Abstract
Domonkos Sik's Salvaging Modernity: A Social Contract for the Age of Permacrisis represents both a continuation of his own ambitious earlier works (such as the 2022 work Empty Suffering: A Social Phenomenology of Depression, Anxiety and Addiction) and also sits as testament to the strength of the broader interdisciplinary “Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization” research network, of which he is an important pillar (see Keohane and Petersen, 2013; Sik, 2022; van den Bergh et al., 2026).
In his quest to “salvage modernity,’ Sik presents a counter-intuitive synthesis of critical social theory (especially critical theory) and the liberal contractarian tradition. His aim is the production of a measured, “balanced” theory for our age of “permacrisis.’ Rather than being driven by a revolutionary anti-capitalist or decolonial zeal, the objective throughout is measured, with overtures made to the best of both the liberal and critical traditions. The word “salvage” is therefore deployed, not in the sense that modernity has been destroyed and we are dismantling what is potentially “salvageable” within the strewn wreckage. Rather, it is a book which seeks to nurture the project of modernity as a critical friend, while aware that it lingers in poor health. Sik's “salvaging” places modernity on restorative life-support, rather than subjecting it to an extractive post-mortem. This is a fascinating book where the politics is moderate and pragmatic, but the theory is unapologetic and bold.
Sik's point of departure is convincing and clearly articulated. He argues that the fundamental paradoxes of modernity exist within the blind spots of subjects’ reflexive capacities. Modernity spins out of control, its structural contradictions unresolved, with agents unable to critically comprehend their life worlds. A challenge stemming from the genesis of modernity itself echoes throughout the book: in keeping with first-generation critical theory, Sik argues that the institutions and mechanisms which promised liberation from misery and domination (free trade, science and enlightenment) have ultimately decayed into forces which engender ever greater suffering (global warming and spectacular inequality) (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997).
Today, Sik argues, such illusions of progress are no longer credible. We are stuck in modernity itself, a modernity spinning out of control. We are not in post-modernity (which offers the lineaments of an alternative order), or late modernity (where new sources of authority/order/organization in modernity emerge). Rather, we are stuck in modernity and within a modernity that is in permacrisis. The structural paradox of modernity − that our promised sources of our freedom are our sources of our domination − remains unresolved and unrealized by the agents who have the potential to change it. This is the modernity that needs to be salvaged, a frail and ill, modernity.
For Sik, this permacrisis will remain indefinitely (perhaps eclipsed only by catastrophic climactic breakdown?). Past critical social theorists mistakenly believed that the experience of suffering would catalyse critical cognition, which would precipitate structural transformation. People would gain critical awareness that the cause of their suffering was connected to the paradoxes of modernity and would therefore wrestle to resolve them. Sik disagrees: such theories naively assumed that such suffering would not be captured by systemic logics. In keeping with Fromm (1991), and insights from the broader Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization network, Sik argues that such suffering increasingly is indeed mobilized by the systemic logics themselves (Sik, 2022; van den Bergh et al., 2026). Gesturing towards Fromm's “pathological normalcy,’ Sik argues that social subjects have their suffering naturalized, medicalized and psychologized. The challenge for critical theory in such a landscape, argues Sik, is existential. If transformations do not come from showing links between suffering and social contradictions, where does emancipatory praxis emerge? What, in essence, is the point? I read Sik's core argument in the book to be that we should strive to make things better, little by little, aware of such fundamental challenges. This is to be achieved through encouraging networks of reflexive transformation, through nuanced encounters which slow modernity's paradoxical tendencies. This is to occur slowly, as a form of rearguard action. Sik's position is that it can only be achieved through the painstaking construction of a synthesis of intellectual traditions, anchored in a multifaceted social phenomenology.
