must be seen as ‘expressions’ of underlying socio-economic structures.[108]

The notion of unintentional truth content explains Adorno’s (in)famous belief in the critical importance of art. Because truth is unintentional, the work of art can be seen as the ‘medium of the unconscious history writing of society’; it can unintentionally reveal the social contradictions and tensions which are obscured by the appearances of societies characterised by identity-thinking and the exchange principle.[109] Moreover, art is perhaps uniquely unintentional in the modern world, having more in common with pre-modern mimesis than any other form of modern activity.[110] Adorno does not believe art to provide any basis for praxis, however. Rather, it points to the sort of relationship a truly emancipated subject might have with the world; reality should ‘imitate’ art.[111] When considering this relationship, it is important to remember that as a good dialectician, Adorno does not think we can simply reject the moment of subjective intentionality, of conceptual thought and identity thinking, and move straight to some more direct relationship with the material world. He states that any attempt to liquidate the subject rather than sublate it into a new form will result in ‘a regression to real barbarism’.[112] Adorno’s hope is that subjectivity will be transformed through a new mode of relating to objectivity.

The role of unintentional truth in Adorno’s thought reveals the way in which his philosophy points towards a form of praxis in which the subject does not stand apart from and over objectivity, but interacts with it. Such interaction can occur both within individuals, in their interaction with nature, and in their interaction with each other. That this form of practical cognition is also a form of praxis is apparent in the fact that it is equivalent to ‘communication, as an objective concept’. Because, for Adorno subjects are also objects, the truth in question is also a relationship between human individuals in which their particularity, their corporeality, and their relationship to nature is not suppressed.[113] This relationship would be one of genuine, objective rather than subjective communication.[114] Thus, as the passage quoted at the start of this paper suggests, Adorno can not only show CIRT that intersubjective communication is unlikely to lead to emancipation, but also that it is not ‘the best there is’. We can hope for a better form of praxis, one which does not rely on the suppression of important aspects of human experience and existence.

We now draw our enquiries to a close with some suggestions as to the particular avenues of inquiry to which this account of praxis might direct Critical IR Theorists. At least one of these has already been taken up by Linklater in his normative sociological of harm. However, Linklater seems to be more interested in developing a theory based on the work of Norbert Elias than on pursuing the implications of early Frankfurt School Critical Theory.[115] Bernstein provides an idea of where such an avenue of inquiry might lead, recommending recognition of way in which morality builds on particular instances of suffering.[116] Such a line of inquiry would point to a form of cosmopolitanism in IR which was sensitive to the way in which universalisation and institutionalisation of norms can begin to obscure objective particularity.

Another line of inquiry which has already been pursued by some political theorists is the attempt to identify instances of political practice in which people appear to attempt to protect themselves and their communities from the effects of subjective reason. For example, John Holloway has made such claims about the Zapatistas in Mexico.[117] Such a line of inquiry would certainly be an interesting one for IR theorists. However, it is not clear that such practices are in keeping with the form of objective communication just described.

Finally, given that a number of things can be grouped together under ‘objectivity’ – corporeality, nature, nonidentity/otherness, etc. – it would be interesting to see how the concerns of different schools of critical thought in IR might link up. For example, what might be the connection between the suppression of cultural difference, a major concern of poststructuralists, link up with domination over the natural environment, a concern of Marxists and environmentalists? This last line of inquiry might be particularly fruitful given that the former problem shows no signs of abating (especially, it can seem, in the supposedly more progressive regions of the world) and that the latter is only just being recognised as a political problem by global leaders.

For now, we can note that the pursuit of communication which has so concerned Critical IR Theorists remains an important goal. It offers a means of balancing universality and difference and of empowering populations in relation to global power structures. However, properly conceived of, communication must be an objective practice in which the dictatorship of the subject is overcome. Only then will it truly address the needs and interests of vulnerable humanity.

Conclusion

These comments will no doubt not satisfy those who want CIRT to provide clear prescriptions for international political practice. However, the intention of this paper has not been to provide such an account. Rather it has aimed to provide a new account of how and in pursuit of what ends CIRT should be pursued. In answer to the first question, we have seen that CIRT should resist the temptation to isolate a progressive form of subjectivity or intersubjectivity. Rather it should acknowledge the impossibility of doing so and continue the form of critique found in the work of Marx, in which the underside of liberal and Enlightenment values, their complicity in domination, is revealed.

In answer to the second question, we have seen that it is necessary to find new ways of articulating relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. The desirability of such a line of inquiry has been obscured in IR by the apparent productivity of the communicative turn and by the suspicion of the very concept of objectivity found in early works of CIRT. The same factors also account for the failure to engage with Adorno’s Critical Theory in any depth. It has been demonstrated here, however, that his philosophy points to an alternative and potentially fruitful way in which IR can interpret and tackle the normative, epistemological, and praxeological questions raised by Critical Theory.

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[1] Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical foundations of the post-Westphalian era, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 5.

[2] Theodor Adorno, ‘Subject and Object’, in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt eds., (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 497-511, especially 502.

