The Origins of Critical Theory

1,490 words

Carl R. Trueman
To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse
Brentwood, Tennessee: B&H Academic, 2024

The philosophy which provided metapolitical cover for the violence of the George Floyd Riots in 2020 is called critical race theory. Carl R. Trueman, a theologian and professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, has published a book about the body of thought from which critical race theory sprang – critical theory.  Critical theory’s origins lie in Marxism. To understand Marxism, one needs to understand the philosophical movement called German Idealism which was started by Immanuel Kant in East Prussia in the 1780s.

Trueman writes,

Kant was concerned with how knowledge of anything was possible and his answer…was that human beings do not know things as they are in themselves but as the human mind perceives them in accordance with its own organizing principles of categories. Idealism as a broad tradition flowing from Kant was thus preoccupied with the relation of human beings as perceiving subjects to the things perceived. Put more simply, it focused upon the human mind in its relation to the world that it perceives. (p. 25)

Kant’s idea that perception is reality has some truth to it – a particular shade of color is more easily discerned if there is a word for it. However, reality always conquers perception. Any society which holds perception as a thing more important than objective, physical truth will succumb to magical thinking which is disadvantageous in the long run. Kant’s ideas on perception shows why the concept of “lived experience” rather than empirical evidence is so important to Black Lives Matter activists.

Kant was an enormous influence on Georg Hegel, Friedrich Schelling and others. Of the German Idealists, Hegel is the most important. Trueman points out that Hegel,

…was deeply interested in the historical dimension of human thought. He observed that the ways in which men and women thought and related to each other did change between places and epochs. And in this insight lies one of the keys to later critical theory. In a sense, critical theorists who build upon Hegel, such as Theodor Adorno, are asking a similar question to Kant: Under what conditions is knowledge possible? But they move the question from the essential structure of the human mind to the contingent structure of the society in which the individual lives and in which “knowing” occurs. What constitutes knowledge for them is therefore deeply connected to social and cultural conditions… (p.18)

Hegel also formed what came to be called the Hegelian Dialectic. A dialectic is a form of philosophical discussion where two opposing ideas are discussed. The discussion develops in the following way: thesis (all humans are equal) is compared to its antithesis (humans are not equal) to arrive at synthesis (humans are equal under the law but not in as runners in the 50-meter dash). Hegel also pointed out the tendency of a notion to pass over into its own negation as the result of conflict between its inherent contradictory aspects. In other words, new technological advances can save lives and improve health while also making weapons of mass destruction possible.

According to Hegel, history was a story of becoming, not being. He also claimed that the way people think at any given point in time is the result of current circumstances rather than the way things necessarily had to be. Karl Marx built on Hagel’s ideas. He thought that capitalism would evolve into communism by the means of capitalism’s inherent contradictory aspects, such as workers being unable to afford the products that they make. Marx also stated that philosophers should seek to make changes to the present order. Marxist philosophers came to be called theorists – indicating the shift in focus.

Marx died in 1883, but his work was carried on by theorists, such as Karl Korsch, Karl Kautsky, and George Lukács. They came to form the Second International – a movement of Marxist theorists who focused on the economic concerns of the working class – specifically the white working class. The Second International’s core area of concern was in Europe. The Second International was the dominant ideology of the Left from 1889 – 1916. Lineaments of this worldview were still visible in the 1960s; Leftist gatherings would descend into childish chanting between supporters of the (white) working class against mostly Jewish New Left supporters of non-white issues.

The Second International fell apart in 1916 because the working class fervently supported the establishments of their respective empires during World War I. This is when the Frankfurt School arose and jettisoned “crude economic Marxism” for what became critical theory. The name Frankfurt School comes from the department in which the theorists got their start: the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt. The men of this school were Jewish, and deeply conscious of their standing in a society which was increasingly hostile to them. After Hitler came to power, they snuck off to the United States where they infected the universities around Berkely, California.

The most important philosophical works of the Frankfurt School are Minima Moralia (1951) by Theodor Adorno and Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) by Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Adorno and Horkheimer were Jews. In 1950, Adorno, and others published The Authoritarian Personality which is a well-known book. The Authoritarian Personality, to put it simply, is a Jewish-centric attack on white American culture which goes down rabbit holes of sexual repression and conformity using Freudian “science.”

Dialectic of Enlightenment is the more important work of critical theory. Its most important insight is recognizing the power of cultural works such as movies while recognizing that this cultural power leads to its own negation. Michael Moore’s anti-capitalist movies are themselves capitalist works that wouldn’t be made at all if not profitable. Walter Benjamin, another Jewish critical theorist, pointed out between 1927 and 1933, that the mass media art such as movies transformed the ritual of art into political acts.

Another Frankfurt School subversive was Herbert Marcuse. Most of his philosophy was in line with the other critical theorists, but he gave rise to the thought that there were ideas which needed to be suppressed. Those who supported “…aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services…” were the villains needing the gag and gulag. Truman writes,

Many in the west are confused by the recent rebellion against freedom of speech on college campuses. But the notion that freedom of speech is merely cover for allowing an unjust system to remain in place under a veneer of justice and fairness is not new with Black Lives Matter or campus speech codes on race, gender, and pronouns. Marcuse was voicing precisely the same concern in the 1960s. (p. 108)

Marcuse’s ideas perfectly demonstrate Hegel’s ideas that a notion, over time, will eventually negate itself. Marcuse’s freedom has become repression. With the view that critical theory is an exercise in Jewish ethnic supremacism it makes all sense, however. Dr. Trueman, however, unfortunately obeys Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies throughout the book so he misses that key insight.

Trueman points out that there is a degree of truth to critical theory, and this is not unusual in other flawed philosophical worldviews – heresy by another name. He refers to John Henry Newman, a Christian Theologian whose writings influenced both Catholics and Protestants, who said words to the effect that heresy thrived by over-promoting some part of part of a thing which was true while ignoring other true matters. Marxism was correct that economic factors influenced human affairs, and Freud was correct that people were irrational, however Marxism collapsed in the real world and Freudian psychology was thoroughly debunked by the early 1960s. Trueman says that Christians should engage with critical theory and point out its flaws, while showing that the Christian message has the answers.

Trueman is channeling an earlier theorist.  Francis Schaeffer, the Christian philosopher of the 1960s and 70s, made the claim that Hagel brought the system of western thought to a “Line of Despair” beyond which there was no hope of a rational answer to the great question of meaning. In other words, German Idealism is an intellectual dead-end. Schaeffer countered that the Bible and the message of Christ were all a person needed in striving towards the big issues.

However, both Schaeffer and Trueman might be focused on one great truth but ignoring many others. Christianity is well and good, but not all our people will be receptive to it. The stagnation of Western civilization seen today is due to the fact that Kant’s German Idealism created a high-walled intellectual rut that is both a path and a prison. Critical theorists, like Judith Butler, produce densely worded publications which say nothing. The End of History, predicted by Hegel and others turned out to last less than a decade and a half. Critical race theory, which goes back to Kant and Hegel creates Africanization. It is time for a new, secular philosophical school to replace German Idealism entirely.