Maeve Cooke

Redeeming redemption
The utopian dimension of critical social
theory
Abstract Critical social theory has an uneasy relationship with utopia. On
the one hand, the idea of an alternative, better social order is necessary in
order to make sense of its criticisms of a given social context. On the other
hand, utopian thinking has to avoid bad utopianism, dened as lack of
connection with the actual historical process, and nalism, dened as
closure of the historical process. Contemporary approaches to critical social
theory endeavour to avoid these dangers by way of a postmetaphysical
strategy. However, they run up against the problem that utopian thinking
has an unavoidable metaphysical moment. Rather than seeking to eliminate
this moment, therefore, they should acknowledge its inevitability. The
challenge is to maintain a productive tension between closure and contesta-
bility and between attainability and elusiveness. The paper outlines a
strategy for meeting this challenge, a strategy that is based on a distinction
between the metaphysical content of utopian projections and their fallible
claims to validity.
Key words critical social theory fallibilism metaphysical closure
postmetaphysical thinking reexivity regulative idea utopia
Critical social theory has an uneasy relationship with the idea of utopia.
Despite evident utopian elements in his own critical project, Karl Marx
criticizes the fantastic pictures of future society painted by utopian
socialists such as Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen. Since their social
criticism ignores the absence of the economic conditions necessary for
emancipation and does not take account of the actual state of the pro-
letariat, it becomes a mere fantastic scheme in which personal inven-
tiveness takes the place of historical action.
1
Here we nd one common
motif in the critique of utopian thinking: its distance from the actual
PSC
PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM

vol 30 no 4

pp. 413429
Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0191453704044026
02 cooke (mrw/s) 15/6/04 11:26 am Page 413
historical process, leading to a lack of connection with the potentials
for emancipation implicit within existing social reality. A critical social
theory that fails to connect with the actual historical process stands
accused of bad utopianism, of an inability to set in train transforma-
tive social action.
2
This motif recurs, for example, in the work of
Herbert Marcuse, who rejects utopias as impossible projects, not real-
izable through the efforts of human beings.
3
Marxs ambivalence regard-
ing utopian thinking is shared by Georges Sorel, though for different
reasons. Again, despite the strong utopian impulse in his own social
criticism, Sorel rejects utopian projections, unfavourably contrasting
their rationalist blueprints for a good society with non-intellectual,
imaginative constructions.
4
Here we nd a second motif in the critique
of utopian thinking: its denial of the contingency of human knowledge
and the creativity of human free will, leading to a closure of the
historical process. Critical social thinking that sees the good society as
a condition actually attainable by human beings stands accused of
nalism, of an absolutist and ahistorical conception of human know-
ledge that gives rise to totalitarian models of social order.
5
This motif
can be found, for example, in the work of Isaiah Berlin, who denounces
utopian schemes as morally repulsive visions of a closed world, praising
Sorel for his revolt against the rationalist ideal of frictionless content-
ment in a harmonious social system in which all ultimate questions are
reduced to technical problems, soluble by appropriate techniques.
6
Today, critical social theorists tend to argue that a postmetaphysi-
cal approach is necessary in order to avoid the problems of bad
utopianism, nalism and totalitarianism. For, these problems can be
attributed to forms of metaphysical thinking that are authoritarian and