Such a nuanced and located phenomenology is central to Sik's project: this is where the possibility for critical consciousness emerges. He argues repeatedly that in today's permacrisis subjects become estranged from their own suffering. Furthermore, he correctly notes that contemporary “critical theories do not fully realize the distortive consequences of internalizing the paradoxes of modernization” (p. 3) more broadly. As such, the aim of his project is to move beyond a standard social phenomenological understanding of suffering and to instead focus on subjects who are themselves experiencing suffering in a “distorted” manner. The focus is to be on mourning, loss and negativity, as per Allen (2020). Subjects that exist in impossible dualities, are systemically mandated to naturalize both the inevitability of being exploited and the inevitability of needing to exploit. Multiple, fragmented, frail subjects, struggling to conform to the pathological normalcy offer a slow, but credible foundation for a rear-guard defence of humanity in times of permacrisis. Some subjectivities are harder for systemic logics to capture than others.
The point of departure for Sik's project is therefore to “elaborate the horizon of critical praxes from the perspective of actors being adjusted to structural paradoxes” (p. 4); looking at those who are forcibly enframed within the pathological totality, but supporting those who cannot be subsumed fully within the “paradoxical structures of modernity.’ Conscious of the distortions of reflexivity impeding subjects’ comprehension of their own suffering, Sik argues that critical theory must advance through a nuanced social phenomenological reading of the experiences of subjects’ suffering, aware that such experiences are themselves often deracinated by systemic imperatives. The hunt is to find the distortions existing within the distortions of suffering. For Sik this offers, perhaps the only (?) credible path for disclosing the immanent paradoxes of modernity.
Such a project in and of itself would be startlingly ambitious. Sik, however, has this merely as his starting point. His aim is to take such a nuanced phenomenological development of the critical theory tradition and bring it into dialogue with social contract theory. He admits that this “is not a self-evident project” (p. 5), however he contends that it is vital for rejuvenating both critical social theory and the contractarian tradition. This is where Sik may surprise critical social theorists, politically. He argues that the universal norms which emerge from modernity, broadly anchored in negative liberty, are not to be cancelled or rejected (p. 40). Sik (perhaps controversially) argues that “they still provide unmatched security for individual freedom” (p. 40). The promises of modernity are to be “salvaged.’ Instead of rejecting the contractarian tradition, Sik presents social contracts as a “core promise of modernity,’ of a worldview which seeks to push beyond domination (p. 5). What is required is a nuanced reconstruction of the contractarian tradition, brought about by a dialogue with a critical theory, with his distinctive social phenomenological inflection.
Sik's startlingly original modification of the social contract tradition is to add a secondary intersubjective component to the contract. Alongside traditional liberal contractarianism, enacted by decontextualized, universal subjects, Sik calls for a social contract which additionally speaks at the level of the “particular encounter” with the Other. Critical social theory teaches that the model of liberal subjectivity needs to be corrected: we cannot rely on notions of trans-historical stable reason, of a universal subject's atomistic decision-making capacities. Instead, universal systems of justice (freedom for the market, law, etc.) need to be partnered with the particularistic experiences of the social subject, as a living, breathing actor. Alongside the liberal universalisms, Sik argues for partnering theories of “impossible morality,’ which he derives from Levinas (1969) and Derrida (2000). This enables a “trial of particularity” to occur as a crucial companion to an objective ethics. I read Sik as presenting his intervention in a similar matter to the role of “equity” within the English legal systems: equity follows the law and can intervene when called upon, however it does not exist to unsettle or depose the legal order.
Running parallel to the abstract universal freedoms enabled by modern contracting there is now Sik's new, secondary opportunity for the contractor. They can step out of the universal and enter the world of the “particular.’ Sik suggests that this serves to “disrupt” the manifold paradoxes of modernity. Networks are now encouraged to ask, in essence “even if X is contractually viewed as a universal good, is it leading to the right outcome/claim in this instance”? When the answer happens to be in the negative, the obligation becomes to suspend the universal claim (and the contradiction which exists within said feature of modernity). Sik's claim is that “if enough suffering actors initiate the trial of particularity … then a collective critical praxis might be born” (p. 10). Such praxis should not serve to destabilize modernity further, this is not Sik's intention. He seeks to “salvage it,’ to rebuild it, to stabilize it as best one can. He seeks to ameliorate its paradoxical tendencies, that is the objective behind such trials. Sik acknowledges that such an approach may not advance radical social change. Yet he believes in its utility: arguing that while trials of particularity “… are far from being revolutionary, [they] at least … can be accessed by the unorganized suffering masses trapped in a pathology of normalcy” (p. 17).
