Ideology and Suffering: On the Realism of the Frankfurt School

• In Event: Reimagining Political Realism

Abstract

Explanatory reflections that reveal the socio-historical roots of beliefs and institutions can be subversive. Some say that realism in political philosophy should mean a genealogical mode of critique that debunks legitimation stories without the need to invoke contested concepts like injustice or oppression. In the spirit of Marx and Nietzsche, self-declared “radical realists” aim to develop an empirically informed ideology critique without morality. For, in their view, idealistic moral reflections detached from reality as we know it run the risk of elevating prejudices into principles, given the social conditionality of thought. Their alternative approach, which relies primarily on epistemic norms, has been associated with critical theory in general and Theodor W. Adorno in particular. In this paper, I assess the relationship between radical realism and the tradition of the Frankfurt School. My aim is to shed some doubt on the desirability of banning moral considerations from a critique of ideologies. Realists have suggested that critical theory should cast overboard the “transcendental baggage” introduced by Habermasian discourse ethics and also abandon the concept of “false consciousness” because of its demanding philosophical implications. By drawing mainly on Adorno, I will criticize the bare-bones understanding of ideology that would result and commend a radical form of critique that takes into account the complexity of moral experiences of suffering. Ideologies limit the abstract field of possibilities we can envision, and they repress as well as misdirect impulses of suffering. A critique should unveil these mechanisms in political life. But since they will, in order to cloak the reprehensible as reasonable, involve the abuse of moral concepts and ideals, and thus what Adorno called a “false transcendence,” it is a mistake to remain outside the realm of morality to counter them.

Author

• Amadeus Ulrich, Goethe University Frankfurt