[3] Linklater, Transformation; Richard Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’ International Studies Quarterly 25, no.2 (1981): 204-236; Mark Hoffman, ‘Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm Debate’, Millennium 16, 2 (1987), pp.231-249.

[4] Jürgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation, 110-11; James Bohman, ‘Democratising the global order: from communicative freedom to communicative power’, Review of International Studies 36, 2 (2010): 434.

[5] See e.g. Jürgen Haacke, ‘Theory and Practice in International Relations: Habermas, Self-Reflection, Rational Argumentation’, Millennium, 25, 2 (1996): 255-89, especially 258

[6] Ibid.

[7] Axel Honneth gives an eloquent account both of the feeling of historical distance which can accompany the reading of some of Adorno’s work and of its continuing significance. See Axel Honneth ‘The Possibility of Disclosing Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in social Criticism’, Constellations 7, 1 (2000): 116-27.

[8] Adorno’s criticisms are partially pre-emptive insofar as the statement in question is made in his essay ‘Subject and Object’ which was originally published in 1969. Habermas was already developing his theory of communication by this point. However, he had yet to effect his paradigm shift from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of language which saw him further develop his philosophy of communication with an account of the ‘universal pragmatics’ of speech.

[9] Norman Geras, ‘The view from everywhere’, Review of International Studies, 25, 1 (1999): 157-163.

[10] Heikki Patomäki and Colin Wight, ‘After Post-Positivism? The Promises of Critical Realism’ International Studies Quarterly 44, 2 (2000), 213-237, especially 217.

[11] Andrew Linklater, ‘Towards a global sociology of morals with ‘emancipatory’ intent’, Review of International Studies, 33, Special Issue (2007): 135-150

[12] J.M. Bernstein, ‘Suffering Injustice: Misrecognition as Moral Injury in Critical Theory’, in Language Without Soil: Adorno and Late Philosophical Modernity, Gerhard Richter ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 30-51, especially 35.

[13] Ibid., 46.

[14] Andrew Linklater ‘The Achievements of Critical Theory’ in Linklater Critical Theory and World Politics, (London: Routledge, 2007) 45-59, especially 49.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Jürgen Habermas Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 66.

[17] Bohman, ‘Communicative freedom’; Habermas, Postnational Constellation, 110-11.

[18] Linklater Transformation of Political Community

[19] Ibid. 168.

[20] Ibid. 3.

[21] Ibid. 38-39.

[22] Ibid. 48-49.

[23] Ibid. 79.

[24] Ibid. 40.

[25] Ibid. 8.

[26] Risse ‘“Let’s Argue!”.

[27] ZIB stands for Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, the journal in which the debate took place. See Nicole Deitelhoff and Harald Müller ‘Theoretical paradise – empirically lost? Arguing with Habermas’ Review of International Studies 31, 1 (2005): 167-178.

[28] Risse ‘Let’s Argue’, pp.23-33.

[29] Bohman, ‘Communicative freedom’.

[30] Max Horkheimer, ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, in Critical Theory: Selected Essays, Matthew J. O’Connell trans., (New York: Continuum, 1972), pp.188-243; Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, (London: Heineman, 1972).

[31] Ashley ‘Political Realism; Andrew Linklater Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations 2nd Edition, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990); Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millennium 10, 2 (1981), pp.126-155.

[32] J.M. Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life: Jürgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory (London: Routledge, 1995), 10.

[33] See e.g. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, (London:Verso, 1972).

[34] Jürgen Habermas The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).

[35] Jürgen Habermas ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’, in On the Pragmatics of Communication, Maeve Cooke ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 21-104, especially 22; Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Volume 1 , trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).

[36] Habermas, Philosophical Discourse, 296-7.

[37] Tom Rockmore, Habermas On Historical Materialism, (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989) pp.141-142.

[38] Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 43.

[39] Ibid., 68.

[40] Nicholas Rengger, ‘Going Critical? A Response to Hoffman’ Millennium, 17, 1 (1988): 81-89, especially 82-83.

[41] James Bohman ‘Theories, Practices, and Pluralism: A Pragmatic Interpretation of Critical Social Science’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29, 4 (1999): 459-80.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Ibid.

[44] See e.g. Haacke, ‘Theory and Praxis’; Linklater, Transformation, 162. David Held identifies the same attitude amongst social theorists in general.

[45] Richard Ashley, ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’, International Organisation 38, 2 (1984): 225-286, especially 237.

[46] Robert Cox ‘Realism, positivism, and historicism’, in R. Cox and T Sinclair eds. Approaches to World Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 (1985)) 56-7.

[47] Linklater, Transformation, 165.

[48] Geras, ‘The view from everywhere’, 163.

[49] Ibid.

[50] For Linklater’s reply to Geras see Andrew Linklater ‘Transforming political community: a response to the critics’ Review of International Studies 25, 1 (1999): 165-175.

[51] Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science, 2nd Edition (London: Verso, 1978), 34; Patomäki and Wight, ‘After Post-Positivism?’, p.217.