ahistorical. Critical social thinking that succumbs to bad utopianism
is open to the charge of authoritarianism in that it projects images of a
good society whose validity is unquestionable, not open to challenge
in public processes of critical interrogation.
7
Critical social theory that
succumbs to nalism, with its accompanying risk of totalitarianism,
is open to the charge of ahistoricism in that it projects images of a good
society that stands beyond the inuence of history and context.
8
Speaking generally, a postmetaphysical approach seeks to avoid abso-
lutist and foundationalist conceptions of valid knowledge and to
acknowledge the inuences of history and context on human experience
and thinking.
9
More specically, it seeks to avoid bad utopianism by
locating emancipatory potentials within actual historical reality;
moreover, the actualization of these potentials is held to be not a matter
of natural or historical necessity but dependent on the historical action
of autonomously acting human beings; thus, in contrast to (the later)
Marx, for whom emancipation was the result of the necessary dynamics
of historical development, contemporary critical social theory makes the
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realization of these potentials contingent on transformative social
action. It seeks to avoid nalism, and its accompanying risk of totali-
tarianism, by eschewing substantive ideas of the good society in favour
of purely formal conceptions.
These concerns are evident in the conception of utopia that can be
extracted from Jrgen Habermass theory of communicative action.
10
In
his projected good society, communicative rationality would ourish
in the main domains of the lifeworld. In the domain of socio-cultural
reproduction, cultural traditions would be passed on from generation
to generation by way of public processes of rational deliberation. In the
domain of moral, legal and political validity, valid norms, principles,
laws and policies would be the outcome of open-ended, fair, public pro-
cesses of intersubjective deliberation guided only by the search for the
right answer. In the domain of personal identity-formation, human
beings would develop as autonomous agents for whom no aspect of
their own subjectivity was in principle immune from rational criticism.
(Furthermore, this lifeworld, governed by norms of communicative
rationality, would maintain a harmonious relationship with the func-
tionalist imperatives of the social system.
11
)
This conception of utopia is attributed with the features necessary
in order to avoid bad utopianism, nalism and totalitarianism.
Habermas claims, rst, that the idea of a fully rationalized lifeworld is
already implicit within the everyday linguistic practices of modern
societies. Thus, it expresses an emancipatory potential that does not
stand abstractly removed from history and the complexities of social
reality but is already contained within existing social contexts. Second,
he emphasizes that the rationalization of the lifeworld is not a process
that can be taken for granted but is one that is contingent on the trans-
formative action of autonomous acting social agents. Thus, his good
society is seen not as the natural or inevitable result of the develop-
mental dynamics of modern societies but as a possibility whose real-
ization is dependent on the activity of autonomous agents in actual,
historically specic social orders. Third, communicative rationality
refers primarily to a procedure for dealing with validity-claims and not
to the content of these claims. Thus, his good society is dened purely
formally; rather than describing the concrete shape of exemplary forms
of life it merely species the structural characteristics of possible ones.
However, whereas the rst and second features of Habermass post-
metaphysical vision are evidently important if bad utopianism,
nalism and totalitarianism are to be avoided, the third feature
requires closer examination.

