What critical theory offers is—in its own way—a kind of alternative theology or religious vision of the world. The various themes of critical theory can be seen or understood as themes, convictions, insights, hunches that all in various ways can be related to traditional Christian themes or doctrines. My contention is that when we read the critical theorists we can see in their various convictions and arguments and theories a kind of echo of various Christian themes—even if in critical theory they are often distorted, twisted, and rejected.

Introduction

While Critical Theory as a school or tradition of thought is not new, it has come to some prominence in recent years. While there are numerous persons and writing with varied perspectives within this school or tradition, it is nonetheless possible to summarize the principles and convictions of Critical Theory in a general way.

This article will first summarize the key tenets of Critical Theory through an engagement with some of the seminal thinkers of Critical Theory. These key thinkers explored here are:  Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin. These thinkers should provide a representative sample of the writings of Critical Theory.

I argue that if Christians are to respond fully and properly to Critical Theory, such a response must be rooted in a truly Christian biblical-theological framework. Such a Christian response will recognize that Critical Theory is in effect an alternative theology or religion, and that it is helpful to understand Critical Theory as just such an alternative theology or religion.

A truly Christian response to Critical Theory will show that it is not—ironically—critical enough. Christianity truly gets to the heart of the matter and actually is the most truly “critical,” in that the Christian message offers a true understanding of reality and what is wrong with the world, and likewise offers the true solution to the myriad challenges, problems, and sufferings experienced and seen in the world.

Critical Theory: A Brief Survey

It is not easy to briefly summarize critical theory. It is a movement or school of thought with a variety of thinkers and themes. Nonetheless, there are general commitments and positions that we can summarize.

All roads lead back to the Institute for Social Research, founded in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany. Hence, this Institute, and its fellow-travelers, are often referred to as the “Frankfurt School.” The early Frankfurt School was composed of Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Friedrich Pollock. Other associated persons would be the famous psychoanalyst and social psychologist Erich Fromm, Otto Kirchheimer, Henryk Grossman, as well as Walter Benjamin. Second generation persons who are associated with the Frankfurt School would especially include Jürgen Habermas (born in 1929). The school was unapologetically Marxist, though it also felt free to try and advance, critique, and/or adjust the received Marxism of their day. With the rise of Nazism to increasing power, the Institute for Social Research moved to Geneva in 1934, and to New York City (Columbia University) in 1935.¹ Likewise Critical Theory utilizes many insights from Hegel, and at least some members of this school saw Sigmund Freud’s basic paradigm as essential to its work.

Critical Theory was birthed in the aftermath of World War I. It was hoped—by many persons sympathetic to Marxism—that this crisis would precipitate the revolutionary activity for which many Marxists hoped. But such a revolution did not occur after World War I, and this led to something of a crisis for the Critical Theorists in general. Thus, Critical Theory both accepts much of the general Marxist (and Hegelian) paradigm, but is quite happy to re-work, re-think, adjust, extend, and even reject at points, various aspects of the Marxist paradigm. One of the “last” great thinkers of Critical Theory—Jürgen Habermas—has been more explicit about, at least in some senses, moving past Marx.

There are a number of ways one could try to summarize the key themes of critical theory. The movement was (and is) by no means monolithic, and the debates within the movement are not insignificant. In this article it is suggested that the key themes of critical theory can in general be viewed through the lens of traditional Christian insights and themes. That is, it will be argued that what critical theory offers is—in its own way—a kind of alternative theology or religious vision of the world. The various themes of critical theory can be seen or understood as themes, convictions, insights, hunches that all in various ways can be related to traditional Christian themes or doctrines. My contention is that when we read the critical theorists we can see in their various convictions and arguments and theories a kind of echo of various Christian themes—even if in critical theory they are often distorted, twisted, and rejected. But because critical theorists are nonetheless creatures living in God’s world and on God’s terms, their various themes and arguments can be rightly understood through the prism of key Christian themes and truths—even when the arguments, themes, and convictions of critical theory run radically counter to fundamental Christian truth claims. For organizational purposes I will group the various insights of critical theory into three broad categories:

(1)   Creation and Reality

(2)   Sin and Salvation

(3)   History and Eschatology

The Theology of Critical Theory

Creation and Reality

Let us turn to Herbert Marcuse, particularly his, “From Ontology to Technology: Fundamental Tendencies of Industrial Society.”² Marcuse, in a fascinating way, traces the birth of modern science and its entailments. We will not recount the narrative here, as much of it is fairly non-controversial: the modern world saw a shift from seeing a telos built into the very structures of reality, and as even guiding history, to a situation where there is no telos whatsoever as constitutive of reality; the world comes to be seen in primarily mathematical categories; technology becomes virtually ubiquitous.

Suffice it to say that For Marcuse, the rise of science and its ally technology is then linked to the rise of capitalism. So, we should not be surprised that as Marcuse and other Critical Theorists talk about “liberation” and the like, this entails the “liberation” from Capitalism, and from societies which create and perpetuate Capitalism.

For Marcuse, there are certain key “goods” with which persons ought to be concerned. These true goods, which should be at the heart of things are: “the abolition of anxiety, the pacification of life, and enjoyment.” These are all “essential needs.”³ And at the birth of modern science, there was a recognition of the importance and true goodness of these “goods.” There are also additional realities (whether good or not) which Marcuse considers “intrinsic to the very notion of modern science.” These are “world harmony,” “physical laws,” and even of “the mathematical God,” which/whom Marcuse calls “the highest idea of universal quality throughout all inequality!”⁴ But, according to Marcuse, what has in fact happened? The good things just mentioned, which were goals or even motivating factors for modern science have all been abandoned or marginalized. In short, the goods of “the abolition of anxiety, the pacification of life, and enjoyment” in a way helped birth modern science (and the Enlightenment and modernity and industrial society), but then modern science betrayed and turned on these key “goods.” Marcuse explains: “Industrial society clearly developed a notion of technology which undercuts its inherent character.”⁵ That is: Industrial society or modern science turned on those principles—those goods—which were at the heart of the very project of industrial society or modern science itself. To summarize, Marcuse writes: “pure instrumentality [an aspect of modern science and technology] deprived of its ultimate purpose, has become universal means for domination.”⁶

We begin to get a real glimpse of Marcuse’s ontology or metaphysic, and his anthropology, as we read on. Marcuse proceeds to write that civilization itself is foreign to, and hostile to, the nature of man. And bound up with civilization is work. Marcuse seems to assume that without civilization and work, man could meet his deepest needs and be happy and satisfied. Here we see most likely the Marxist-inspired utopianism, in which in some mysterious way, food will be supplied, shelter will be found, and safety from crime will just somehow be present.

He can write: “Civilization is man’s subjugation to work”—and this is inherently a bad thing.⁷ And Marcuse’s anthropology is explicit in the following: “The primary instincts of man naturally tend to immediate satiation and to rest, to tranquility through this appeasement; they oppose themselves to the necessity of work and labor and to the indispensable conditions of satisfaction in a world ruled by starvation and the insufficiency of goods.”⁸ Indeed, “society” is intrinsically hostile to the good of the individual. As Marcuse writes: “Society therefore must turn the instincts away from their immediate goal and subjugate them to the ‘reality principle,’ [i.e., the necessity of work?] which is the very principle of repression.”⁹

But as Marcuse develops this line of thought—the repressive nature of society itself—things take a dark and odd turn. What happens to people—as they live in society—is that the instincts of persons change, and they in a sense embrace and accept repression. As Marcuse writes: “Their instincts become repressive; they are the biological and mental bases which sustain and perpetuate political and social repression.”¹⁰ That is: persons (in the sense of their instincts) embrace and perpetuate the political and social repression which is a natural corollary of society and work itself. Indeed: “All progress, all growth of productivity, is accompanied by a progressive repression and a productive destruction.”¹¹ As this gets worked out: Society and work—especially in a capitalist mode—is by its very nature—inextricably linked to, and entails: (1) “progressive repression” and (2) “productive destruction.”

