Philosophy Applied Today

A Social Theory: Critical Theory

A social theory called critical theory examines society logically through an examination of political economics, ideologies, dominance, and exploitation. It is founded on analyzing domination and emphasizes transforming society into one that is free of domination. Critical theories examine assumptions that individuals make to explain how the world functions and go into great detail regarding social life. The work of the Frankfurt School is known as critical theory, and it has its roots in the writings of academics like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse (Fuchs, 31).

Goals and Doctrines of Critical Theory

According to Max Horkheimer, a critical theory must adequately describe social problems, offer practical ways to address these issues, and finally, it must clearly follow the norms of criticism established by the field. Over the years, the goals and doctrines of critical theory have been used by a huge number of social scientists and philosophers. Today, critical theory can be recognized in many in gender and queer theory, feminist theories, cultural theory, in critical race theory, and in media theory and media studies. This paper focuses on the critical theory of communication and the contributions of Jürgen Habermas towards this theory. (Fuchs, 31)

The Critical Theory of Communication

Critical Theory of Communication gives important insights about the operation of communication in the era of social media, digital media, and information. The theory further suggests that the society needs to go beyond Habermas’ theory and establish a critical theory of communication. Fuchs (3) suggests that knowledge, communication, culture, work, labor, ideology, alienation, reification, and dialogues are some of the key categories for the foundations of critical theory of communication. Communication is one of the fundamental foundations of most economies since it is the only way for bringing about and reproducing social relations in all the realms of society, in the form of either symbolic relations or unspecified forms of indirect communication. In addition to communication, another necessity for existence is human thought since for economic progress anticipative thinking is required just like communication is significant. Through thought and communication, the economy is fundamentally cultural.

The Role of Communication in Society

Communication is, without a doubt, a central portion of domination-less society. In capitalism, communication is also a type of interaction, through which ideology is made available to the subjects via mass media. The rise of computer technology, science, and knowledge in production has further deepened the antagonism between value and labor time. Fundamental social features of society are those social relations that humans have to enter in order for the human being and social systems to exist. They do not exist outside of history but are concrete, recurrent social relations in and through which history is made. Such necessary social relations include, for example, social production, communication, social relations of production, reproduction, a certain degree of co-operation, consumption, the social use of means of production, etc. Communication is necessary for all societies and one cannot prosper without communicating in a social situation. Even if you do not say anything in a specific situation, then your silence also communicates something to others. Social relations are organized in and through communication. In class-based societies, communication takes on specific forms and has a necessary organizing role of social relations that are class relations. In capitalism, communication in class relations is then oriented in the capital-labor relation.

Jürgen Habermas: Contributions to Communication Theory

One of the important philosophers who contributed to both critical theory and communication theory is Jürgen Habermas. Habermas was born in Dusseldorf on June 18, 1929 (Fultner, 2). Habermas’ profound engagement with social theory, political theory, and communication theory was one of the most influential theories of the twentieth century in the social sciences and humanities. Updating critical theory and communication theory, therefore, requires a substantial engagement with Habermas’ works. There are many virtues of Habermas, not least that he is a true public intellectual who has intervened in everyday political debates. Habermas is not just known for the Theory of Communicative Action, but also for his earlier work, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Fultner, 28-33). Both works have become key readings in media and communication studies. In a sense, Habermas’ later work retains the notion of the public sphere but connects it to the notion of communication, which has resulted in the concept of the life-world. In media and communication studies, Habermas is a key thinker in respect to the concept of communication.

Habermas’ Theory and Communicative Rationality

Habermas’ theory is one of the most influential communication theories of the twentieth century. For example, the Encyclopedia of Communication Theory lists the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action as a milestone in a chronology of the field and says that it has had a huge impact and greatly influences critical communication theory (Fuchs, 29). Jürgen Habermas based his approach on the traditional Frankfurt School and concurrently came up with the concept of communicative rationality. Through this, he ventured beyond the classical tradition. Habermas argues that Horkheimer and Adorno failed to recognize the communicative rationality of the life-world. For Habermas, critical theory questions the fact that steering media such as money and power attack the communicative infrastructure of largely rationalized life-worlds. Habermas, argues that communicative and instrumental action are the two fundamental features of social practice implying that the human being is both a laboring and a communicating being, with work and interaction as the determinants of the reproduction of life. (Baynes 53 196).

Emancipatory Interest and Critical Theory

For Habermas, emancipatory interest aims at the pursuit of reflection; it enables liberation from dogmatic dependence (Baynes, 183). In those passages where Habermas tries to define what critical theory is all about, his formulations remain abstract and vague. He mainly points out the emancipatory role of communication and that the goal is undistorted communication. He thereby falls short of the concreteness of Lukács’, Horkheimer’s, Adorno’s, and Marcuse’s notions of critical theory. These thinkers left no doubt that such a theory is all about questioning all structures of domination and exploitation. In a way, Habermas maintains the classical Marxist theory and improves it by stressing communication. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have experienced a positive increase in communicative and cultural work in the economy.

Conclusion

Theory of communication is, therefore, a critical theory to which Jürgen Habermas contributed greatly. However, we need to go beyond Habermas since he did not theorize digital communication via computer networks such as the Internet, social media platforms, and mobile media. The Internet, social and mobile media can certainly not be ignored. Critical theory must, therefore, be updated to the realities of the twenty-first century. New communications technologies are one of many realities that today need to be critically theorized. The Internet’s power structures are not very much different from those of traditional mass media, yet it has new potentials and limits that interact with structures of accumulation in the economy, the political system, and the cultural system.

Works Cited

Baynes, Kenneth. Habermas. London: Routledge, 2016. Print.

Fuchs, Christian. 2016. Critical Theory of Communication. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.16997/book1. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

Fultner, Barbara. Jurgen Habermas: Key Concepts. New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2012. Print.