New Critical Theory

by Thomas Scarborough

Critical theory has been all in the news of late. In fact it goes back a long way. First developed in the 1930s, I myself studied critical theory in the 1970s. I may own the first paperback edition, too, of a dictionary of critical theory, published in 2001.

Critical Theory has become increasingly important. This is theory which ‘reveals and challenges power structures’, which is oppression. It is ‘critical’ because it is not neutral. It is normative. Professor Robert M. Seiler of the University of Calgary writes that ‘criticism involves ... judgments for the purpose of bringing about positive change’.

I here propose that critical theory, in fact, goes back to the ancients, in its core characteristics—and to something both deeper and broader than we have supposed.

Socrates, in defining the virtuous life, said, ‘Choose the mean, and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible,’ while Aristotle thought of ethics as ‘the golden mean’—the balanced life. Thus ethics represents the achievement of balance in the human person—and, of course, in society. Balance between unity and diversity, novelty and tradition, thought and feeling, economy and community, and so much more. It is not hard to see how this coincides with critical theory—which seeks to bring balance to social inequalities of various kinds.

What is this balance, so beloved of the ancients? It stands to reason that, as we seek to balance all things, we have knowledge of those things. We are informed of them before we begin. In fact, if information is lacking, as we make judgements about our society, our resulting balance must be askew. While imbalances may come about simply through apathy, they may come about deliberately, too. In the case of lies, deceit, and propaganda, one simply removes information from the balance—or adds it. Or, worse, if one cannot get one’s way, one turns to violence and oppression, eliminating unwanted individuals, or seizing control of systems, to neutralise the information which is not wanted.

Oppression therefore rests on the suppression of information. Alternatively, it rests on the failure of an uptake of information. One may have systems which seem perfectly friendly towards all information, yet in practice fail to take it up. Information itself goes hand in hand with its reception, incorporation, and, of course, pursuant action.

This has three implications for critical theory.

• Firstly, where information is suppressed, this may not in every case happen along recognised class lines—or lines of race, gender, privilege, and so on. This is my first reservation concerning critical theory today. In reality, information is suppressed along all kinds of lines, which critical theory may fail to identify—because it fails to identify and analyse the suppression of information. It may miss oppression which we had not imagined, or which lies beyond familiar categories. This should not be understood as a rejection of critical theory. Rather, critical theory as we know it does not drive deep enough.

• Secondly, when one speaks in terms of the suppression of information, one broadens the scope of critical theory. One may also speak of such suppression—therefore oppression—in connection with the environment. Where we fail to include the environment in our thinking, we oppress wetlands, insects, elephants, forests, fish, and so much more. Critical theory today is not equal to such forms of oppression, precisely at a time where they threaten the ruination of our world. Again, this should not be understood as a rejection of critical theory. Far from it. Current critical theory, I maintain, does not go broad enough.

• Thirdly, critical theory has often been associated with ‘cancel culture’. The purpose here is not to discuss the merits or demerits of cancel culture, but to note that one should be careful that cancel culture does not limit the freedom of information. The loss of such information to the system could signal oppression.

Let us now notice: in terms of philosophical categories, my view goes down to bedrock. It goes down to the things-relations distinction, which originated with the ancient Greeks. This is a distinction which philosophers have accepted almost universally, among them Aristotle, Hume, and Wittgenstein—with some exceptions.* According to such philosophers, philosophy deals with things and the relations between them—at best, expansively and holistically. Therefore we oppose the suppression of information.

Oppression may now be defined as a loss of information to the system, through various kinds of pressure, including physical coercion. In short, this describes critical theory, which exposes oppression—yet more than critical theory, it goes to the very heart of reality, which is the relatedness of all things. It goes beyond human oppression, too, and includes our long and sorry oppression of the environment, where we failed to take into account all the information we should have done. I shall call this New Critical Theory. 

---

An important exception is F.H. Bradley, perhaps the foremost philosopher of the 19th Century. 

