Introduction to special issue: The critical theory of society

Abstract

The state of theorizing bearing on an explicit, contemporary, critical theory of society is first of all outlined. While contemporary conditions of scholarship are not promising in this respect, the potential of a distinctive critical theory of society nonetheless remains tantalizing. The mostly agreed, even if mostly only implicitly, core architectonic of critical theory is outlined as a foundation, though disagreements persist over the significance of the linguistic turn and context-transcendent versus context-immanent modes of theorizing. On the basis of the outline of the general architectonic, suggestions are made, pointing forward to the articles in the special issue, as to how the contemporary democratic focus of the theory offers inspiration for a more explicit, modern articulation. Such a theory would follow the lead of the first generation, but it would additionally take on board the multiple theoretical as well as social changes that have since occurred.

The first striking fact about a critical theory of society is that by and large there isn’t one, at least in the more explicit sense intended here. This does not mean that critical theory does not provide the wherewithal for developing such a theory of society, nor that there haven’t been important achievements in this direction in its near and more distant pasts. Indeed, if its concerns for the normative well-being of society as a whole continues to have meaning it is obliged to develop one, or at least to operate as if one were possible, perhaps with an uneasy conscience given its inability to make the theory explicit. It also does not mean that theories of society of various other kinds, for example, functional theories such as those of Durkheim, Parsons, or Luhmann, or general social theories that don’t aspire to be a full theory of society, haven’t influenced critical theory. At various times, these have had abundant influence. It is simply that they rarely have been fundamentally explicated within it as a fully fledged critical theory of society, notwithstanding that some critical theories of society, such as Habermas or Brunkhorst, have found incorporating elements of Luhmann indispensable (Brunkhorst, 2014; Habermas, 1987). Historically, these other societal theoretical influences have in the main emanated from Marxism, vital in the first generation, the various kinds of classical, neo-classical and modern functional theories alluded to here, and also Weber, notably the theory of rationalization that was already present in the early classics. Symbolic interactionism and pragmatism have also had considerable influence, especially on the second-generation work of Habermas and in some part on later work too, for example, Honneth. Habermas attempts to integrate pragmatism’s concern for local symbolic variation with larger structural theses, for example, the integration of Mead and Durkheim outlined in Volume 2 of The Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas, 1987).

So, viewed in contemporary profile, it may be claimed that critical theory has been influenced by systematic theories of society and general social theories, but on the whole has not developed a comprehensive theory of its own if the first generation’s concern with a specific interpretation of Marxism is excluded. Contemporary critical theoretical concerns appear to have taken the more systematic articulation of an intrinsic critical theory of society off the agenda. In this, it is partly responding to forms of social change that have made the theory of society appear much more arduous to develop, and partly it is a product of the disciplinary concentration within critical theory where sociological influence is waning. Critical theory on the whole retains its concern for overall societal justice and the good life without a theory of society, which comes in only through the backdoor in the form of theses about what is normatively unjust or pathological, or by identifying institutional complexes, primarily law and democracy, that promise if not to redeem the claim of overall justice to move it in a better direction. Mostly, no overall societal ontology of the kind consistent with a general theory of society is advanced, even if the scale of the claims offered without it makes this often appear as a performative contradiction. There appears no way, nor even will, to accommodate in a revised format the first generation’s concern to at least offer an outline theory of society, or to be committed as they were to task of building critical theory as a theory of society, in their case by means of a culturally modified Marxism.

There is one evident exception, Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action. This work explicitly pursues the double goal of the ontological–epistemological transformation of social theory in the direction of a theory of communicative action, and of demonstrating how such a theory can capture normative dynamics at the level of society as a whole through the illustrative juridification thesis (see Kreide, this issue). Other important contributions with systematic intent have been those of Brunkhorst’s Critical Theory of Legal Revolution and Honneth’s Freedom’s Right (Brunkhorst, 2014; Honneth, 2014). The former advances a valuable modern synthesis of Marxist, functional and communication theories, the latter characteristically explores the contemporary implications of Hegel-derived normative-societal ideals drawing especially on Durkheim and Parsons. While the immense synthesis of theoretical currents achieved by Habermas in the early 1980s has had profound resonance in some respects, by and large it has not led to a renaissance of theorizing society as a whole. As Rosa and Schulz observe (this issue), Habermas never systematically developed the colonization thesis thereafter, though creative use of it has been made elsewhere (see Kreide, this issue). And the general theory of communicative action has never been extensively applied in the social sciences, largely because of the theoretical challenges it poses for advancing the present goals of social science. Yet, these exceptions indicate the uneasiness of conscience of critical theory in operating without a theory of society while social theorizing of quality exists in its midst.

