The Critical Theory of Society

Abstract

How often do we stumble hesitantly and somewhat intuitively forward, only later to discover that the position we reached, however inexact or fuzzy it may be, stands fully within a tradition to which we had been oblivious? For me, this pattern seems normative. I had moved fully into developing both my critique of justice as equity and my critique of psychology’s ideals and its scientific paradigm without once citing as references the work and the writings of the Frankfurt school. Somewhat like Molière’s character, who discovered the existence of prose only after he had long been speaking it, I discovered critical theory after I had already begun to use it. That discovery, however, gave focus and greater precision to my halting, though hopefully persuasive, earlier contributions.