Decentring critical theory with the help of critical theory: Ecocide and the challenge of anthropocentricism

Abstract

Our present situation of anthropogenic ecological disaster calls on Western philosophy in general, and Frankfurt School critical theory in particular, to reconsider some long-standing, entrenched assumptions concerning what it means to be a human agent and to relate to other agents. In my article, I take up the challenge in dialogue with the idea of critical theory articulated by Max Horkheimer in the 1930s. My overall concern is to contribute to on-going efforts to decentre Frankfurt School critical theory in multiple dimensions. With the help of Horkheimer, I seek to show that this theoretical tradition has itself an important contribution to make to the endeavour. In Section 1, I argue that the methodology he advocates for critique of society offers a view of the relationship between the human mind and reality, as well as of humans with other humans, that avoids dogmatic rigidity and is hospitable towards mutual learning through engagement with other philosophical and cultural traditions. In Section 2, I consider the more specific challenge of anthropocentrism, suggesting the need for a more differentiated account of this. While critical theory is unavoidably anthropocentric in certain respects, it could avoid more pernicious forms of anthropocentrism that establish epistemic and ethical hierarchies between humans and other-than-human entities and that conceive of ethical validity as a purely human construction, with no independence of human needs and concerns.

Our present situation of anthropogenic ecological devastation, for short ecocide, calls on Western philosophy in general, and Frankfurt School critical theory in particular, to reconsider some long-standing, entrenched assumptions concerning what it means to be a human agent and to relate to other agents. ¹ In my article, I take up the challenge in dialogue with the idea of critical theory articulated by Max Horkheimer in the 1930s (Horkheimer 1972; Horkheimer 1993; Horkheimer 2018/1988). For Horkheimer, as for the early Marx, critical theory is a mode of reflection that aims not just to understand reality but also to change it for the better through application of theoretical insights (praxis). In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels invite us to picture what change for the better might look like, when they call for an association, beyond the antagonisms of class society, in which the free development of each would be the condition for the free development of all (Marx and Engels 1848). Horkheimer unequivocally endorses this picture of a better society and takes for granted that the emancipatory efforts of critical theory should be directed towards achieving it. ² So too did his colleagues at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in the 1930s and 1940s and, at least for the most part, his successors in the tradition right up to today.

Virtually all contemporary critical theorists, those who position themselves within the Frankfurt School tradition and those who maintain some distance from it, agree that critical theories aim to change societies for the better, materially and socially, and many accept some version of Marx and Engels’ picture of an emancipated society. However, since the return of the Frankfurt Institute to Germany in the early 1950s, following its exile during the Nazi years, ³ critical theory has taken various turnings, moving in some innovative, even paradigm-shifting directions (e.g. Habermas 1984 & 1986). Nonetheless, up to recently Frankfurt School critical theory has remained firmly within the Hegelian–Kantian framework of German Idealism from which Marxism emerged. This is no longer the case. In the face of challenges from multiple alternative bodies of critical theorizing such as feminist theory, literary theory, queer theory, decolonial theory, critical disability theory and ecological theory, ‘canonical’ critical theory has begun to acknowledge the importance of lines of critique emerging from various other historical legacies. ⁴ This has pushed it beyond its Kantian–Hegelian–Marxian origins, requiring it to confront its intellectual and cultural biases, including its gender, ableist and anthropocentric ones, and to acknowledge its own implication in colonialism and slavery (Bhambra 2021). In my view, the challenges have been revitalizing for Frankfurt School critical theory, leading to an expansion of its conceptions of oppression and injustice, to include, for example, patriarchy, ableism, racism and colonialism alongside the alienating and reifying effects of capitalism (Allen 2017; Burghardt 2011; McCarthy 2009). Furthermore, they have provoked creative reconceptualizations of core concepts in critical theory such as freedom (Menke 2022; Rosa 2019; von Redecker 2023). They have also reopened questions about methodology and the very concept of societal critique.

The engraving on the top of Herbert Marcuse’s tombstone in Berlin reads ‘weitermachen!’ This may be translated as ‘Carry on!’ or ‘Keep going!’; I take it as an injunction not to give up critically theorizing, no matter how disastrous the global state of affairs – politically, socially and ecologically – and no matter how little prospect there seems to be of any kind of change for the better. My question in the following is: What does ‘weitermachen!’ mean for Frankfurt School critical theory in a situation of anthropogenic ecological disaster on a global scale and the multiple other disasters that are intimately connected with it? My answer is: It calls for heightened self-reflexivity concerning its intellectual and cultural biases, interrogation of its possible complicity with colonialism and slavery and continuing and increased openness to other-than-Western traditions of critical theorizing. ⁵ In other words, it calls for on-going destabilization of long-standing, entrenched assumptions in canonical critical theory and for decentring through engagement with other cultural and intellectual traditions. In the following, my primary concern is decentring. Importantly, decentring does not mean that canonical critical theory must renounce its distinctive philosophical heritage or the ‘enlightenment’ values of freedom, equality and solidarity that motivate and orient it. Rather, the call for decentring should be understood as a demand for intensified self-reflexivity, together with receptivity to ways of knowing, being and conducting lives that are other-than-Western and, as I explain in the second section, also other-than-human.

In the first section, I show how the early Horkheimer’s account of critical theory can help to decentre canonical critical theory on a general level. ⁶ I find the early Horkheimer’s account helpful for at least three reasons. First, due to his connection of questions about human knowledge of reality with questions about human formation, human existence and human relations with others. Second, due to his insistence that the point of critical theory's investigations is not an abstract interest in increasing the storehouse of human knowledge but a concrete concern to overcome oppression, suffering and injustice through changing society for the better. Third, due to the feedback loop he envisages between critical theory and scientific findings, broadly understood. This is not to deny the troubling ‘progressivist’ and ‘Eurocentric’ tendencies in his writings, readily visible, for example, when he refers to ‘a highly developed European individual’, comparing their advanced capacities for moral reflection with human agents in earlier historical formations (Horkheimer 1993, 85). My point, rather, is that the early Horkheimer offers a methodology that has potential value for contemporary efforts to decentre critical theory – including his own.

In the second section, in the context of ecocide, I focus on a specific decentring: one that involves reflection by critical theory on its anthropocentric biases. While Horkheimer’s writings in the 1930s do not move in this direction, this decentring, too, fits well with his general view of critical theory at this time.

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From the very beginning, critical theory’s concern to change society for the better, materially and socially, confronted it with the general question of human knowledge of reality. More specifically, it confronted it with the question of the relationship between the materiality of the social world and the ideas we have about it. For the early Frankfurt School theorists, the relationship between mind and reality was not an abstract philosophical question but rather one at the heart of their concern for social transformation. Indeed, abstract philosophizing was Horkheimer’s main reason for introducing a distinction between what he called ‘traditional’ theory, on the one side, and ‘critical’ theory, on the other, in his famous essay published in 1937, ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ (Horkheimer 1972, 188–243). Traditional theory as he understands it includes philosophy and the empirically based sciences. He holds that modern philosophy since Kant has been characterized by a self-referentiality, which has led it to disregard the implications of philosophical insights for suffering humans in actual historical situations; this self-referentiality then becomes characteristic of the empirically based sciences as they develop from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Horkheimer contrasts traditional theory with critical theory, which is motivated by a concern with human emancipation from oppression, injustice and suffering. Accordingly, critical theory addresses questions about mind and reality from a socially engaged, emancipatory perspective. It is noteworthy that Horkheimer does not dismiss out of hand the self-referentiality of traditional theorizing: he acknowledges the distinctive methodologies and standards of validity operative in various fields of science, broadly understood (Wissenschaft). ⁷ As he writes in his 1932 essay, ‘Notes on Science and the Crisis’:

The fruitfulness of knowledge indeed plays a role in its claim to truth, but the fruitfulness in question is to be understood as intrinsic to the science and not as usefulness for ulterior purposes. The test of the truth of a judgment is something different from the test of its importance for human life. It is not for social interests to decide what is or is not true; the criteria for truth have developed, rather, in connection with progress at the theoretical level. (Horkheimer 1972, 3).

In other words, he takes the view that not all good theories must be critical theories.

Horkheimer’s writings in the 1930s make clear the centrality for critical theory of the question of human knowledge of reality and explain how critical theory differs from traditional theory in its approach to this question. To be sure, when referring to the alternative mode of social theory he advocates, he does not always use the term ‘critical theory’. For example, in his 1931 inaugural address as Director of the Frankfurt Institute, he describes his alternative as a mode of ‘social philosophy’ (Horkheimer 2018/1988) and in his 1932 ‘Notes’ he refers to ‘the Marxist theory of society’ and to a ‘correct theory of the present social situation’ (Horkheimer 1972, 3, 9). Indeed, in many of these early writings, the alternative mode of theorizing is referred to simply as ‘materialism’ (Horkheimer 1993; Brunkhorst 1985, 368). For simplicity, I use the term ‘critical theory’ when referring to his advocated alternative to traditional theory.

Horkheimer attributes to critical theory a number of features that, taken together, amount to a distinctive mode of theorizing. To begin with, he holds that critical theory’s aim is to interpret philosophically what he refers to as ‘the fate of humans’ (Horkheimer 2018, 113, 1988, 20, amended translation). To deny this would be to destroy the intellectual fruitfulness of critical theory, He writes:

If socio-philosophical thought about the relationship of the individual to society, the meaning of culture, the formation of communities, or the overall status of social life (Leben) – in short, about the great, principal questions – should be left behind as the sediment in the reservoir of social scientific problems after those problems that can be advanced in scientific investigations have been drained off, then social philosophy can still perform a social function, for example, that of transfiguration (Verklärung), but its intellectual fruitfulness would be destroyed (Horkheimer 2018, 118, 1988, 28).

Then, its philosophical interpretations must start from the concrete, pressing questions of the times, while endeavouring always to keep sight of the ‘social life-process in its totality’ (Horkheimer 1972, 8). Furthermore, philosophical interpretation must adopt a dialectically materialist perspective (Horkheimer 1972, 144–145). On a dialectical-materialist view, individual humans exist in a dynamic relationship of mutual self-constitution with ‘the material and spiritual culture of humanity as such’ (Horkheimer 2018, 113, 1988, 20). I understand this to mean that individual humans become who they are through their engagement with others in historically concrete, material and social circumstances that are the complex historical product of human activity in the material and social worlds. This implies that ‘the fate of humans’ has a material and social basis and is historically produced in concrete social situations.

In addition, Horkheimer emphasizes that critical theory’s interpretative efforts must be based on collective enquiry in multiple areas that has an empirical component. Thus, critical theory must organize investigations in which philosophers, sociologists, economists, historians and psychologists work together with the aid of the most precise scientific methods, revising the concrete philosophical questions driving its interpretative efforts and rendering them more exact; it must also develop new methods in the course of such work (Horkheimer 2018, 118, 1988, 28). Social-philosophical questions thereby become part of a dialectical movement, in which they are drawn into the empirical scientific process, which affects their character, while they in turn impact on the empirical process of inquiry.

At least implicitly, Horkheimer acknowledges the ethical dimension of the critical enterprise. ⁸ In his 1937 essay, he writes that critical theory as a whole makes an ‘existential judgment’ (Horkheimer 1972, 239). I understand him to mean by this that it subjects human existence under conditions of capitalism to a thorough-going critique. More precisely, it charts the development of capitalism from its initial emancipatory stages to its subsequent reversal into new forms of brutality and oppression. For Horkheimer, critical theory’s main concern is to expose the negative impact of capitalism (Horkheimer 1993, 105); it says little about the details of an emancipated social condition. But this does not mean it lacks an ethical dimension. Any social critique, however, negatively oriented, presupposes a concern for alternative forms of social arrangements that would foster ethical values such as freedom, equality and solidarity (Cooke 2006). In the case of critical theory, its negative existential judgment on the development of capitalism clearly anticipates fundamental social transformation for the better. Indeed, Horkheimer emphasizes its commitment to a future society (Horkheimer 1993, 105, 109). In this sense, it can be said to be ethically oriented.