Two questions arise from the foregoing. The first is why is the consideration of the theory of society important for contemporary critical theory? And the second, assuming such importance can be demonstrated, asks what constraints can be identified that have prevented its stronger articulation to date and, by extension, how might these be overcome?

With respect to the first question, critical theory from the outset has been concerned with emancipating human, and latterly non-human, beings from systematic, unnecessary suffering. It would be achieved by identifying and propitiating the realization of societal potentials that have equally systematic normative implications. In this light, it is not surprising to perceive a latent if not always explicated theory of society accompanying critical theory’s main generational stages from the early Frankfurt School to the present, ranging from the relative dominance of the Marxist tradition, partly culturally transformed, though with Weberian motifs also, right up to the later functional influences. The will to utilize a theory of society within critical theory derives from its systematic normative intention of social transformation. Without the employment of at least the suggestion of an available theory of society, how else could such a normative intention be satisfied?

Yet, turning to the second question bearing on what has constrained a more systematic, sui generis development of the theory of society, certain tendencies may be identified. The most important internal development has been the disciplinary differentiation between philosophy and the social sciences within the tradition, a tendency that has become more pronounced as critical theory has incorporated more and more adjacent paradigms, and become more diffusely articulated in the twenty-first century. A very rough and ready judgement is that in the first quarter of the twenty-first century social and political philosophical theories have come to a position of relative dominance, carrying in the main a distinctive philosophical methodology of identifying what is right and good that stays clear of in-depth societal description. While the various approaches differ significantly, what unites them is the lack of such in-depth description, and the postulation instead of idealizing horizons that could if implemented deliver an emancipated society. Another tradition, partly opposing this idealizing focus, sometimes explicitly as non-ideal theory, emanates from a variety of cultural theoretical paradigms, emphasizing the concerns of emancipatory movements embedded in unjust institutional complexes of world-defining scope that have historically been insufficiently represented in critical theory. This second tradition is certainly more concerned with societal description, but its opposition to both idealizing traditions within critical theory and evolutionary thinking within the wider theory of society means that its contribution is limited in terms of advancing a theory of society.

Generally, across these various complementary and contending contemporary approaches that have become identified as critical theory but which generally emanate from outside sociology only in the social philosophical tradition does the theory of society continue to have any traction, most notably in Honneth but to some degree also in Jaeggi (Honneth, 2014; Jaeggi, 2018). It is, of course, no accident in this respect that the social philosophical tradition in critical theory is mainly in the line of Hegel and, to a lesser extent, Marx. But even there the theory of society is not per se explicitly and fundamentally theorized. Critical theory in sociology does continue to be broadly concerned with a systematic social theory in the work of figures such as Brunkhorst, Eder and Strydom, but sociological critical theory in the main has become relatively isolated from the mainstream of critical theory, which continues without reference to its innovations, for example, communicative negation in Brunkhorst, collective learning in Eder, and the cognitive order in Strydom (Brunkhorst, 2014; Eder, 1985; Strydom, 2011). These brief observations indicate a series of complicated and, from the relevant standpoint here, unproductive fissures, divisions and omissions that constrain the development of an intrinsic critical theory of society consistent with its transformative aims.

Reference has already been made several times to these transformative normative aims of the theory. The question that arises is who any longer truly believes in such aims within critical theory and, more to the point, is willing to advance an account of how they could be realized? In contemporary critical theory, and in critical sociology more generally, this is often done by means of generalized negative critique, identifying injustices and pathologies that are taken to block the emergence of a good society. In recent critical theory, this negative critique is often diffuse in the sense of not being a sustained analysis of the negative syndrome or issue with a view to its transformation. In other words, it does not use extended social scientific analysis for either diagnosis or normative prognosis. What, in their respective contributions, Adorno and Horkheimer referred to as an ‘existent judgement’ of the general state of society is lacking (Adorno, 2019; Horkheimer, 1982). Social change has made apparent that the existent judgement of the first generation, the capitalist degradation of material and cultural life conditions, cannot be held to in the old way, though it retains a considerable degree of truth. Yet, critical theory does necessarily assume the importance of suffering and blocked potentials of a general nature, and its mode of theorizing could not continue if it could not somehow bring into play an equivalent general existent object. There is a considerable difference, though, from ‘bringing in’ existent objects, such as relatively detached theoretical accounts of phenomena such as alienation or reification, and engaging with them from the vantage point of explanatory critique, the emphatic concern of the early theorists. Explanatory critique requires the capacity to actually explain the implications of problem-inducing mechanisms, where classical models are Marx’s critique of capitalism, Lukács’ account of rationalization and the material and cultural critique of Adorno and Horkheimer. At the present time, this kind of explanatory critique is now increasingly brought into question, not just in critical theory but in the wider social sciences (Delanty, 2020, 2022). The stakes are considerable. An implausible account of the general existential state of society does not help, but without some adequate account of it the critique and reconstruction of ‘normative totality’, the original aim of critical theory, is also implausible.

