Where the Epistemic and the Political Meet: An Introduction to the Social Sciences and Democracy

Abstract

In his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory, Max Horkheimer argued that traditional theory, including the heretofore-existing social sciences, had been fixated on the accumulation of facts in specialized, isolated fields of study. Such a fixation had tended to reproduce the existing social order rather than question — let alone challenge — it, Horkheimer contended. In contrast, he proposed a Critical Theory that would recognize that the production of knowledge is not to be detached from social power relations and interests, from its embeddedness in society. Like Karl Marx, the younger Horkheimer and his colleagues of the Frankfurt School believed that (critical) theory and knowledge could and should change society by helping those oppressed to identify and emancipate themselves from their oppression. As a theory, it understands the totality of society in its historical specificity, and it is normative, driven by specific social interests, seeking “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (1982, p. 244) and advancing “the abolition of social injustice” (1982, p. 242).¹ This Critical Theory, Horkheimer argued, should integrate all the major social sciences, including economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology and psychology, establishing a unifying new science that elaborates one comprehensive theory, a version of historical materialism.