Phenomenological Reviews

Series | Book | Chapter

203728

Nietzsche, critical theory and a theory of knowledge

James Swindal

pp. 253-264

Abstract

Max Horkheimer stipulated that a critical theory must have a "concrete awareness of its own limitations."1 When critical theorists apply this rule to their construction of a "theory of knowledge," they formulate a critical science aware that knowledge of any object is conditioned by the social and historical perspective of the knower of the object. This view of science, emerging from the problem formulated in Hegel" s Phenomenology regarding the influence of an instrument of observation upon what is observed, underlaid the anti-positivist polemic of the last several decades. Yet even though critical theorists deny that any scientific discipline possesses a theoretical gaze able to fix laws in realities independent of its own social context, they maintain that it can nonetheless arrive at a restricted set of universals on the basis of which modest but significant predictions about society can be made. But all of its rules and generalizations remain under the material constraints of social forces.

Publication details

Published in:

Babich Babette (1999) Nietzsche, theories of knowledge, and critical theory I: Nietzsche and the sciences. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 253-264

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-2430-2_18

Full citation:

Swindal James (1999) „Nietzsche, critical theory and a theory of knowledge“, In: B. Babich (ed.), Nietzsche, theories of knowledge, and critical theory I, Dordrecht, Springer, 253–264.