And as substantial parts of the world veers towards authoritarian re-feudalization, modern forms of imperial domination or self-induced environmental destruction, it is clear that some kind of general existent judgement is needed, at least for those key institutional complexes bearing on egalitarian democracy, as it is but still more as it could be. The new tendency, in part justified by social change, is to refer to concepts such as plurality, polycentrism and difference and to, mostly implicitly, engage in the kind of ‘downsizing’ of the societal object that Arnason (this issue) would favour to make way for the implications of those ‘imaginary significations’ (see also Skillington, this issue, on the imaginary) that mediate between the objectivity of the world and the horizon of action. In many ways, it is entirely unavoidable and desirable to study objects below the level of the societal totality. It can though come at the cost of being able to effectively theorize that which remains hidden due to the complexity of interconnections between social spheres and issues and that only becomes evident when such spheres and issues are integrally addressed as a relational complex characterized by reciprocal effects. Thus, to downsize from the vantage point of a critical theory of society cannot come at the cost of addressing these general reciprocal effects whose understanding makes possible explanatory critique. And the focus of explanatory critique is not confined to what is the case, where sociology mostly starts, but also to what could be the case, to what reaches beyond actual facts to possible facts. This counterfactual strategy has been core to critical theory from its outset, and to left-Hegelianism before it. And mostly going beyond the nature of the relational turn in sociology, it postulates the primacy of logico-mental relations, the capacity to interpret the world in ever new ways.

The situation is complicated further by the re-orientation in sociology, and the wider cultural and social sciences, that aligns with some of the above developments in critical theory. For a half century now, sociology has been turning away from major structural theses about society that had previously emanated from the hegemony of the structural-functional tradition or, with an opposing normative perspective, from a renaissance of the Marxist accounts of capitalism, developmental economics and colonialism. These intellectual paradigms were progressively eclipsed by a methodologically transformative concern for difference and the individual that amounted to the mainstream selective absorption of aspects of the linguistic and phenomenological turns into academic sociology. In its concern for differences of perspective and the creative capacities of agents, much of modern sociology, action-theoretical, phenomenological and interpretive in form has adopted a kind of subject-centred nominalism that stands opposed to the imputed hegemony of ‘false generals’. Previous kinds of sociology, and for that matter kinds of critical theory, are deemed to have created and sustained such false generals. They include, at the very apex, that of universality itself and also various of its assumed manifestations such as Eurocentrism and covert colonialism, and both overt and disguised patriarchy. Viewed in the light of emancipatory interests, such theorizing, and the associated new social movement paradigm generally, has had an exemplary effect. Its principal methodological target has been the unmasking of hidden assumptions associated with privilege disguised within an objectivating neutral perspective, whether critical or liberal.