We will return to Marcuse below when we reflect more explicitly on the various ways Critical Theory can speak of redemption, deliverance, utopia, and the future—generally in a revolutionary way. But for now, let us turn to how Critical Theory understands the human dilemma, what Christian theology has traditionally spoken of as centered around sin.

Sin and Salvation

If one has read much of 20^th century philosophy, social theory, and social critique, one sees a fairly typical pattern: a hunger and yearning to make sense of the times, and in a sense to ask a basic question: What has gone wrong? How did we get here? Or, what makes the modern world the modern world? While the exponents of critical theory which we are examining are generally Marxist and fellow-travelers of Marxists, one also clearly sees this pattern with the emergence of mid-twentieth century Conservatism. We could get off-script here, but I am thinking of the seminal work of Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences. Weaver, writing this book in 1948—three years after World War II—was asking key questions: In the light of two world wars, how did the modern world become what it has become, and is there any way forward out of the myriad political, social, and moral pathologies? In an intriguing way, the exponents of critical theory are posing very similar questions—though differing significantly from the general paradigm offered by someone like Richard Weaver.

Let us turn to an important essay by Theodor W. Adorno, “Society.” We are placing Adorno’s reflections on “society” in this section on “Sin, Atonement, Redemption, Sanctification, and Holiness,” for here we glean insights on how at least Adorno thought of man as a social creature—but man as a social creature is already in a kind of system which is—in Christian theological terms—“sinful,” such that man is in need of liberation. As Adorno works through his understanding of society, it is clear that the chief culprit that plagues society today is “the market system.”¹² He writes: “the abstraction implicit in the market system represents the domination of the general over the particular, of society over its captive membership.”¹³ Likewise: “Behind the reduction of men to agents and bearers of exchange value [i.e., capitalism] lies the domination of men over men.”¹⁴ In short, at least one of man’s fundamental problems, if not the fundamental problems is a societal set of relationships in which something like “the market system” prevails. Something like socialism does not yet—on Adorno’s view—promise to clear the deck of all societal problems, frictions, “oppressions,” etc. But clearly, the societal reality which most concerns Adorno is that society in which “the market system” is generally prevalent. But we learn that Adorno seems to see virtually all societies as plagued by market realities. He can write of “the universal law of the market system.”¹⁵

Society, for Adorno, never—it seems—encourages right thinking, living, or “consciousness.” Rather, “society increasingly controls the very form of consciousness itself.”¹⁶ That is, “society”—and again essentially capitalism is in view here—actually conditions the very way we think of our own societal situation. Thus, one can think that making a middle-class income teaching at the local school, or pastoring a local church, or working in the local factory, etc., is leading a good life. But in reality, one has been conditioned to think in that way. One is actually oppressed and downtrodden—due to having to live out one’s life in a market economy. Thus, the oppressed and downtrodden may live one’s entire life in that situation, and never know it. We will return to this theme in our “Reflections” section.

One of Herbert Marcuse’ key books is his 1955 Eros and Civilization, subtitled, A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud.¹⁷ His thesis in Eros and Civilization is quite clear. Every effort must be made to liberate persons from anything that will inhibit erotic pleasure. Marcuse speaks positively of “Polymorphous sexuality,” and writes: “the new direction of progress would depend completely on the opportunity to activate repressed or arrested organic, biological needs: to make the human body an instrument of pleasure rather than labor.”¹⁸ In short, Marcuse is arguing that the forces and reality of the “market economy” (i.e., capitalism) mitigate against erotic satisfaction. He writes: “the erotic energy of the Life Instincts cannot be freed under the dehumanizing conditions of profitable affluence.”¹⁹

Marcuse takes for granted “Freud’s proposition that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts . . .”²⁰ Indeed: “Free gratification of man’s instinctual needs is incompatible with civilized society: renunciation and delay in satisfaction are the prerequisites of progress.”²¹ And again: “The methodological sacrifice of libido, its rigidly enforced deflection to socially useful activities and expressions, is culture.”²² Hence, culture is the culprit, for culture by its very existence hampers or impedes the “free gratification of man’s instinctual needs.”

