Mark Thorsby--Introduction to Critical Theory

source: Mark Thorsby     2013年11月12日
Lecture 12 from Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy
Professor Thorsby introduces students to the key concepts of critical theory via the work of Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse

Rick Roderick: The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (1993)

# automatic playing for the 8 videos (click the up-left corner for the list)

source: The Partially Examined Life     2012年1月25日
For more information, see http://www.rickroderick.org

Rick Roderick on The Masters of Suspicion [full length] 48:03
Rick Roderick on Heidegger - The Rejection of Humanism [full length] 44:52
Rick Roderick on Sartre - The Road to Freedom [full length] 39:58
Rick Roderick on Marcuse - One-Dimensional Man [full length] 45:23
Rick Roderick on Habermas - The Fragile Dignity of Humanity [full length] 47:34
Rick Roderick on Foucault - The Disappearance of the Human [full length] 45:47
Rick Roderick on Derrida - The Ends of Man [full length] 44:13
Rick Roderick on Baudrillard - Fatal Strategies [full length] 48:03

Rick Roderick on Habermas - The Fragile Dignity of Humanity [full length]

source: The Partially Examined Life    2012年1月25日
This video is 5th in the 8-part video lecture series, The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (1993).

Lecture notes:
I. Habermas is perhaps the last important defender of a kind of rationalism that attempts to save the contributions of modernity, while recognizing its distortions and pathologies. He will attempt to disentangle enlightenment in myth in the name of human emancipation free from unnecessary constraints.
II. Habermas begins his project with a distinction between labor (as analyzed by Marx) and interaction. The first is based on production, the second on communication. The first is monological, the second dialogical. Freud serves as the model for the study of distorted forms of speech and action upon which a critical theory of society can take its start.
III. But to criticize distorted communication, a model of undistorted communication is required. Habermas seeks to develop an argument that the human species has a fundamental interest in undistorted communication that is built into the very structure of language.
IV. Undistorted communication must meet four conditions; the symmetry condition (everyone has an equal chance to talk and listen); the sincerity condition (everyone discloses what they believe to be true); the normative condition (everyone attempts to say what is right morally).
V. Such communication would make a free society possible in which the only force a free person must recognize is "the unforced force of the better argument". This is not just an elitist notion, since "in a process of enlightenment there can only be participants".
VI. Undistorted speech and action opens us up to the concept of communicative rationality that acts as a counter concept to merely instrumental rationality as criticized by Marcuse. For Habermas, we should seek a balance between instrumental and critical reason, between science and the ethical and the aesthetic dimensions that have been unbalanced by power and money, state and economy.
VII. The fragile self is caught between these abstract systems of control in its struggle for autonomy and meaning. Habermas' project for emancipation holds out the hope that a measure of the dignity of humanity can be rescued from the one-sided development of modernity through the power of solidarity and reason.
VIII. Habermas' project is ongoing, and includes activity in the public sphere where alone the promise of a reasoned consensus based on undistorted communication might be fulfilled.
For more information, see http://www.rickroderick.org

Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School (1977)

source: mehranshargh    2015年11月7日
In this program with world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee, the late philosopher and radical political theorist Herbert Marcuse explains how the so-called Frankfurt School reevaluated Marxism when world economic crisis failed to destroy capitalism as predicted by Marx. He also analyzes the philosophical roots of the student rebellions of the sixties.

Herbert Marcuse on the Frankfurt School (1-5)

source: Heathwood Press  2015年5月20日
The Frankfurt School was dedicated to addressing a series of issues not only concerning the foundations of modern and historic society, but also the philosophy of social science. Investigating some of the most foundational issues about the nature of the social world, Frankfurt School critical theory was an important period in the history of Western thought and continues to be entirely relevant today when trying to understand the overarching social forces that affect us all in our global world.

Here is an insightful five-part interview with Herbert Marcuse, discussing everything that has to do with Frankfurt School critical theory. For anyone who is just learning about or being introduced to the Frankfurt School, this interview with Marcuse will offer some key insights into the innovative thinking about social agency and structure that was central to the movement.