Along with the benefits of re-invigoration by new concerns for equal dignity, plurality and embodiment, there is also a cost associated with new forms of non-ideal theorizing. When these theoretical movements reach for an explanatory mechanism, as theories claiming any kind of generality, even the very existence of institutional regularities, must do, they frequently invoke older structural categories such as capitalism, patriarchy or imperialism. The problems that arise are twofold. In the first place, the structures invoked do certainly bear on the objects of criticism of the theories, but the constitution of these structures cannot be demonstrated from within the theories. In the standard dualism of structure/agency theories, which has, often latently, extended well beyond sociology, their reciprocal constitution can never be adequately explained. The contemporary sociological imagination has not solved the problem posed by the need to develop a generative theory of social regularities. The second, very much related, problem is that of the missing mediating link between ‘local’ manifestation of meaning and the social structures that condition them. What is missing has become taboo in sociological theorizing, emphasizing the power of reasoning beyond causal forces and behaviours. This is in certain respects what lies at the core of critical theory, though even there not satisfactorily developed. The lead given by Habermas has never really been taken up social theoretically – as an institutionalized collective project – in terms of a theory of communication that spans subjective, objective and intersubjective categories of being, and that can also be embedded in the ontological form of a theory of society. The power of reasoning expresses the power of the mind, not the methodological solipsism of the individual mind in isolation but the extended social mind. The dilemma of much modern sociological theorizing presents itself as either an inclination to a theoretically conservative structural pole or theoretically liberating agency pole. Where it inclines to the latter, the denial of redress to generals, other than those regarded as false, universalistic reason, leaves it without a means of demonstrating how the sought for transformation could ever be realized. Where it inclines to the former, generality is preserved, but not the dialectically embedded generative generality of intersubjective mediation. Accordingly, nothing like the conditions for rational – public or private – autonomy can ever be properly postulated with such an assumption, given that these conditions precisely require the employment of autonomous general concepts, and on that basis justifying general ideals, a process that Adorno understood as the autonomy of theory (Adorno, 2019; see Arnason on autonomy, this issue).

General elements of a critical theory of society

It is not thinkable to advance any claim for a renewal of the theory of society within critical theory without consideration of the constructivist transformation of sociology associated with recent changes in the discipline. But neither can it be claimed that the present direction of the social and cultural sciences can intrinsically contribute to the full realization of a more explicit theory of society to match the normative intentions of critical theory. In fact, it is not even their goal, and it generally does not present itself even as a problem. In my view, to the contrary, what is required in critical theory is a resonant theory of society that in its own distinctive way builds from transformative changes in relevant systems of disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge as they variously embrace linguistic and phenomenological turns at different speeds and intensities. To speak of its own distinctive way involves recognition of the reality of generals that, in the sociological tradition, were already powerfully embraced by both Marx and Durkheim. Beyond even these classical traditions, though perhaps still in certain respects in line with Marx’s theory of ideology, real generals after the linguistic turn should decisively include reasoning as a mediating capacity lying between the phenomenology of feelings and the instituting power of facts (see O’Mahony, this issue). The power of reasoning is both a progressive and regressive power, as in Forst’s distinction between good and bad justification (Forst, 2007; see Eder this issue). In one way or another, all the contributors to the present issue recognize the centrality of reason to critical theory. A further horizon is to extend the theory to show reasoning performatively at work, including its deformations.

The above remarks imply that a more dynamic account of the constitution of meaning and power should be intrinsic to a contemporary critical theory of society (see Rosa and Schulz, this issue, on ‘Dynamis’). Beyond the dominant dualistic thinking, a third ‘space’ must be identified, a space of extended collective mental structures and intersubjective capacities. It is a mistake to identify the basic cognitive endowment of humanity, including the crystallization of states of feeling into general habits, as having an ineluctable tendency through the operations of this third space to generate negative syndromes. This above all applies to the category of reason. In the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Habermas, 1990), Habermas opposes the post-structuralist tendency to extirpate the operations of reason in favour of the revealing of being that is supposed to flow directly through the imagination into action-orienting worldviews. Habermas argues, by contrast, that the reasoning process, whose intersubjective architecture is outlined in the theory of communicative action, should mediate between imaginary conjectures and its possible intra-mundane learning processes. Much of the modern critique of reason misses what Habermas calls the long-established counter-discourse of modernity that is articulated by means of the self-critique of reason. In this formulation, he takes issue with ‘Reason’ only being imputed dogmatic properties assumed to characterize its intrinsic form.

Opposing this account of Habermas, the critique of reason, including the emphasis on the other of reason, imputes dogmatism to reason, with mostly only vague intimations it could be otherize. Over against such imputed dogmatism, often attributed to Kantian transcendentalism, is posited the virtue of historicizing categories of knowledge that are strictly relative to their immanent deployment. The emphasis on immanence has proved resonant today and overlaps with the critique of transcendental presuppositions. There is undoubtedly an important point being made here against a certain kind of metaphysical transcendentalism, that because of its extrinsic transcendental quality can at least be represented as forming a basis for the selective domination of a ‘prejudiced’ reason. But the downside consequence is that all that is left of any idea of the reasonable amounts to an agonistic struggle whose possibility of general normative grounding is not apparent. Also excluded is any kind of theorization of cultural evolution that could be seen to eventuate in universal – to the human species – idealizing cognitive forms from which the capacity for reasoning and general normative judgement might be shown to emerge (Brunkhorst, 2014; see Strydom, this issue).