Sik therefore purports to have an entry point for normative claim making, anchored in the enfeebled subjects’ phenomenological experience of suffering. This is not an abstract encounter, nor designed to build institutional structures. It is at odds with more recent theoretical projects, for instance, with Honneth's (1995) critical theory of recognition, which seeks a universal moral grammar built of our subjects’ feelings of disrespect or misrecognition. In contract, Sik's approach is anchored forever in the particular and is framed as expressly anti-institutionalist. In this regard, Sik repeatedly invokes Levinas to great effect.
Throughout the core of the book Sik explores the experienced paradoxes of modernity through an esoteric fusion of social theory and his nuanced social phenomenology. He does this to explore the opportunities for such a pushback through multiple “impossible encounters” where “trials by particularity” may occur. In Chapters 2 and 3 his focus is on mimetic crises and the paradoxical logics in modern/market societies where desire and destruction combine. Sik draws heavily on the work of Rene Girard (1977, 1986) here, which is surprising, and a decision which requires further discussion (and possible extension/critique) elsewhere. In Chapters 4 and 5, the focus shifts to the paradoxes in the domains of inter-objectivity and technicity, and Girard is displaced as a guide by (a more predictable) Merleau-Ponty (1968). Again, there is much to be discussed, as this is another fascinatingly rich fusion of eclectic thinkers, held together to advance a sophisticated project. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the paradoxes embedded in the discursive realm and their experience by social actors. This exploration is advanced by yet another eclectic cast of thinkers, with Sloterdijk and Habermas prominent. Again, there is scope for further discussion of this approach, but that will have to wait for elsewhere too.
I admire Sik's ambitious project and fully concur that a new foundation is required for critical social theory which acknowledges that the subjects’ experience of suffering no longer offer a viable entry point for conducting social critique; if, indeed, it ever did. I also agree fully that the social contract tradition benefits from insights offered by critical social theory and attempts to destabilize liberal universalism. His attempts to displace the hypostatized trans-historical atomistic rational contractor are to be commended. That said, I am less convinced that critical theory, at least in the form of its original Frankfurt School manifestations, could ever be coherently synthesized with the contractarian tradition. Sik does an excellent job here and the book is a fascinating read. My concern is less with Sik's work, but with the objective itself. Sik comes as close as one can. I conclude with three, hopefully productive, critical challenges to Sik's project, which I hope will spur him on to write further electric theorizations.
First, I wish to see how he would respond to the charge that his project risks falling victim to what Michael J. Thompson (2016, 2022) calls the “neo-Idealist fallacy.’ Thompson's argument is that many contemporary critical theories (especially those of Axel Honneth and Rainer Forst) ultimately are flawed in that they overinvest subjects with critical capacities that they “simply cannot possess” (Thompson, 2016: 5). Neoliberalism bombards the subject, leading to forms of what Thompson (2022) calls “hyper-reification.’ In an increasingly cybernetic society, subjects have their desires artificially induced and the system proceeds to partially sate them. This leads to the erosion of critical capacities and what Thompson (2022) calls the “loss of the self in late capitalism.’ This is potentially a problem for Sik because his argument is that subjects are indeed assaulted by neoliberalism (pp. 1–3) but are also able to push back against the paradoxes of modernity through “trials by particularity.’
Sik's claim from the start of the book is that social subjects in modernity are brittle, enfeebled, victim to systemic imperatives that they do not understand. They are unable to comprehend how their suffering is connected to the paradoxes of modernity. Yet Sik argues throughout the body of the text that networks of such subjects can engage in “trials by particularity,’ where they recognize the limits of the universal rights provided by the social contract. Is there a potential contradiction between the enfeebled social subject of modernity and the subject capable of engaging in “trials of particularity”? The ability to act against the systemic imperatives in particular instances (either through a Levinasian epiphany, or through an encounter with Derrida's Stranger) seems to be at odds with the ideologically saturated subject that Sik presents at the start of the book. Is there a possibility that the subject expected to engage in “trials by particularity” is overinvested with critical capacities? Indeed, is not the very ability to identify the “face” of the Other, to experience the “epiphany of the face,’ impeded by the “constitutive power” of the system (Thompson, 2016)? This is hopefully a productive question for Sik to address, because he is explicitly aware of the limitations of the subject and their impeded critical capacities; hence, his injunction to a trial by particularity.
