Presented at the 6th International Critical Theory Conference, John Felice Rome Center, Loyola University, Rome

1. Social Pathology and
‘Postmetaphysical
Thinking’
Robert Farrow
6th International Critical Theory Conference, The John Felice Rome
Center of Loyola University Chicago in Rome

2. Main claims of this presentation
• The notion of ‘social pathology’ is undertheorised in the Frankfurt
tradition
• We must either be realists about social pathologies or critical theory is
not methodologically distinct
• To be realists about social pathologies we require a social teleology
• Such a teleology cannot be provided within the remit of
‘postmetaphysical thinking’ without making room for a particular kind
of philosophical judgement

3. Structure
• I. The role of social pathology in contemporary critical theory
• II. Analysis of the concept
• III. Postmetaphysical Teleology
• IV. Judgements about the Teleological/Pathological

4. I. Social Pathology in Critical Theory
• Methodological construct used by Frankfurt School
• NB. Phrase rarely (if ever) used by first generation
• Distinct from ethical, social, political criticism
• Draws together sociological and philosophical aspects

5. Habermas (1984:333)

6. Typology of Social Pathologies
Culture Society Person
Cultural
Reproduction
Loss of Meaning
Withdrawal of
Legitimation
Crisis in Orientation
and Education
Rationality of
Knowledge
Social Integration
Unsettling of
Collective Identity
Anomie Alienation
Solidarity of
Members
Socialization Rupture of Tradition
Withdrawal of
Motivation
Psychopathologies
Personal
Responsibility
Habermas (1987:143)

7. Mode of recognition emotional support cognitive respect social esteem
Dimension of Personality needs and emotions moral responsibility traits and abilities
Forms of recognition
primary relationships (love,
friendship)
legal relations (rights)
community of values
(solidarity)
Developmental potential -
generalization,
de-formalization
individualization,
equalization
Practical relation-to-self basic self confidence self-respect self-esteem
Forms of disrespect abuse and rape denial of rights, exclusion denigration, insult
Threatened component of
personality
physical integrity social integrity ‘honour’, dignity
The structure of relations of recognition (Honneth, 1996:129)

8. “Capitalism is to be understood as a pathology, and not
merely social injustice”
Honneth (2007:14)
“The historical past should be understood as a process of
development whose pathological deformation by
capitalism may be overcome”
Honneth (1996:337)

9. II. Analysis of the concept
• Social pathology as metaphor
– C19th Sociology
– Historically rooted in ‘body politic’ (C. 14-15th
)
– An (incredibly) brief historical survey

10. The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology
Avis aus roys. France, probably Paris, 1347-1350.

11. The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology
Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

12. “For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body
Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your
Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are
the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues (lying
under such SKIN), hereby Society stands and works;--then is
Religion the inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which
ministers Life and warm Circulation to the whole. Without which
Pericardial Tissue the Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert,
or animated only by a Galvanic vitality; the SKIN would become a
shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting rawhide; and Society itself a dead
carcass,--deserving to be buried.”
Thomas Carlyle (1836) Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr
Teufelsdrockh, Bk. 3, Ch.2.

13. Sociologists who refer to ‘social pathologies’
Bird (1862); Smith (1911); Queen (1925); Day (1934);
Schuman (1936); Wooton (1963); Rosenberg et al. (1964);
Pietrowski (2006); and Henry (2008).
The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

14. Things to note about medical analogy
1. Pathologists are realists about pathologies
2. Teleology is an essential part of the process
3. Collapse of fact/value distinction

15. II. Analysis of the concept
• Medical analogy
– Realism about pathology
– Teleology as essential feature
• Realism about social pathologies means that they are not
simply theoretical tools or metaphors

16. Either…
1.‘Social pathology’ is a useful fiction but as a result critical
theory is not distinct from other forms of social critique
or
2.Critical theorists are obliged to be realists about social
pathologies

17. III. Postmetaphysical Teleology
• Aristotle: metaphysical biology
• Objections
• Scepticism of neo-Aristotelians

18. “[MacIntyre] gets into problems with his recourse to the Aristotelian
concept of praxis as soon as he attempts to extract a universal core
from the unavoidable pluralism of equally legitimate forms of life
which is typical of modernity. Where does he derive [the]
metaphysical pre-eminence of the polis as the model form of life,
where human beings [can] realize the telos of the good life? [In]
modernity, the plurality of individual life-projects and collective life
forms cannot be prejudged philosophically...”
Habermas (interview) in Dews (ed.) (1992:348)
[my emphasis]

19. III. Postmetaphysical Teleology
• Postmetaphysical paradigm (Habermas)
–Communicative rationality
–Fallibilism
–Historicization, situatedness
–Pragmatism
–Proceduralism

20. Habermas: ‘Species Ethics’
“Where we lack compelling moral reasons we have to let
ourselves be guided by the signposts set up by the ethics
of the species.” (Habermas, 2003:71)
•Subversion of procedural/communicative rationality
The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

21. Honneth: Recognition & Ethical Life
• Three forms of recognition / misrecognition
• Love / Abuse
• Respect / Denial of Rights
• Esteem / Denigration
• The ‘Neo-Nazi’ objection
The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