Already implied in the above remarks is another strategy for the ‘detranscendentalization’ of reason that is informed by but yet distances itself from the critique of reason just outlined. The fundamental difference in that in this alternative account what is at issue is detranscendentalized reason rather than the extirpation of reason through detranscendentalization, often in this latter instance replaced by a version of reflexivity without reason. Drawing from Habermas, two roots of a detranscendentalized reason entail the retention both of Kant’s emphasis on rational autonomy and Hegel’s idea of reason in history (Habermas, 2021). From the perspective of Kant, on the one hand, Hegel’s account would subordinate the idea of justice, itself needing to be morally justified, to that of the functional requirements of social integration. On the other hand, Habermas acknowledges Hegel’s achievement for the historical thinking underpinning his conventions-based philosophy of law that includes the theory of society and the theory of the state. The problem with Hegel is that he subordinates rational autonomy to what has been historically achieved through reason in history, not convincingly remedied by his speculative philosophy. What is required in Habermas’s view to realize the universalization of the moral law is to move from the solitary intelligible ‘I’ of Kant to the public legislation of the many communicatively socialized subjects. Neither Kant nor Hegel had ‘communitized’ the conditions for the practice of knowledge generation. This was left to Peirce of whom Habermas speaks of as following a detranscendentalized way of thinking (Habermas, 2019). If we are to accept further Apel’s reading of Peirce as an immanent-transcendental thinker, utilizing the counterfactual device of the in principle unlimited communication community as a foundation for the practical realization of knowledge in the real communication community, then the characteristic features of critical theory as immanent-transcendent and intersubjective begin to emerge (Apel, 1995). This is an indispensable contemporary starting point for explicating a critical theory of society.

The above remarks imply that the reliance on either or both of a functionalized, materialist Marxism, as opposed to a left-Hegelian reading of Marx, or general functionalist theories are not promising directions for the full explication of a critical theory of society. Luhmann, for example, has no theory of democratic reasoning that would breathe collective learning into the operation of binary codes, a fundamental goal associated with Peirce’s category of thirdness with its suspensions of the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle. The nominalist, pluralist and critical turns of the social and human sciences have further made apparent the complexity of the objects of such a theory. And it may be further added that supranational processes of multiple kinds, ranging from historical colonialism, contemporary forms of empire and normative regime building beyond the nation-state, challenge what is to be understood by society. And this is only one of a series of issues, including equality-seeking identity struggles of all kinds, that have acquired compulsive contemporary force.

In response to these blockages and challenges, thus far it has been claimed that a critical theory of society should be guided by the linguistic and phenomenological turns but nonetheless advance a strong account of good reasoning that mediates between feeling and action, while not neglecting pervasive bad reasoning (Eder, this issue). It should proceed with a realist theory of the operations of collective extended mind that yet does justice to the plurality of subject positions. It should therefore follow Habermas in the direction of a discursive, democratic theory of the societal coordination of validity. It should continue to embrace Kant’s Copernician revolution of locating the operations of mind at the centre of the human form of life, but render it in a radically collective and democratic manner through the advancement of a detranscendentalized reason. Yet such a detranscendentalized reason would also be immanent-transcendent to meet the basic requirement of what Adorno simply put as ‘thinking beyond’ (See Skillington on Adorno, this issue). It should offer a generative theory of social structures while retaining the focus of explanatory critique, both diagnostically in terms of what has gone wrong or right and prognostically in terms of what could be. The generative dimension is not yet adequately present in critical theory nor, as above, on the whole in sociology more generally. Nonetheless, it appears promising for its pursuit to build on the second generation of critical theory with its concern for reasoning, supplementing Habermas’s communicative action and philosophy of social science with Peirce’s account of sign-mediated inference (see O’Mahony and Strydom, this issue), and integrating that complex with the process of structure formation (materialization).