For contemporary endeavours to decentre Western critical theory, Horkheimer’s critique of abstract theorizing is especially relevant. His objection is two-fold. First, particularly in the case of philosophy and the human sciences, the abstractness of traditional theorizing generates a disembodied, disembedded and disengaged epistemic subject, whose counterpart is an apolitical and individualized economic and political subject, untouched by the exigencies of social life (Shea 2021, 14). Second, abstract theorizing splits off mind from reality, privileging the mind side of the relationship and ending up as some variant of idealism. He discerns this tendency not just in Spinoza and Hegel, but even in the writings of the later Marx (Horkheimer 2018, 117, 1988, 27). Against theorists who privilege their own particular philosophical ideas about history, truth, justice, happiness and the good life, Horkheimer underscores the need for critical theory to remain in constant connection with its material: it must continuously modify and develop its existential judgment with the help of ‘concrete scientific investigations of the empirical subject matter’ (ibid., 117/28). Thus, there is a continuous dialectical movement between empirical research and the evaluative framework of the critical theory. In Horkheimer’s words, there is ‘an ongoing dialectical permeation and evolution of philosophical theory and empirical-scientific praxis’ (ibid., 118/29). Lacking this, the theory is likely to sink into dogmatic rigidity, advancing theses that are fundamentally immune from external control. Being ultimately devoid of any type of verification procedures, they can indiscriminately claim that they present the truth (ibid., 119/29). On the other hand, Horkheimer is equally critical of any hypostatization of the empirical facts. He stresses that the empirically based sciences do not have the last word. Rejecting the modern positivist fact-value distinction, he insists that in critical theory, facts are not extrinsic to the human mind but rather ‘emerge from the work of society’ and are ‘products which in principle should be under human control’ (Horkheimer 1972, 209). This is why critical theory must employ the most varied methods of investigation, including what he calls traditional methods, to improve its own critical diagnoses and emancipatory projections. Horkheimer makes clear that critical theory is engaged continually in a learning process. Due to its concrete concern for social transformation, it must always be ready to modify its values, and accordingly its substantive content, in response to the facts of the prevailing injustice (ibid., 241). Put differently, the theory must learn from scientific research that (always provisionally) establishes ‘the objective realities’ (ibid., 209). Moreover, the learning process should be mutual: not alone must critical theory learn from research that establishes the objective facts; its values and substantive content must shape and guide its research-based, practical efforts to overcome the prevailing injustice through concrete transformative proposals: empirically informed emancipatory praxis must learn from critical theory (ibid., 241).

Critical theory’s reliance on modern philosophy as well as on the empirically based sciences explains why Horkheimer, as I remarked initially, does not think that all good theories must be critical theories. Nonetheless, he insists that the self-referentiality of traditional theories makes them susceptible to dogmatic rigidity, since the theses and facts they present lack any type of verification procedures (this, as we have seen, is also a danger for critical theories when they fail to open their own particular ideas about history, truth, justice, happiness and the good life to correction and modification by the findings of the traditional sciences). Furthermore, on my reading of his position, he holds that traditional theories are impoverished by their unwillingness to commit to existential judgments about ‘the great principal questions’ – questions about the relationship of the individual to society, the meaning of culture, the formation of communities and the development of history as a whole.

I suggest that these elements of Horkheimer’s critique of traditional theory are relevant for contemporary efforts to decentre Western theorizing in general and canonical critical theory in particular. I find the alternative methodology he attributes to critical theory important and timely for three main reasons. First, the dynamism of critical theory’s dialectical-materialist methodology guards against dogmatic rigidity. Second, critical theory’s (frequently tacit) ethical orientation – its concern, ultimately with the question of the good life for humans – enables it to take an evaluative stance on the merits of different, possibly competing epistemologies, ontologies and ethical frameworks. Third, its evaluative stance is thoroughly self-reflexive. Although at any given time it makes a concrete existential judgment about the development of human history as a whole, this judgment is itself always in formation. To be sure, Horkheimer focusses on critical theory’s openness to correction and change in response to the findings of Western science, broadly understood. But its self-reflexivity in this respect can easily be extended to engagement with other-than-Western intellectual and cultural legacies. In both cases, engagement with other bodies of thinking can be viewed as a process of mutual learning. These mutual learning processes are ethically oriented by the evaluative aims of the theory (the theory itself may not acknowledge this explicitly). In other words, learning takes place within an overarching frame of evaluative questions about what it means for humans to lead a life that is good in an ethical sense – or, in Horkheimer’s words, questions about ‘the fate of humans’. Without such an ethically inflected evaluative frame, productive critical engagement with alternative ways of knowing, being-in-the-world and leading an ethically good life would not be possible. ⁹ Furthermore, since mutual learning is held to be an inherently open-ended process, the evaluative frame itself becomes part of a continual process of critique and is always open to more or less radical change for the better. This means that no single theoretical tradition ‘owns’ the overarching evaluative frame. Put differently, it means that the ideas of the good constituting the frame must have partial independence of any specific body of theory. In the next section, I suggest that these ideas of the good must have partial independence of human thinking.

Building on this general account, I now turn to the more specific need to address anthropocentrism as part of the decentring endeavour and offer some thoughts on what this would mean for critical theory. As remarked initially, this kind of decentring fits well with Horkheimer’s general view, even though he himself has little to say about anthropocentrism in his writings of the 1930s. Nonetheless, there are hints in various places that he is alert to the dangers of over-emphasizing the human in critical social theorizing. He writes that the solidarity of humans is part of the solidarity of life in general, draws attention to the communion humans feel with animals and observes that the happiness and misery of humans is tied to the life of animals in general. ¹⁰ It is not surprising, therefore, that Dialectic of Enlightenment, his book with Adorno from the 1940s, exposes and critiques certain kinds of anthropocentrism and suggests alternative ways for humans to conceive of and relate to themselves and others, both human and other-than-human (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002).

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In the context of anthropogenic global ecological devastation, critical theory’s emancipatory aims confront it with a particular challenge. Its concern with social transformation through praxis presumes that there are human agents who feel able to cooperate with other human agents to bring about social change for the better. However, the contemporary ecological disaster has given rise to widespread feelings of human powerlessness. Such feelings are not conducive towards changing human societies for the better. Indeed, they tend to provoke reactions that either reproduce the modes of thought and behaviour that contributed to ecological disaster in the first place or lead to resignation, apathy and despair. If social change for the better is to happen, individuals, and the collectives of which they are part, must want things to change and feel empowered to act in ways that could achieve this. This means, at a minimum, that contemporary critical theory must offer a picture of human agency, and corresponding vocabulary, that enables humans to see themselves as contributing to the shape of their own futures. ¹¹ At the same time, their sense of agency may not be premised on mastery of others, human and other-than-human, and their actions may not contribute to further destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems. Elsewhere, following Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, I highlight the connection between anthropogenic ecological disaster and the idea of the sovereign human subject, which has been the normative reference point for multiple strands of theorizing within Western modernity (Cooke 2023). Horkheimer and Adorno present a vivid account of capitalist modernity as a closed system of instrumental rationality, in which all other-than-human natural entities are denied any distinctive or even individual qualities and reduced to mere matter to be mastered and manipulated by humans at will. Driving the system of instrumental rationality is a corresponding ideal of freedom that understands self-determining agency in terms of domination and control. This idea of freedom valorizes human sovereignty, understood as the possession and exercise of a will that chooses and determines just as it pleases, subject only to certain general moral and legal constraints. It is intimately connected with belief in the limitless potential of human agency and assumes a plenitude of inexhaustible resources that enables an ever-expanding range of human choices, self-gratifying consumption and uninhibited self-expression. Arguing that we need to sever the connection between freedom and the ideal of human sovereignty, while continuing to attach importance to self-determination, I sketch an alternative idea of freedom as ethically oriented, ecologically attuned, self-directing and self-transforming agency. My re-envisioning of freedom calls for a more differentiated account of anthropocentrism than I have provided hitherto. In the remaining part of my discussion, I take further steps in this direction.

I contend that canonical critical theory (and Western philosophy in general) needs to develop an account of anthropocentrism that would distinguish between more and less benign forms. Broadly speaking we can distinguish between epistemological anthropocentrism and ethical anthropocentrism, making further differentiations within each category (Cooke 2020). Epistemological anthropocentrism refers to the human-centeredness of philosophical claims to knowledge of nature and of reality more generally. Since Kant, the predominant view has been that reality is accessible to humans only in cognitively processed form, through the mediations of human consciousness and language. In other words, the lens through which we humans interpret the world is unavoidably a human lens. This rules out appeals to unmediated human knowledge of a ‘natural order of things’ or of ‘nature-in-itself’. It is important to notice that even if the Kantian view is valid, it does not imply that the human lens offers superior access to reality: It does not mean that human knowledge of reality is better than that of other animals – or indeed of any other entities. In my view, the kind of epistemological anthropocentrism that merely asserts the inevitable mediation of human knowledge of reality by human consciousness and language is relatively benign: It does not necessarily have ecologically troubling implications for how humans relate to other humans and to entities that are other-than-human. By contrast, there is another kind of epistemological anthropocentrism that I consider more pernicious. This version claims the superiority of human knowledge of reality to the knowledges of other-than-human entities. It establishes an epistemological hierarchy, in which from the outset other-than-human ways of knowing are deemed less valuable than human ways of knowing. It is plausible to think that this privileging of human knowledge has been a contributing factor to our current situation of anthropogenic ecological devastation. For, privileging human knowledge leads easily to the stance that humans are masters of the natural world due to the supreme powers of human reason, and are entitled to apply their knowledge to gain dominion over nature and control it as they please. There is an evident connection between this stance and the instrumentalizing logic of capitalist modernity, in which humans relate to themselves, to other humans and to everything other-than-human, purely as a means for satisfying particular needs and concerns. As I observed, this reduction of everything other-than-human to mere matter, devoid of any distinctive qualities, to be used by humans as they please, facilitates destruction by humans of their natural environments with the unwelcome consequences of anthropogenic ecological devastation.

Epistemological anthropocentrism, which refers to how humans know reality, is closely connected with ethical anthropocentrism, which refers to human engagement with questions about the right conduct of life within a given reality. To illustrate what I mean by ethical anthropocentrism, I use the example of political theorizing. Since contemporary Frankfurt School political theorists favour a deliberative democratic approach, I concentrate on theories of deliberative democracy, focussing on those that attach importance to the ethically inflected, epistemic quality of deliberative outcomes (Benhabib 1994; Forst 2012; Habermas 1996). In the case of such theories, deliberation is supposed to improve the epistemic quality of democratic outcomes – it is supposed to produce legislation, political decisions and public policies with a stronger claim to truth or rightness than, for instance, a simple voting procedure. Although its ethical inflection is rarely acknowledged explicitly by the theorists themselves, epistemic quality is evidently not ethically indifferent, for the ultimate aim of epistemically better legislation, political decisions and policies is a better society in an ethical sense (for example, a society in which each individual would be able to develop more freely or in which there was greater social equality or stronger bonds of solidarity).

In the Frankfurt School tradition (and outside it), the ethically inflected, epistemic validity of deliberative outcomes is usually held to be dependent on the inclusivity of democratic deliberation and the equal ‘voice’ of all participants within it. Such theories are unavoidably ethically anthropocentric in at least two senses. First, in the sense that by connecting epistemic validity with the exchange of reasons in public deliberation, they exclude entities such as mountains, trees, rivers, elephants, jellyfish and spiders who, even if they do exchange reasons, do so in languages most humans cannot understand. Democratic deliberation is a practice conducted by humans in human languages, who can at best speak on behalf of entities whose languages are (currently) unintelligible to human ears. This form of ethical anthropocentrism seems to me relatively benign. Speaking on behalf of others who cannot speak for themselves is not inherently troubling from an ethical point of view – we are all familiar with contexts where parents must speak on behalf of their children or children must speak on behalf of their parents, because they cannot articulate their concerns in languages we can readily understand. The ethical requirement in such contexts is not refusal to use our voices to articulate the needs and concerns of others. To the contrary, the ethical requirement is to be attentive to the particular needs of the entities on behalf of whom we speak, calling on us to develop and cultivate powers of receptivity, generosity and imagination (Cooke 2020).

Deliberative democratic theories are unavoidably ethically anthropocentric in a further sense. They are inherently focussed on human needs and concerns; within the Frankfurt School tradition, their focus ultimately is the shape and substance of an ethically good life for humans. In my view, this focus becomes pernicious only when it goes hand in hand with a hierarchy of ethical needs and concerns that places human ones at the top of the ethical pyramid. Importantly, focussing on human needs and concerns from the point of view of an ethically good life does not necessarily mean that we construct an ethical hierarchy, in which human perceptions of the good take precedence over those of other-than-humans – although, certainly, Western philosophical traditions have tended to establish ethical hierarchies of this kind. Thus, in principle, at least, I consider the focus of theories on human needs and concerns a form of ethical anthropocentrism that is relatively benign.