22. IV. (Philosophical) Judgements about the good
• Habermas (1982) says of judgments of natural purpose: “such
attempts would have to lead back to metaphysics, and this behind
the levels of learning reached in the modern age into a
reenchanted world.”
• McCarthy: defence of judgements about natural good
• Kant’s defence of teleology in Critique of Judgement
•A Caveat

23. Summary
• There is a tension between two commitments in contemporary
critical theory
• Realism about social pathologies
• ‘Postmetaphysical’ thinking
• One could reject the idea that we need such realism
• Another way out of the problem is to defend a particular kind of
philosophical judgments about the social good which would
require a reinvigorated naturalism
The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

24. “Reason cannot become transparent to itself as long as
men act as members of an organism which lacks reason.
Organism as a naturally developing and declining unity
cannot be a sort of model for society, but only a form of
deadened existence from which society must emancipate
itself.”
Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory”

25. rob.farrow@open.ac.uk
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
www.open.ac.uk/iet
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/openminded/
philosopher1978

26. References
• Aristotle (1946) Politics. Translated by Ernest Barker. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bird, John. Contributions to Social Pathology. London: Ward and Lock, 1862.
• Carlyle, T. (1896) Sartor Resartus. Boston, Mass.: Ginn and Company
• Day, Herbert Lamson, Social Pathology in China. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934.
• Dews, P. (ed.) (1994) Habermas: Autonomy and Solidarity. London: Verso
• Foot, P. (1978) Virtues and Vices. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Fraser, N., and Honneth, A. (2003) Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical
Exchange. Translated by Joel Golb, James Ingram and Christiane Wilke. London and New York:
Verso.
• Freundlieb, Dieter (2000). “Rethinking Critical Theory: Weaknesses and New Directions” in
Constellations 7, no. 1. 80-99.
• Habermas, J. (1982) “A Reply to My Critics” in Habermas: Critical Debates, edited by J. B.
Thomson and D. Held, 218-83. London: Macmillan
• Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization
of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

27. References
• Habermas, J. (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 2: Lifeworld and System: A
Critique of Functionalist Reason. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Habermas, J. (2003) The Future of Human Nature. Oxford: Polity Press
• Henry, Sally. Bullying as a Social Pathology: A Peer Group Analysis. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen
Press, 2008
• Hobbes, T. (1651) Leviathan. Oxford : Clarendon Press
• Honneth, A. (1994) “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: Situating Critical Theory Today” in
Habermas: A Critical Reader, edited by Peter Dews, pp.320-37. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Honneth, A. (1999) “Pathologies of the Social: The Past and Present of Social Philosophy” in The
Handbook of Critical Theory, edited by David Rasmussen, Oxford: Blackwell. 369-398
• Honneth, A. (2004) “A Social Pathology of Reason” in The Cambridge Companion to Critical
Theory, edited by Fred Rush. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 336-60
• Honneth, A. (2007) Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
• Honneth, A. (2009) Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory. Translated by James
Ingram et al. New York: Columbia University Press

28. References
• Horkheimer, M. (1936) “Traditional and Critical Theory” in Critical Theory, edited by M. J. O'Connell.
New York: Herder & Herder 188-214
• Hurtshouse, R. (1987) Beginning Lives. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Kant, I. (1987) Critique of Judgement. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis & Cambridge:
Hackett Publishing Company.
• Kant, I. (1929(Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan
• MacIntyre, A. (1982) After Virtue. London: Duckworth.
• McCarthy, T. (1991) Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary
Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Queen, Stuart Alfred. Social Pathology. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1925.
• Rosenberg, Bernard, and et al. Mass Society in Crisis: Social Problems and Social Pathology.
London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964.
• Schuman, Frederick L. Hitler and the Nazi Dictatorship: a study of social pathology and the politics
of fascism. s.l. : Robert Hale and Co, 1936.

29. References
• Horkheimer, M. (1936) “Traditional and Critical Theory” in Critical Theory, edited by M. J. O'Connell.
New York: Herder & Herder 188-214
• Hurtshouse, R. (1987) Beginning Lives. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Kant, I. (1987) Critique of Judgement. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis & Cambridge:
Hackett Publishing Company.
• Kant, I. (1929(Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan
• MacIntyre, A. (1982) After Virtue. London: Duckworth.
• McCarthy, T. (1991) Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary
Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Queen, Stuart Alfred. Social Pathology. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1925.
• Rosenberg, Bernard, and et al. Mass Society in Crisis: Social Problems and Social Pathology.
London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964.
• Schuman, Frederick L. Hitler and the Nazi Dictatorship: a study of social pathology and the politics
of fascism. s.l. : Robert Hale and Co, 1936.

30. References
• Smith, Samuel George. Social Pathology. New York: Macmillan, 1911.
• Wootton, Barbara. Social Science and Social Pathology. s.l.: Allen and Unwin, 1963.
• Zurn, C. (2000) “Anthropology and Normativity: A Critique of Axel Honneth’s ‘Formal Conception of
an Ethical Life’” in Philosophy and Social Criticism 26, no. 1 (2000): 115-24.