These last remarks bring to mind that critical theory, from the first generation onwards, has sought to develop an integrated left-Hegelian – or young-Hegelian – logic of inquiry (see Strydom, this issue), which would not neglect a Kantian cognitive core in line with Habermas’s above-referenced argument. While the first generation is often criticized for operating with a determinist capitalism-critical model, in fact to a very large extent it developed a distinctive critical theoretical approach that has carried on ever since in one way or another. The way in which it has been supplanted is in the line of Habermas’s replacement of the model of the philosophy of consciousness with a language philosophical approach. But other aspects endure, including the concern for an integrated theory spanning the existent, the possible, the general and the actual. Critical theory thus from its outset, taking various texts of Adorno and Horkheimer as exemplars, pioneered a strategy of detranscendentalization of both Kant and Hegel to make way for unpredictability and fallibilism, but, as in Adorno’s negative dialectics, it offers an immanent-transcendent model. Accordingly, it shows a characteristic concern for transformative cognitive innovation, akin to Peirce’s logical innovation of abduction, and a related modal focus on examining the social implications of the possible. It sets a holistic dialectical account of time and change against a dualistic nominalism, entailing the need to apprehend complex logical relations in order to understand and explain practices. Accordingly, it seeks a transformation of logic away from the sterile domination of deductive logic to a dialectical triadic logic that is capable of grasping what is at first theoretically antithetical (the non-identical). It emphasizes giving full rein to the feeling capacities of subjects in the exercise of freedom through thought and seeks freedom from domination for both humans and nature (see Skillington and Chernilo, this issue). Thus, even if society as an existent object was to some degree conceived in a deterministic fashion, the first generation authors already incorporated many of the features that have also, paradoxically, been used to criticize them. Yet, they did not strongly embrace the linguistic turn, and, both within and without critical theory, addressing it has become an ineluctable requirement of the theory of society. But contemporary critical theory has also been ambivalent about its implications, and how to establish a division of labour between a phenomenology of consciousness and linguistic and other sign-mediated processes, and between both of those and the existent relational objects and processes that constitute societal regularities. In some respects, the space has been intensely explored, focusing on the theoretical plane principally with the by now centuries-long reception of German idealism, twentieth-century phenomenology, including phenomenological hermeneutics, structuralism and the linguistic turn. But it is the challenge of the latter in the broader context of the first three that remains the principle obstacle to the advancement of a critical theory of society, above all, because it contains the challenge of mediation which, read another way, also extends to the challenges of generation and institution (see Arnason on Castoriadis, this issue).

Implications for the critical theory of society

Taking the above briefly sketched elements together, and granting that sociology has been the primary locus of the theory of society, it seems clear that there is no distinctive sociological movement that today could carry the tasks for its fulfilment. The emphasis here is on ‘movement’, rather than individuals or small groups. In this respect, one might speak with Wright Mills on the need for another kind of sociological imagination, the sociological imagination of critical theory (Mills, 2000). While all the encompassing paradigms in the discipline, empirical-analytic, interpretive-phenomenological and critical have something to impart, a critical theory of society would require attention to its distinctive roots as indicated above and throughout the issue. But it also requires an expansion of the range of theoretical consideration to embrace the linguistic turn and the corresponding formation of new kinds of existent judgements. The first generation’s particular kind of existent judgement regarding the structural and cultural malaise of capitalist modernity needs to be radically changed and extended to meet contemporary challenges. Some of it is still relevant in an altered manner (see Kreide, this issue, even if drawing more off Habermas), and some of it applies more or less as a truth of some of the pivotal outcomes of the last century or so. Nonetheless, it is clearly insufficient on its own in the light of both social and epistemic transformations. The thesis of endless degradation of capitalism with only one way out, its immediate root and branch replacement, cannot be sustained, though this is not an argument against radical modification and displacement of capitalist practices. From another, later vantage point, for all their many merits, neither can procedural theories that stand at a distance from the state of society meaningfully contribute to understanding societal coordination without in-depth analysis of the substantive outcomes of the historical process, including their own, sometimes perverse, effects. There are also many more fields and theoretical–empirical approaches added to critical theory since the 1960s, each with their own distinctive composition and structures of communication. No matter from where we start out, critically theory requires us to dialectically consider how the state of affairs under consideration generatively came to be, what its associated tendency might be and then how it can be changed, that is, what its new form must be that could re-direct this tendency. And in advocating change, contemporary forms of life have to be taken into account, more common in Hegel-inspired social and social philosophical theories such as Honneth, Jaeggi and Rosa (Honneth, 2014; Jaeggi, 2018; Rosa, 2016). Thus, actual structures of practices must be theoretically incorporated in circumstances where increasingly de-centralized contexts and perverse outcomes of human agency are difficult to anticipate.