Marcuse summarizes Freud. There exists both a “Pleasure Principle” and a “Reality Principle.” The Pleasure Principle is just that—man is driven to various forms of pleasure, including (or especially) sexual pleasure. The Reality Principle is that in any given society there are a number of barriers which keep persons from seeking to fulfill the Pleasure Principle. These two principles are—in fact—in fundamental conflict.²³ Like other Critical Theorists, “society” or “civilization” mitigates against true human freedom. As Marcuse writes: “The replacement of the pleasure principle by the reality principle is the great traumatic event in the development of man . . .”²⁴

In summarizing Freud, Marcuse does not hesitate to speak in architectonic terms of this struggle between the “Pleasure Principle” and the “Reality Principle.” As Marcuse writes: “Freud considers the ‘primordial struggle for existence’ as ‘eternal’  and therefore believes that the pleasure principle and the reality principle are ‘eternally’ antagonistic. In short, we have something like an older metaphysical and moral dualism. We have something like the old Manichean dualism between good and evil, but transposed into different categories: the “eternal” struggle between (1) the provenance of true freedom, which is sexual—the Pleasure Principle, and (2) that which constrains and leads to repression of one’s desire—the Reality Principle.

And the clash between these two principles is—again—spoken of in terms of revolutionary liberation. Psychoanalysis can help recover the deep repression which both the individual has done to himself, and which the larger culture—also shaped by the Reality Principle—has inculcated. But what happens as someone who is seeking psychoanalysis to come to terms with their sadness, or depression, or anxiety, or anger—or whatever it might be—starts to discover these deep repressed desires, desires which flow from the Pleasure Principle? The recovered, repressed desires “must eventually shatter the framework in which they were made and confined” [vis-à-vis the Reality Principle].²⁵ What happens: “The liberation of the past does not end in its reconciliation with the present. Against the self-imposed restraint of the discoverer,²⁶ the orientation on the past tends toward an orientation on the future.”²⁷ Indeed: “The discovery of lost time becomes the vehicle of future liberation.”²⁸

So, Critical Theory offers its own understanding of sin and the human dilemma. It has gnostic and dualistic (even Manichean) overtones, since the problem of man appears to have always been in existence. There is no pre-fall realm from which man has fallen. Further, community or civilization is by its very nature oppressive and mitigates against true freedom. Let us turn to what Critical Theory tends to say about history, the future, and even the nature of eschatology. In this last section we will even get a sense of Critical Theory’s understanding of redemption.

History and Eschatology

There are a number of points where Critical Theory addresses the future, or a future hope, or redemption, or some kind of eschatological goal it is seeking in history. Generally, when it is looking ahead, to that to which it aspires, it speaks in some kind of utopian or even revolutionary terms. Let us return to Herbert Marcuse’s essay, “From Ontology to Technology.”

Marcuse laments that what he calls “the technological project” should have eventually “annulled” itself. As Marcuse writes: “the necessity for domination was supposed to disappear.”²⁹ As a professing Marxist, we are clearly in Marxist territory here with Marcuse. There is need for centralized power—which is centered in and flows from the revolution—to exist. But it will fade away once the revolution has accomplished its goal of destroying the capitalist order, and once the subsequent centralized state has accomplished its goals. We get a sense of the not-so-subtle dystopianism when we read Marcuse’s lament that “the technological project” or “technicity” did not indeed fade away. What should have resulted is as follows: “The triumph over misery and the insufficiency of goods should have made it possible to ‘abolish labor,’ to put productivity to the service of consumption, and to abandon the struggle of existence in order to enjoy existence.”³⁰

But it is worse on Marcuse’s reading. The “domination and destruction” of the technological project continues. Indeed, “domination and destruction themselves become the conditions of progress.”³¹ That is, “domination and destruction” became—as Marcuse saw it—the warp and woof of twentieth-century society, very much a technology-centered and driven and shaped society. Marcuse goes on to write that “individuals perpetuate their own domination.”³² That is, he seems to be saying that 20^th century man perpetuates a system in which man himself is being dominated. Thus, persons perpetuate a technological society in which persons themselves are being dominated.