[52] Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, (London: Routledge, 1998), 25.

[53] Patomäki and Wight, ‘After Post-Positivism’, 25.

[54] Linklater, ‘Global sociology of morals’, 140.

[55] Ibid, 139.

[56] Ibid. 148-49.

[57] Ibid. 142.

[58] Ibid. 142 & 147.

[59] Ibid. 145.

[60] Joel Whitebrook quoted ibid., 146.

[61] For example, Critical Realism is arguably just as complicit in the exclusion of the corporeal and instinctual from rationality described by Linklater as Habermasian Critical Theory.

[62] Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 3.

[63] Bernstein, ‘Suffering Injustice’, 48.

[64] Ibid, 45; Karl Marx ‘On the Jewish Question’ in David McLellan ed. Karl Marx: Selected Writings 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46-70.

[65] Martin Jay, Adorno (London: Fontana, 1984), 58-9.

[66] Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 9.

[67] The use of ‘man’ is significant; Adorno and Horkheimer believe that the instrumental relationship to nature is a masculine one. Ibid., p.26 & p.84.

[68] Ibid., 7.

[69] Ibid., 11.

[70] Ibid., 6.

[71] Ibid., 8.

[72] Ibid., 9.

[73] Ibid., 18.

[74] Ibid., 25.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 5.

[77] Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment,14. Frederic Jameson emphasises this aspect of Adorno’s philosophy, arguing that ‘exchange value’ is ‘strictly identical with ‘identity’’. Frederic Jameson, Late Marxism, (London: Verso, 1990), 23-24. For Marx’s account of exchange value and use value, see Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, (New York: Lawrence and Wishart, 1967), 43-47.

[78] Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p.13.

[79] Ibid, xiv.

[80] Adorno’s understanding of the relationship between ‘illusion’ and reality is derived from Marx’s distinction between appearance and reality, in which the former is never presented as entirely illusory. Howard Williams, Hegel, Heraclitus, and Marx’s dialectic, (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 1989), 145.

[81] Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Volume 1, 366.

[82] Adorno, ‘Subject and Object’, 499.

[83] Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life, 105-106.

[84] Ibid., 144-5. Bernstein makes this suggest in a summary of Seyla Benhabib’s Hegelian critique of Habermas. Unlike Benhabib, however, he does not believe these problems can be overcome through a reformed understanding of communicative action, but that they highlight the importance of Adorno’s philosophy. Ibid., 148. See also Seyla Benhabib Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) .

[85] Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 17-18.

[86] Adorno, ‘Subject and Object’, 499-500.

[87] Ibid.

[88] Ibid.

[89]

[90] For example, he criticises Kant for abandoning the distinction between truth and illusion. Negative Dialectics, 73.

[91] Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 25.

[92] Theodor Adorno, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Ivory Tower? Conversation with Theodor W. Adorno’, Gerhard Richter trans. & ed., in Language Without Soil: Adorno and Late Philosophical Modernity, Richter ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 227-238.

[93] Ibid., 234.

[94] Ibid., 235.

[95] For a more extensive consideration of the implications of Adorno’s theory of truth for IR see Matthew Fluck ‘Truth, values, and the value of truth in critical International Relations theories’, forthcoming Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, 2 (2010).

[96] Simon Jarvis, ‘Adorno, Marx, Materialism’ in The Cambridge Companion to Adorno, Tom Huhn ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.79-100, reference p.84.

[97] Adorno, Negative Dialectics, pp.17-18.

[98] Theodor Adorno ‘Introduction’ in Adorno et al., trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby, The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, (London: Heinemann, 1976), pp.1-67, reference p.27

[99] Ibid.

[100] Adorno, ‘Subject and Object’, 498-99

[101] Ibid., 498.

[102] Ibid.

[103] Ibid., pp.498-9.

[104] Susan Buck-Morss, ‘T.W. Adorno and the Dilemmas of Bourgeois Philosophy’ in Theodor W. Adorno Volume 1, Gerard Delanty ed., (London: Sage, 2004), 39.

[105] Ibid, 40.

[106] Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy, , accessed 28/3/09.

[107] Buck-Morss, ‘Bourgeois Philosophy’, 40.

[108] Ibid., 41.

[109] Ibid., 40-41.

[110] José Manuel Martínez, ‘Mimesis and distance: arts and the social in Adorno’s thought’, in Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism, John Holloway et al, (London: Pluto Press, 2010), 228-40, especially 238-9.

[111] Ibid., 239; Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life, 149.

[112] Adorno, ‘Subject and Object’, p.499.

[113] Ibid.

[114] Bernstein, Ethical Life, 153

[115] Andrew Linklater, ‘Global civilizing processes and the ambiguities of human interconnectedness’, European Journal of International Relations 16, 2 (2010): 157-78.

[116] Bernstein, ‘Suffering Injustice’, 48-49.

[117] John Holloway et al ‘Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism’ in John Holloway et al Negativity and Revolution, (London: Pluto Press, 2009), 11.

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