Work in progress (critical theory)

Ok.

The traditional theorist holds that we can know the world through our senses, through experiments, through science. The critical theorist, on the other hand, will maintain that the subject, meaning the scientist or observer, is a part of the world in which we are observing, and that henceforth we need to be wary of the knowledge we think we have. Any theorist, scientist, or observer is necessarily a product of historical and social circumstances, and those circumstances may go a long way in forming a bias within us, that renders our theories and experimentation less than adequate in understanding reality.

Almost immediately we can see that the critical theorist runs into the same trouble he attributes to the traditional theorist. For he is himself a product of external circumstances, and his charge of biasness on others has to be accounted for on his end. A number of critical theorists will, I believe, defend their position by making the argument that they are self-conscious, and that this very self-consciousness elevates their theory, perhaps, to that of invulnerability.

I admit that I have not read in detail this line of defence they take, but on the whole it does not look to me a very tenacious defence to mount. For if the traditional theorist reads up on critical theory, and becomes self-conscious of his own fallibilities, does it then mean that his original theory becomes validated and rendered OK under the critical theorist's scrutiny? The critical theorist would like to say no, but if he takes this line of defence, he is compelled to say yes.

I propose another line of defence for the critical theorist. Horkheimer ostensibly had some influence from Hegel, and it is on Hegel's dialectics that his ideas can possibly be defended. Simply put, if we accept Hegelian dialectics, then biasness and un-biasness are antithetical to each other, and should eventually find a synthesis. If we further accept that this synthesis is a superior state of thought than either of the previous two states, then we will need to accept that both partiality and impartiality are not only crucial in the development of human thought, but, in a sense, absolutely necessary as well. The critical theorist, in so uncovering partiality, or biasness, has already performed a crucial role in the synthesis, and he is free to admit of his own partiality unabashedly.

The focus now shifts to Hegel's account of dialectics, and any assault on the critical theorist's position has to deal with that to some extent. Personally, I've got my own criticism of Hegel, but I have got to qualify this criticism as unqualified criticism as I haven't read his works, and so I think I shall not proceed any further for now.