Power and critique

Abstract

If the task of social philosophy is understood in terms of a critique of power, the question of a proper understanding of power becomes particularly pressing. This article recalls two well‐known, different ways of conceptualising power from the philosophical tradition, roughly domination and constitution. It is argued that the very definition of what contemporary social philosophy or a critical social theory can, and should, do is dependent on the very notion of power employed. Social critique can accordingly be conceived of as either the detection of impediments to individual agency or a more general assessment of power relations. Though the former remains more prominent in social theory today, the latter is broader in scope and remains useful for the project of a critical analysis of the social.

Keywords:

• social philosophy
• critique
• Arendt
• Weber
• Spinoza

Notes

1. This specifically modern self‐understanding is captured in Hegel’s notion of the ‘right of subjectivity’ in his Philosophy of Right. See Hegel (1991, p. 125) and Menke (2008).

2. For more on Spinoza on power, see Saar (forthcoming).

3. The recent discussion of this topos is documented in Hindrichs (2007).

4. This now commonplace differentiation between the two lines of tradition can, for instance, be found in Wartenberg (1990). On the social‐philosophical implications of these two usages of the term, see Fink‐Eitel (1992), Saar (2007, pp. 234–246) and, most comprehensively, Strecker (forthcoming, ch. 1).

5. For alternative interpretations, which tend more in the direction of action theory or in the direction of social ontology, see the classic article of Habermas (1986) and Marchart (2005, pp. 127–164), respectively.

6. For the current state of the debate on the concept of critique in German philosophy and social theory, see Demirović (2008) and Jaeggi and Wesche (2009).

7. See Allen (2008, pp. 96–122, esp. p. 112) and, similarly, Honneth (1993, ch. 8). For recent discussions of Habermas’s theory of power, see Iser (2008) and Strecker (forthcoming, ch. 5).

8. For a systematic discussion of the ‘will to power’ doctrine in Nietzsche, see Owen (1995, pp. 41–47, 2007) and Saar (2007, pp. 107–130).

9. For a systematic response to this critique, see Lemke (2003).

10. For more on this type of analysis, see Rose (1999).

11. For examples of such analyses, see Lorey (2008), Saar (2008), Kerner (2009) and Hark (2009).