The necessary ‘existent judgements’ and theoretical incorporation is much more difficult where there is no recourse to a single overarching cause, such as capitalism. Though articulated in a very wide range of different approaches, the implications of emphasizing agential imaginative powers correspondingly require a generative account of social structures that emerge from the attributed agential powers. On the other side, so to speak, it requires tracing how contradictions, dysfunctions and pathologies embodied in society excite shifts in consciousness that in turn agitate the imagination and associated reasoning. In the first generation, critical theory offered an integrated logic of inquiry of this kind. Accordingly, a theory of society has three dimensions, that of institutionalized or otherwise ordered social relations, including dysfunctional, unjust and unethical ones, that of a differentiated collective unconscious and that of differentiated conscious signification that could result in reasoned coordination. In line with Peirce, from the vantage point of knowledge, the first is the factual, the second is the possible and the third is potential necessity. Without deviating into a reconstruction based on Peirce (see O’Mahony and Strydom this issue), the similar framework of the first generation, even though without sign mediation, inescapably points to the need for integrated consideration along these lines. Horkheimer stresses for example the need for understanding necessity in critical theory as mastery – appropriate intervention – as opposed to traditional theory’s concern with necessity as the probable. Such intervention requires modal consideration of possibilities that are not yet instituted in social arrangements and, until they are, cannot give rise to concrete, justifiable perception. But they can give rise to imaginative perception. For such imaginative perception to mean anything it cannot stay as an imaginary signification – an abduction, a modal proposition – but must be examined against the actual or potential facticity of the existent or could be existent. And, on the other side, as the factually identifiable, normatively stabilized existent it will exert effects on consciousness, a consciousness that nonetheless can reach beyond these conditioning effects. And it can do this because the key intellectual concepts of critical theory, which, though they are not entire and permanent in themselves but endlessly mediated through changing experiences and constructs, are nonetheless sufficiently autonomous to reach beyond what exists. They instead subsist as a quasi-transcendentally anchored, evolutionary generated set of potentialities that enable movement beyond existing institutional forms in another direction, even to change them radically (see Strydom this issue).

To conceive of key intellectual concepts as mediating potentiality enables critical theory to overcome a besetting problem between context-immanence and context-transcendent. Such a move is already indicated clearly by Apel’s transcendental semiotics and Habermas’s universal pragmatics. Context transcendence involves a capacity to go beyond what is instituted, a distinctive hallmark of critical theory. It leads to disclosing potentialities that could be instituted and addressing them as real possibilities. Normative standards lie within the immanent world, but the validity of these standards is always subject to critique, extension or transformation. If the concept of validity claim is to be retained, then conceptual frames together with distinctive ways of reasoning about them must not be assumed to be exhaustively instituted. These frames instead hold potentials beyond what is instituted that would open up collective learning processes (see Eder., this issue). Such disclosing is guided by the hope that Eder (this issue) rightly identified as basic, a hope for better that can move from diffuse feeling to confident proposition, the possibility for action realized in another story pointing not to a troubled past alone but to a way beyond it that could yet be realized.

A large part of the burden for realizing the future of critical theory lies with sociology. Critical theory needs to spearhead a sociological movement of its own that does not hearken back to functional assumptions in a dependent way. For all the sophistication of Parsons, this approach cannot capture the modal dynamism of critical theory. Nor can it adequately address what it means to do sociology once the linguistic turn has been taken seriously and the detached observer perspective has been relinquished. Sociology in any case has in important respects progressed beyond Parsons, while at the same time it has seen its capacity for generality diminish with the embracing of a kind of phenomenological nominalism. A modern functionalism like that of Luhmann offers some valuable pointers, but ultimately its theory of society is far removed from the normative-critical emphasis of critical theory. A linguistified version of Marx’s left-Hegelian approach remains the best option, since it contains all the elements that later made their way into critical theory. It remains true that society has changed massively since even the middle of the twentieth century. And, accordingly, the question remains as to what would be the kinds of existent judgement that would accompany the still pertinent emphasis on capitalist degradation to form the core focus of an emergent theory of society?

