The poverty of Critical Theory in International Relations: Habermas, Linklater and the failings of cosmopolitan critique

Abstract

Within and outside of the discipline of International Relations, Frankfurt School Critical Theory faces a ‘crisis of critique’ that is affecting its ability to generate analyses and political interventions that are relevant to the present world-historical conjuncture. This article seeks to identify the theoretical origins of this predicament by investigating the meta-theoretical architecture of the prevailing Habermasian framework of critique. I contend that the binary ontology and methodology of society that lies at the heart of the Habermasian paradigm has effected an uncoupling of normative critique from substantive social and political analysis and resulted in a severe weakening of both Critical Theory’s ‘explanatory-diagnostic’ and ‘anticipatory-utopian’ capabilities. Thereafter, I discuss the determinate ways in which these issues have manifested in critical theoretical interventions on international politics by exploring both Habermas’s own writings on the post-national constellation and Andrew Linklater’s theory of cosmopolitanism and the sociology of global morals. Both projects, it is argued, rely on a reductive, functionalist analysis of global political dynamics and express a political perspective that lacks a definite critical content. Ultimately, the article contends that a revitalisation of Critical Theory in International Relations must necessarily involve a clarification of its fundamental categories of analysis and a recovery of the orientation towards totalising critique.

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“…In the field of IR, since his seminal work The Future of Human Nature (Habermas 2001), the Habermasian critical project in IR was explicitly built on a binary framework. One side interprets the normative and legal evolution of world society and assessing the possibilities for further moral development in the global arena, while the other side (the so-called the systems-diagnostic) analyse in functionalist terms the transformations of economic and political subsystems in the age of globalisation (Schmid 2018). The systems-diagnostic side consists of three core points:…”

“…3. The transformation aspect where the political and administrative functions that have historically been attached to the nation-state have to be ‗transferred … to larger political entities (or reconstituting itself at a supranational level) which could manage to keep pace with a transnational economy' (Habermas 2001: 52, Habermas 2012, Schmid 2018.…”

“…Since his early works on international political theory, Linklater's works were dominated by the concern with identifying the different stages of development of the freedom of human subjects in the area of their international relations. Later On, his works progressively shift away from philosophical and normative questions and towards a greater engagement with sociological inquiry (Linklater 1980, Schmid 2018).…”

Information is power? Transparency and fetishism in international relations

“…In IR, Critical Theory has generally been associated with discourse ethics and scholarly 'reflexivity'. However, recent reconsiderations of this tradition in IR and elsewhere identify its core as lying in the materialist critique of a modern, capitalist society which is 'unthinkingly destroying itself' (Müller-Doohm, 2017, p. 254;Schmid, 2017). For many Critical Theorists, this critique partly concerns the epistemic dimensions of a social totality structured around the capitalist exchange principle, with the Marxist concept of fetishism representing a key influence.…”

Jürgen Habermas and the democratization of world politics

“…As such, Habermas's critical approach to world politics needs to be further developed, namely through a deeper engagement with the historical-sociological study of world politics in order to disclose the actual existing immanent potentials for the development of the type of 'cosmopolitan vision' Habermas is seeking to nurture (see: Beck, 2006). Recent developments in critical international theory appear to be moving in this direction, either calling for the need for greater historical-sociological engagement (Schmide, 2018, Devetak, 2018, or seeking to develop it themselves (Linklater, 2016). It is up to contemporary and future scholars to complete this task and understand if, and how, Habermas's ethical vision for the future of world politics might be actualized.…”