There is a yet another relatively benign sense in which critical social theories are ethically anthropocentric; this holds for ethical as well as political theories. In a recent article, Arne Vetlesen argues that the powers of reflexivity found in humans are morally significant, especially our future-oriented capacities for abstraction and imagination, because they help constitute us as agents accountable for our actions (Vetlesen 2023). This is a peculiarity of human agents, as far as we know. Vetlesen makes the point that some of the others for whom we are responsible may not exhibit the same capacities for reflexivity, while nonetheless qualifying as moral addressees. Contending that moral accountability does not imply moral superiority, he proposes an asymmetric model in which not all moral addressees are moral agents. Against this, it may be objected that peculiarity slides easily into superiority. However, it does not necessarily do so – just as focussing on human needs and concerns does not necessarily imply an ethical hierarchy with human interests at the top of the pyramid. At the same time, it is an open question whether accountability is a core ingredient of a decentred moral or political theory. Vetlesen’s argument raises the question of the place of accountability in a more expansive, less Western-centred, mode of theorizing.

There is another kind of ethical anthropocentrism that I find inherently troubling. This kind of ethical anthropocentrism defines ethical validity entirely in human terms, as a purely human construction with no reference point beyond the needs and concerns of humans. Using our example of theories of deliberative democracy, it is the view that when participants in public deliberation agree that a proposed law, political decision or public policy is a just or good one, the ideas of justice or goodness to which they refer are produced by way of the deliberative procedure: these ideas of justice or goodness have no independence of the procedure since they are constituted by it. This kind of ethical anthropocentrism is evident in all forms of theorizing in which epistemic validity is held to be a purely human construction, with no independence of human practices of thought and behaviour. Why is it troubling?

It is troubling because it makes human constructions of context-transcending validity – ideas such as truth, justice, happiness or goodness – the ultimate reference point for humans in their ethical engagements with all entities, the other-than-human as well as human. By ‘context-transcending’, I mean normative ideas that are held to be valid beyond the immediate context in which they are articulated (Cooke 2006). This means that the validity of the needs and concerns of other-than-human entities is determined solely by human needs and concerns. Certainly, as I observed earlier, no human conception of the good could be entirely independent of human needs and concerns. Nonetheless, in the context of anthropogenic global ecological disaster, making humans needs and concerns the ultimate determinants of the validity of the needs and concerns of all entities is pernicious. I suggest that contemporary critical theory (and ethical and political theories in general) should seek alternatives to this kind of epistemic constructivism when thinking about the meaning of truth, justice, happiness, the good and related notions of context-transcending validity. What is required, instead, are determinants of validity that are not entirely the product of human needs and concerns. Put differently, decentring critical theory in the ecological dimension calls for ideas of context-transcending validity that have a human-transcending component – some essential independence of human needs and concerns. Such partially human-transcending ideas facilitate human receptivity to the ethical qualities of entities that are other-than-human. As a result, modes of theorizing that adopt such a perspective on ethical validity are better equipped to break with the instrumentalizing logic of capitalist modernity.

This calls on contemporary theorists, especially but not only within the Frankfurt School tradition, to revisit their determinations of epistemic quality in the domain of ethics and politics. They must re-open the question of what it means for a judgment to be valid in an ethical-political sense. Specifically, they must move away from the view, at the core of Habermas’ thinking, for example, that an idealized rational consensus determines the validity of deliberative processes in the domain of practical reason (Habermas 1996).

Why is this necessary? I have argued that contemporary critical theory requires an idea of human agency as non-sovereign yet in some sense self-determining that is oriented by ethical ideas (‘the good’, ‘justice’, ‘truth’, ‘happiness’), which have partial independence of human needs and concerns. Conceived in this way, ‘the good’ (and cognate ideas such as ‘justice’, ‘truth’ and ‘happiness’) have not only a context-transcending, but also a human-transcending force. This means that experiences of the good (or truth or justice or happiness) by human agents in particular situations may set in train radical transformations of ethical identity that result in fundamentally new self-understandings, understandings of relations to other entities, human and other-than-human, and conceptions of the good, justice, truth or happiness. Transformations of this kind entail fundamental changes in subjective perceptions of what is a good or bad reason in the ethical-political domain. This means, in turn, that those who undergo such radical identity transformations may find their new ethical-political sensibilities fundamentally out-of-step with the socially prevailing views of what counts as a good or bad reason. The subjective and experiential nature of the transformations complicates the matter further. ¹² This has significant implications for deliberative theories, exacerbating the problem of mutual intelligibility in the exchange of reasons in deliberation. For, participants who have undergone a radical transformation of identity through context-transcending (and especially human-transcending) experiences of the good may lack the linguistic resources – the vocabulary – to articulate to other participants why they view their new sensibility as epistemically better – as fostering a better way of reasoning than they have practised hitherto.

