The Political Deficit of Immanent Critique. On Jaeggi's Objections to Walzer's Criticism

ABSTRACT

The paper aims to show that Rahel Jaeggi's objections to Walzer's model of internal critique are in many respects inconsistent, and above all that these objections are a sign of a political deficit in the neo-Hegelian methodology adopted by Jaeggi to develop her model of immanent critique. The same deficit concerns Jaeggi's use of Marx's model of the critique of ideology, which can be fruitfully reworked by Walzer's reinterpretation of Gramsci's theory of the struggle for hegemony.

KEYWORDS:

• Rahel Jaeggi
• Michael Walzer
• immanent critique
• social criticism
• Antonio Gramsci
• Axel Honneth

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, above all the third part devoted to the “Forms of critique”; “Rethinking Ideology”; on the debate on the forms of critique and his reception in Germany see also Jaeggi and Wesche, Was ist Kritik?; Forst et al., Sozialphilosophie und Kritik.

2 See above all Honneth, “Die Normativität der Sittlichkeit,”; Freedom's Right; “Idiosyncrasy as a Tool of Knowledge”; Disrespect; on Kant-Rawls see also Jaeggi and Celikates, Sozialphilosophie, 117.

3 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism.

4 Honneth, “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso,” 43–63; the original German article was titled Rekonstruktive Gesellschaftskritik unter genealogischen Vorbehalt. Zur intellektuellen Erbschaft der Kritischen Theorie, and has been published in “Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie”, 48/5 in 2000.

5 Honneth, “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso,” 47.

6 See Jaeggi, Rethinking Ideology, 74 ff.

7 See also Schaub, “Misdevelopments, Pathologies, and Normative Revolutions”.

8 See above all Boltanski, On Critique.

9 See also the objections that Honneth advance to Walzer in “Idiosyncrasy as a Tool of Knowledge. Social Criticism in the Age of the Normalized Intellectual,” devoted to a critical analysis of “Mut, Mitleid und ein gutes Augen,” a revised and above all shorted version of this article, that is only the second paragraph, has been later published in English as a part of the Preface to the second edition of The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2nd ed., 2002, Xi–XVIII).

10 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 264.

11 See e.g. Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 265.

12 On Oliver Stone see also; Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 265.

13 Jaeggi, “Rethinking Ideology,” 74.

14 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 286; see also p. 265, p. 299.

15 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 264.

16 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 266 ff.

17 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 265; see also p. 274.

18 Jaeggi, “Rethinking Ideology,” 74.

19 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 267.

20 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 273.

21 See also Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 290.

22 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 272.

23 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 276.

24 See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 71 ff; I tried to outline this methodological deficit of Walzer's approach (an not only the political deficit of the immanent neo-Hegelian model) in Solinas, “On the Forms of Immanent Critique,” 104 ff.

25 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 60.

26 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 68.

27 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 69.

28 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 27 f.

29 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 270–6.

30 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 3; see also p. 57.

31 See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 33–4.

32 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 55 f.

33 See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 33–4; on this point see also Walzer, Preface to the second Edition, XII–XIII.

34 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 33.

35 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 33–4.

36 See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 55: “Insofar as the Critic Wants to Be Effective … ”.

37 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 48; see also pp. 20, 44.

38 See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 52.

39 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 268, footnote.

40 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 269.

41 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 272.

42 See e.g. Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 259, 261.

43 See e.g. Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 282.

44 Marx, “Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843,” 208.

45 Marx, “Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843,” 207.

46 Jaeggi, “Rethinking Ideology,” 74–5; see also Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 277–8.

47 Marx, “Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843,” 208–9.

48 Marx, “Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843,” 209.

49 See also Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 306–7.

50 Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 285.

51 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 36; quoted in Mouffe, “Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci,” 181.

52 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 36.

53 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 36–7.

54 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 37–8.

55 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 38.

56 This crucial point is explicitly highlighted also in Walzer, Mut, Mitleid und ein gutes Augen, 709.

57 Here we have then to go beyond the (very problematic) distinction between “social theory” and “social critique” discussed in Walzer, Mut, Mitleid und ein gutes Augen, 709 ff.

58 See Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, 280, 285–6, 296–301.

59 Marx, “Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843,” 208.

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Marco Solinas

Marco Solinas is a post-doctoral fellow in political philosophy at Scuola Universitaria Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy. His current research focuses on critical theory and political theory of emotions. He is the author of the monographs From Aristotle's Teleology to Darwin's Genealogy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Via Platonica zum Unbewussten (Wien: Turia und Kant, 2012); some of his articles have been published in Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophisches Jahrbuch, Teoria Politica, Revue Philosophique de Louvain, La Società degli individui, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung.