By Bernard E. Harcourt
With regard to Critical Theory, the concept of Utopia was predominantly of interest to the first generation of the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer and Adorno, and later Marcuse) and to their adjacent thinkers, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and, still further away, Karl Mannheim—or, at least, we will be focusing on their writings in this seminar. (We will turn to the third generation, specifically to Seyla Benhabib’s writings on utopia and cosmopolitanism which grew out of her classic text, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, at Utopia 12/13 on April 12, 2023, with Robert Gooding-Williams, Karuna Mantena, and Kendall Thomas).
Within the first generation of the Frankfurt School and adjacent thinkers, there was an important shift in the relation to utopia from what one might call a “unidirectional” concern during the early period (1920s-1930s, with the publication of Bloch’s The Spirit of Utopia [1918] and of Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia [1929]) to what one might call a “bidirectional” approach during the late period (1950s-1960s, especially prior to the student uprisings of 1968, with Marcuse’s idea of the “end of utopia” and Bloch’s efforts to revive utopia and imagination within the East Bloc). This transformation is the product, in large part, of the history of Soviet communism, the rise and fall of Stalinism, and the ossification of socialism in the East Bloc on the one hand, and the lead up to the student revolutions of May ‘68 in the West on the other hand.
During the earlier unidirectional moment, critical theorists predominantly analyzed the concept of utopia through the lens of the historical absence or non-realization of emancipatory uprisings in the West. The task for Bloch and Horkheimer was to articulate the interaction between utopian thinking and emancipatory praxis. By contrast, during the later bidirectional period, there developed different geopolitical discourses on utopia: one concerning the role of utopian thinking in relation to revolutionary praxis in the West and the other regarding the need for utopian thinking to radically reimagine Soviet-style socialism. It is fair to say that, through the prism of both the temporal shift and the political fragmentation, Critical Theory has produced a spectrum of theories of utopia.
During the first period (1920s-1930s), focused predominantly on the problem of political praxis in advanced Western capitalist societies, there emerged at least three different theories of utopia:
1/ The first, most clearly formulated by Ernst Bloch, adamantly embraced the need for utopian thinking in the West as a spur to political action. Most clearly formulated in Bloch’s Spirit of Utopia, a poetic philosophical text, this position championed utopia as an absolutely necessary stimulant for normatively positive political praxis. It was formulated within the framework a Marxist philosophy of history. In its effect, this first approach rebuffed the classical anti-utopianism of Marx and Engels, at least according to the conventional reading.
2/ At the other extreme, Mannheim developed a neutral sociological theory of utopia as the flip side of his description of ideology. Mannheim did not locate the sociology of knowledge within the historical conjuncture of the times (late capitalism; crises of capital; bourgeois intellectual production), as Horkheimer would; he attempted instead to develop a positivist, objective, or neutral theory about ideologies and utopian thinking that applied across historical periods. Along those lines, ideologies were to be understood as the prevailing world views, and utopias as the predominant hopes and aspirations at any one time—hopes and aspirations that would spur people to action.
3/ Situated somewhere in the middle, the early Frankfurt School thinkers connected the concept of utopia more directly to the dialectics of praxis—to the question of whether the political and economic conditions were ripe for political action and if so, how to nourish, fuel, and support the will to revolutionary action. Horkheimer’s critique of utopian thinking relates to whether or not the economic and political conditions within capitalism, for example, the accumulation and crises of capital (what he referred to as the “objective conditions”) are sufficiently advanced in Western society for social transformation; only then is utopian imagination useful as a way to spur the will and desire for social change that is necessary to ignite praxis (what he referred to as the “subjective conditions”). For Horkheimer, by contrast to Mannheim, it is impossible to analyze the role of utopian thinking outside of the self-reflexive framework of critical theory.
By the 1960s, there is a completely different political constellation because critical thinkers like Adorno, Marcuse, and especially Bloch, are facing challenges from both political directions: not just the reactionary or counter-revolutionary forces in the West, but the equally conservative, even stultifying, pressures of Soviet communism in the East. In that context, with the bidirectional pulling and pushing, there emerge two new positions:
4/ First, Marcuse proposes, for the West, the “end of utopia.” What Marcuse means by that, is that the economic conditions and crises of capitalism have attained a point that is ripe for social transformation and, therefore, that there is no need to speak of utopia as an impossible future, as a non-existing space, precisely because it could very well exist; in fact, the only thing getting in the way is the lack of will, and even that, according to Marcuse, was changing as a result of the new student movements. The idea of an “end of utopia” was intended to spur the young generations to action. Notice that the framework fits neatly within the critical theory paradigm; it is the social and economic conditions that have changed, resulting in a different positioning of utopia.
5/ But second, and in relation to the Eastern Bloc, Ernst Bloch, and also Theodor Adorno, advocate for an enhanced need for utopian thinking within Soviet-style socialist countries. Utopia now becomes essential to reimagining a stultified socialism.
In both periods, the concept of utopia undergoes change based on the historical circumstances of the times. The relationship between Critical Theory and utopia derives or depends—as does Critical Theory more generally—on the historical conjuncture. But note that the concept is practically always instrumentalized, in the sense that it does not have an essence; it is, rather, constantly redeployed in furtherance of political action. It is reconceptualized in order to further the goal of emancipation as achieved through praxis, where praxis itself is formulated in relation to the “objective” and “subjective” conditions of the period.
To help us explore and disarticulate the relation between Critical Theory and Utopia, it is a privilege to welcome to our seminar two brilliant critical philosophers and leading thinkers of the Frankfurt School, Rahel Jaeggi and Martin Saar. Rahel Jaeggi is the author of Critique of Forms of Life and is Professor of Practical Philosophy, with an emphasis on Social and Political Philosophy, and director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change Berlin at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Martin Saar is the author of Genealogy as Critique: History and Theory of the Subject after Nietzsche and Foucault, and is Professor of Social Philosophy at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main; this year, Martin Saar is a fellow here at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin—and in that capacity, is our host at the Wissenschaftskolleg. Thank you Martin and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin for hosting us!
And welcome to Utopia 10/13!