A first answer to this question is to be found in the transformed understanding of mediation that first occurred between the first and second generations. Democracy in the widest sense, embracing both law and the public sphere, has emerged as the institutional core of societal mediation. The direction of critical theory in this sense appears clear in a very general sense, even if how to advance democracy, and what kind of democracy to advance, still contains many different, and partly irreconciliable, perspectives within it. Thus, a critical theory of society must stand forth as a democratic theory of society. This essentially means that the core moral–political concepts of critical theory must acquire moral and legal validity in societal arrangements. For this to happen, the public sphere in the widest sense, as the space of conceptual public mediation of the furthest consequence, must properly function. Dewey understands this, as does Habermas. The self-critical conceptual foundations of radical democracy as the public of publics is the vantage point of the critical theory of society. Such a complex must continuously address the meaningful orchestration and integration of core concepts, for example, legitimacy, critique, equality, freedom, dignity, authenticity and secularism. These key concepts, using Strydom’s terms, are validity concepts that must be realized in validity goals (see Strydom, this issue). They form the recognitional base for adjudicating what is in need of criticism and what should be done about it. They are recognitive in that they can be identified as autonomously context-transcendent, while at the same time dependent for their realization on their immanent institution, separately and together. In this way, in spite of the necessary plurality of existent judgements in the face of the challenges of modern societies, the generality of justice can still be asserted. In the articles in the issue, this motif is constantly explored, sometimes more explicitly and sometimes less.

The second, and highly related, answer is the need to advance a democratic logic of inquiry that would support such a theory of society. It is possible to articulate one version of this, building on Peirce, as an inferential logic of inquiry that stands as a variation on left-Hegelianism. The inferential logic has three parts; a constitutive or creative part associated with the transition from phenomenal feelings to abductive conjecture; a relatively stable deductive part based on formal conclusions that make general sense of the conjecture; and an inductive application that evaluates the significance of generalized conjectures (potentialities) for actual or possible states of the world. Thus understood, it encompasses a logic of knowledge generation, generalization and application that can be applied to any issue. It encompasses ontological dimensions of determination/innovation, epistemic dimensions of validity and methodological dimensions of effects on actual or possible worlds. The sociological effort in wide interdisciplinary context entails the structural re-elaboration of the inferential logic of inquiry to address not just natural but also social objects, and, of course, socio-natural objects (see Chernilo and Skillington, this issue). This requires specifying the inferential logic in such a way as to grasp the cognitive structures and processes underpinning the various levels of society, guided in part by the linguistic transformation of idealist philosophy from the late nineteenth century. Following Peirce and others, idealist philosophy is given realist re-direction. The disciplines implicated are chiefly philosophy and sociology, but incorporating everything that is intrinsic, cognitive science, media theory, aesthetic theory, linguistics, logic, economics, anthropology and others. It is a democratic logic of inquiry in following the premise that in democratic societies, however imperfect they may be, basic ideals of democracy such as the moral and legal equality of individuals, social freedom, procedural legitimacy and the right to justification can be sidestepped but not explicitly opposed. Such ideals are also intrinsic to the logic of inquiry of social research. Yet, it is also the case that in political debates arguments inimical to democracy’s basic ideals are often made. To validly address this ineluctable reality, a democratic logic of inquiry must reflexively demonstrate its own conformity with democratic ideals as a prelude to any criticism of other arguments, especially if they are regarded as fundamentally inimical to such ideals. An important qualification is that wide latitude must be accorded to what is to be considered ‘democratic’ in societal argumentation, and hence clear distinctions must be made between what in research – or society – really violates democratic ideals and what are nothing more than legitimate difference within the broad democratic frame.

A logic of inquiry thus represented in a semiotic vein can also take other forms, with Brunkhorst for example supplying one version based on the constitutive power of negative communication, and Honneth offering another based on democratic rational universals forged from Hegel’s spheres of recognition (Brunkhorst, 2014; Honneth, 2014). There are quite a few others. All are significant for the fact that with generous interpretation they do not need to exclude one another. The importance of a viable, more explicit logic of inquiry in carrying forth the project of democratic mediation cannot be overstated. The spheres of feelings, facts and reasons must be always present and sight must not be lost of their constant interpenetration. If it is the philosophers’ task, including social theorists with the appropriate inclination, to build and refine the architectonic, it is the social scientists’ task to actually use it in social analysis. And, in using it, to also refine it, and to create new questions and challenges. In the articles that follow, these themes are extensively explored, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly and sometimes critically. It seems to me that the very possibility of a critical theory of society lies within the interstices of these themes, democratic mediation and logic of inquiry, even if they are formulated, as they are sometimes in the articles to follow, in ways that initially can feel quite divergent.