And here—at the end of this essay—is where Marcuse finally gets to his own solution to this technological dilemma. The answer is revolution. Marcuse writes: “all liberation presupposes a revolution, an upheaval in the order of instincts and needs: a new reality principle.”³³ Marcuse then writes: “This total transvaluation of values would affect the being of nature as well as the being of man.”³⁴ It is not wholly inaccurate to see this “total transvaluation of values” as a kind of rebirth of both man and nature—albeit a rebirth quite different from the rebirth of biblical faith.

We complete this section on history, the future, and the nature of eschatology by looking at a seminal essay by Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”³⁵ This is a provocative essay, essentially twenty separate theses or paragraphs (not un-reminiscent of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, in the sense of an almost stream-of-consciousness flow of thought). The bogeyman of the essay seems clearly to be historical materialism—the notion that matter is all there is, and the history “marches” (without meaningful human agency?) to its end. We might think we have some true kind of freedom or agency, but really this “historical materialism” wins all the time, something which Benjamin laments.³⁶

For Benjamin the kind of happiness we experience is inextricably bound to our own particular human circumstances and human situatedness. This—in one sense—is almost self-evident, but there is a dark and somewhat depressing way that Benjamin construes our situatedness, as we shall see.

Benjamin provocatively speaks of our happiness as being bound up with redemption. He writes: “our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption.”³⁷ And: “The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption.”³⁸ He continues, in almost a cryptic way: “There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of this.”³⁹

It is striking how this notion of redemption and Messiah shows up in this essay. Benjamin continues with the same theme: “only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past—which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation à l’ordre du jour—and that day is Judgment Day.”⁴⁰

Read More

1. Some histories place the move to New York in 1934.
2. Herbert Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology: Fundamental Tendencies of Industrial Society,” in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, edd. Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner (New York, NY:  Routledge, 1989), 119-27.
3. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 124.
4. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 124.
5. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 124.
6. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 124.
7. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 125.
8. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 125.
9. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 125. In this section Marcuse makes explicit his dependence on Sigmund Freud.
10. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 125.
11. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 125.
12. Theodor W. Adorno, “Society,” in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, edd. Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner (New York, NY:  Routledge, 1989), 271.
13. Adorno, “Society,” 271.
14. Adorno, “Society,” 271.
15. Adorno, “Society,” 271.
16. Adorno, “Society,” 271.
17. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966, originally published in 1955). I will be working from the 1996 publication in this article.
18. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, xv.
19. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, xxiii.
20. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 3.
21. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 3.
22. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 3. Marcuse’s emphasis.
23. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 12-15.
24. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 15.
25. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 19.
26. This restraint is “self-imposed restraint” because persons themselves inevitably embrace the necessity of the Reality Principle.
27. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 19.
28. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 19. Marcuse’s text actually includes some French, which I have rendered into English above. His text reads: “The recherché du temps perdu becomes the vehicle of future liberation.”
29. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 126.
30. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 126.
31. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 126.
32. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 126.
33. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 126.
34. Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology,” 126.
35. This essay was published in 1940, before Benjamin committed suicide later in that same year. The German title is Über den Begriff der Geschichte, and is sometimes translated as “On the Concept of History.”
36. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, ed. Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner (New York, NY:  Routledge, 1989), 255.
37. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 255. Emphasis mine.
38. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 255. Emphasis mine.
39. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 255-56.
40. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 256. The French is in italics in Benjamin’s text. Other emphasis mine.