Fact and Value: The Way Ahead

Grateful acknowledgement to Bannor Toys for the image

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Philosophy may begin to solve a problem as soon as it has identified it.  All too often, it has not.  This post, then, is about defining a problem—no more.  It is one of the most urgent problems of philosophy.

One of the most important aspects of philosophy is ethics.  Yet there is an issue which is prior to ethics, which has to be addressed first.  It is the problem of the fact-value distinction—a problem which, since it first appeared on the philosophical map, has cut a divide between fact and value, and more importantly, philosophy and ethics.  In the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein, ethics has become ‘what we cannot speak about’.  Yet ethics is all that we do, from morning until night, from year to year.  Today, this problem has filtered through to the common person, and has caused profound disorientation in our time.  On a social level, we are conflicted and confused with multiple ethics, while on a global level, our ethics increasingly seem to have come apart, with widespread poverty, social disintegration, and environmental destruction. 

It seems easy to describe the philosophical problem, yet far from easy to offer a solution.  Should I take a walk in the woods today, or should I write letters instead?  Should I be a ‘bachelor girl’, or should I marry Joe?  Should we travel to Mars?  Should we drop the Bomb?  On the surface of it, our reasons for choosing one course of action over another might seem obvious, yet it is not something we find ourselves able to decide on the basis of facts.  The problem is basically this: we know that this is how the world ‘is’—yet how should we know how it ‘ought’ to be?  The philosopher David Hume gave the problem its classical formulation: it is impossible to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.  It is impossible to establish any value amidst an ocean of facts—and on the surface of it, Hume would seem to be unimpeachably right.  The facts cannot tell us what to do. 

As we seek a solution to the problem—because we must solve this problem if we are to find our way through to any discussion of ethics—Hume’s conclusion would seem to mean only one of two things: either he identified a problem which cannot be solved, or he was thinking in such a way that he created his own problem.  What, therefore, if Hume laid the very foundation on which the fact-value distinction rests? 

Hume considered that all knowledge may be subdivided into relations of ideas on the one hand, and matters of fact on the other.  That is, one begins with a handful of facts, then relates them to one another.  It is the simple matter of a world where facts exist, and these exist in a certain relation to one another—yet one finds no basis on which to determine what that relation ought to be.  Generations later, the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that many philosophers, following Kant, have maintained that relations are the work of the mind, while things in themselves have no relations.  While Russell was not saying precisely the same as Hume, he was not far off.  A similar view is reflected in the theory of language.  The philosopher Rudolf Carnap considered, in the words of philosophy professor Simon Blackburn (specifically about the ‘material mode of speech’), ‘Speech objects and their relations are the topic.’  Wittgenstein, too, held this view, in his own unique way, through his multiplicity of language-games.

A pebble is a thing.  A house is a thing.  Even gravity, ideology, taxonomy are ‘things’ in a way (we call them constructs), which in turn may be related to other things.  In a sense, even a unicorn is a thing, although we are unlikely ever to find one.  Things, then, may further be involved in what we call truth conditions—which means that they may be inserted into statements, which can be affirmed or denied.  And when we affirm such statements, we call them facts.  For example, we insert the thing ‘pebble’ into a statement: ‘A pebble sinks’—or we insert the thing ‘unicorn’ into a statement: ‘The Scots keep unicorns.’  Our things are now involved in truth conditions, which means that our world is filled with facts.  And if not facts, then denials of  facts. 

Here, I think, is where the problem lies—and the way ahead.  To say that there is a fact-value distinction means that we have first divided up our reality into things on the one hand, and relations on the other.  On what basis, then, might we find our way back to a ‘grounded’ ethics?  Personally I believe the solution lies in the direction of levelling both fact and value to value alone—or things and relations to relations alone—in all fields, including science and mathematics.  Yet even then, we would not finally have reached the goal.  Even if we should be able to see everything in terms of value, which values should then be true, and which false?  And having once solved which values are true, we would need to establish on what basis I should—or could—submit to them.