Such problems of mutual intelligibility can be difficult to resolve on the level of practice but, as I argue elsewhere, they are merely temporarily intractable (Cooke 2006). They appear irresolvable in principle only to deliberative theories that adopt a static rather than dynamic view of language; on a dynamic view, individual and group vocabularies change over time, whereby the ‘poetic’ use of language contributes to semantic renewal. To be sure, even on a dynamic view of language, at any given moment, participants in the argumentative exchange of reasons may not share the same evaluative vocabulary. In such cases, particular participants may be unable to provide the kinds of reasons that would make their utterances intelligible, and hence potentially justifiable, to the other participants. Although this may be a real, practical problem, it is a mistake to see it as a shortcoming either of language in general or of a specific ethical vocabulary. Rather, it is a difficulty that may arise at any time and in any context. Moreover, due to the continuous movement of language and its vocabularies, aided by poetic creativity, it is a difficulty that is in principle surmountable. Indeed, critical theorists of deliberative democracy should view it positively, since a lack of such difficulties would be a sign of semantic stagnation.

However, even temporary mutual unintelligibility is a serious problem for deliberative theories in which a rational consensus, even an idealized one, is held to determine the validity of deliberative outcomes. Theorists like Benhabib, Habermas and Forst, who define legitimacy in terms of idealized rational agreement, run up against the problem that citizens whose understanding of a good reason has shifted profoundly due to their particular experiences may never be able to convince other citizens that their understanding of a good reason is fundamentally flawed in certain respects. This is because their new understanding arises from subjective experiences in particular situations that are not fully shareable linguistically. In such cases, even under ideal conditions, the deliberative process is likely to be insufficient to convince participants that reasons unfamiliar or uncongenial to them are good reasons. In order for all participants to come to an agreement on this, they would all have had to undergo sufficiently similar experiences. In such cases, therefore, problems of mutual intelligibility are unlikely to be resolved by way of a deliberative process, no matter how procedurally perfect, and in consequence, no rational consensus is likely to be forthcoming. While the exchange of reasons in argumentation may foster openness to the ethical experiences of others, and while it can never be ruled out that the exchange of reasons will itself bring about the necessary transformation, there is no guarantee that it will do so. If, as I have suggested, our contemporary situation of global ecological disaster calls for profound changes in human sensibilities regarding relations to self and others, and corresponding changes in what counts as a good reason, deliberative critical theories would be well advised to embrace an approach in which an argumentatively achieved rational consensus does not determine validity – what is legitimate, right or good. Instead, they should think of validity as having a human-transcending component, along the lines I outlined earlier.

Conclusion

The overall concern of my article is to contribute to on-going efforts to decentre Frankfurt School – canonical – critical theory, and Western philosophy more generally, in multiple dimensions. Even though I call for further decentring of Frankfurt School theory, I have sought to show that this theoretical tradition can itself help in this endeavour. I drew attention to the idea of critical theory articulated by Horkheimer in his early writings, arguing that the methodology he advocates for critique of society offers a view of the relationship between the human mind and reality, as well as of humans with other humans, that avoids dogmatic rigidity and is hospitable towards mutual learning through engagement with other intellectual and cultural traditions. In the context of our contemporary ecological disaster I then considered the more specific challenge of anthropocentrism, suggesting the need for a more differentiated account of this. While critical theory is unavoidably anthropocentric in some relatively benign respects, it can avoid more pernicious forms of anthropocentrism that establish epistemic and ethical hierarchies between humans and other-than-human entities and that conceive of ethical validity as a purely human construction, with no independence of human needs and concerns.