Second, at a meta-theoretical level, the philosophical foundations of contractarian thinking and critical theory are different. Rawls (1971), for instance, is explicitly interested in ‘A theory of justice.’ It is “justice” which is at the core of his philosophy. While a concern with justice is increasingly creeping into Frankfurt School critical theory (Honneth, 2014; see Harris, 2022: 20–21), historically critical theory focused instead on the critique of irrationality, not (in-)justice. This is a legacy of the tradition's left-Hegelian heritage. This is not to state that it is impossible to blend insights productively from divergent traditions; or to say that innovations and developments should be held back. Rather, Sik's excellent book shows how startling syntheses can be done to great effect. Yet I am concerned that the focus on irrationality risks being swamped and displaced by the invitation to social contract here. I wonder if Sik can explore further how the power of both meta-theoretical frames can productively be united?
If one was forced to sacrifice either meta-theoretical foundation (either “justice” or “rationality”) to facilitate a revitalized critical social theory, one would be foolish to displace “irrationality.’ The potency of the critique of the irrational totality has long been theorized by Frankfurt School scholars as facilitating a distinctive “explosive charge,’ unmatched by the liberal paradigm (Honneth, 2004: 338). Indeed, when one thinks of the fundamental paradoxes of the social contract, these speak far more to the irrationalities in our “form of life” (Jaeggi, 2018), which precipitate pathologies such as “global warming” (Harris, 2019, 2022). As Neuhouser (2012) has cogently argued, it does not make sense to conceptualize global warming, or other such unintended consequences of modernity, as an “injustice.’ Who would it be an injustice to? Instead, the “thicker” conceptual toolkit of social irrationality enabled a more potent form of social criticism. If a synthesis between the two is impossible, opting to subsume the critique of irrationality within the justice register would seem unsatisfactory, especially for a project whose stated goals are framed to be “salvaging modernity.’
Third, I would be interested to know how Sik would reply to readers who approach his work from a decolonial perspective. For Anibal Quijano (2007) modernity is fundamentally connected with coloniality; hence his construction of the concept modernity/coloniality, to stress their inseparability. Sik explicitly seeks to salvage modernity, so where does this leave the problem of (neo-)coloniality?
The social contract tradition has been criticized by critical theory scholars for generations and these criticisms are well presented by Sik early in the text. Yet the contractarian tradition has also been criticized by decolonial scholars, ideas which are not engaged with substantively here (Mills, 1997). Sik's twin-track approach, of a universality which works to engage the productive fire of modernity (free market and scientific expansion) tempered by the force of trials by particularity (Levinas/Derrida) may likely infuriate decolonial thinkers on both counts (see Mbembe, 2017; Spillers, 2003). Decolonial scholars have long argued that most attempts at universality serve to reinforce and naturalize a transhistorical “white male European subject” (Wynter, 2003). Likewise, the argument that an encounter with the Other, in the form of a trial by particularity would likely be rejected on the grounds that the colonized subject would never be recognized as a subject to start with (Fanon, 1967). The “crushing objecthood of blackness” would preclude the possibility for the subaltern to enter such networks which could push back against neocolonial expropriation (Fanon, 1967: 60). This is not to say that there is not scope for dialogue between critical theory and decolonial theory (see Allen, 2016; Visic, 2023), but it does identify further provocations for Sik to consider.
These provocations are solely intended to highlight areas for further productive development. In Salvaging Modernity: A Social Contract for the Age of Permacrisis, Sik demonstrates a remarkable gift for synthesis and the capacity to create new and exciting theory. The challenge of creating a substantive and positive theoretical contribution is remarkable and not for the faint of heart. While the fundamental aspiration to coherently synthesize critical social theory and social contract theory may forever exist with an unresolved tension, Sik is clearly more than happy to accept this. The project of salvaging modernity is to be based on uneasy comprises with power, the complex syntheses of what is possible with what is accessible. I commend Sik's text and encourage those within the critical theory tradition to engage with it, sympathetic to Sik's objectives.