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The importance of the rst requirement, that the projected good
society should express a potential already contained within existing
social reality, becomes clear if we consider the problem of motivation
facing critical social theory when its ethical projections abstract from
the actual experiences of those to whom its social criticisms are directed.
Adorno runs up against this kind of problem as a result of his view that
instrumental rationality has become all-pervasive under conditions of
late capitalism. For, if a repressive instrumental rationality has now
invaded every part of social life and every aspect of individual con-
sciousness, the critical social theorist must rst nd ways of penetrat-
ing the closed circle of ideology before his projected images of the good
society can motivate social agents to engage in transformative social
action.
12
The problem of motivation is connected with a problem of
justication: if emancipation is conceived in terms that abstract from
the experiences of concrete social agents, these agents will lack a rational
basis for accepting the validity of the emancipatory perspective offered;
in that case, critical social theory would suffer from a justicatory
decit: in defending the validity of its guiding idea of the good society,
it would not be able to appeal to reasons that could resonate with the
needs and interests of its addressees but would have to impose its vision
of emancipation in an authoritarian manner.
13
The second feature of Habermass postmetaphysical conception of
utopia, too, is clearly a key ingredient of any approach that seeks to
avoid bad utopianism, nalism and totalitarianism. This is its depen-
dence on transformative action. If utopian thinking is not to deny the
inuence on human existence of history and context, and if it is not to
deny the creative spontaneity of human free will, it must eschew (sub-
stantive) teleological conceptions of the good society. Instead, it must
endeavour to keep open the process of history by making emancipation
a contingent matter, dependent on the perceptions, interpretations and
actions of concrete, historically situated, social agents.
The third feature is less straightforward. As indicated, Habermas
emphasizes the formality of his utopian conception. He does so in
common with several other contemporary critical social theorists: for
example, formality is deemed a key requirement of the idea of the good
life projected by Axel Honneths theory of recognition;
14
it is also a
central feature of the theory of happiness proposed by Martin Seel.
15
For thinkers such as Habermas, Honneth and Seel, critical social theory
is supposed to identify only the formal characteristics of possible good
societies, avoiding all substantive images. The difculty here is that even
formal ideas of the good society have to have some determinate
content; otherwise they would be unable to arouse the ethical imagin-
ation and would lack motivational and justicatory power.
16
In fact,
Habermass vision of a fully rationalized lifeworld is by no means
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indeterminate: it conjures a more or less concrete image of a social con-
dition in which communication would be perfectly open, in which the
outcomes of validity-orientated deliberation would be perfectly rational,
in which there would be perfect mutual understanding and in which
subjects would have full access to their own inner lives. Moreover, there
does seem to be a connection between the determinacy of the image and
the kind of metaphysical thinking that critical social theorists nd deeply
uncongenial. The idea of a fully rationalized lifeworld does not merely
evoke a picture of a (more or less) specic social condition; it evokes a
picture of a society in which the imperfections of existing social life
would nally have been eliminated. In each domain of the lifeworld, we
are invited to imagine a social condition in which human nitude would
have been overcome: the perfect fairness and openness of communi-
cation would ensure that the reproduction of socio-cultural life is based
on ideas and principles whose rationality is guaranteed, that all norms,
principles, laws and policies would take account of the genuine inter-
ests of all those affected by them and that inner nature would be organ-
ized rationally by the subjects concerned. For this reason, Albrecht
Wellmer is right to point out that ideas such as the idea of a rational-
ized lifeworld evoke the idea of a condition that transcends the contin-
gencies of social life and is, as such, metaphysical.
17
(Wellmers actual
example is the idea of an ideal speech situation, but for our present
purposes the two are analogous.) In consequence, Wellmer himself
despite his initial enthusiastic reception of Habermass linguistic
reformulation of the utopian content of critical social theory now
rejects theories that rely on idealizing projections.
18
His objections seem
to be twofold. First, he rejects any attempt to project a social condition
that abstracts from the unavoidable nitude of human existence; since
the projected condition would have left behind the constraints of nite
human forms of interaction, it is metaphysical in Derridas sense of
being beyond play and the order of the sign.
19
His second objection is
that such ideas are paradoxical: they evoke an ideal of human inter-
action that denies the very conditions that make human interaction
necessary and possible conditions such as inadequate information,
interpersonal misunderstandings, lack of insight, and so on. Accord-
ingly, they require human beings to strive for the realization of an ideal
whose realization would be the end of human interaction and, hence,
of history. We might also say: if such ideas are to have motivating power,
the unattainability of the goal they hold out must be forgotten or over-
looked: otherwise, they will provoke only resignation or cynicism.
20
The
metaphysical and paradoxical character of idealizing projections such
as the idea of an ideal speech situation or the idea of a rationalized
lifeworld has led Wellmer to advocate forms of critical social thinking
that dispense with such projections. As a result, the utopian dimension
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seems to have disappeared entirely from his own most recent work.
21
Habermas has accepted Wellmers general point, though it is still unclear
what conclusions he draws from it for the concept of utopia.
22
At any
rate it is evident that the metaphysical aspect of his utopian vision sits
uneasily with his emphasis on a postmetaphysical approach. This may
be one reason why the utopian dimension is not prominent in
Habermass recent writings on law and democracy.
23
Against Wellmer and, possibly, Habermas I want to suggest that
the metaphysical aspect of Habermass vision is not a aw in his utopian
thinking but rather an unavoidable aspect of the emancipatory perspec-
tive that is an integral part of the enterprise of critical social theory.

Critical social theory is a mode of reection that looks critically at pro-
cesses of social development from the point of view of the obstacles they
pose for individual human ourishing.
24
It has an in-built emancipatory
perspective: it seeks to liberate human beings from the social chains that
bind them by showing them how certain social mechanisms and insti-
tutions prevent them from fullling their potentials as human beings,
and by drawing attention to the essential contingency of these social
arrangements. Emancipation takes the form of eliminating the social
obstacles to human ourishing by way of transformative social action;
it may require prior processes of cognitive transformation whereby
those affected are brought to see the pernicious effects of the social
mechanisms and institutions in question. Its emancipatory efforts are
guided by the image of a good society in which the salient social
obstacles to human ourishing would have been overcome and in which
human beings would be able fully to achieve their potentials as human
beings.
The idea of the good society guiding critical social theory is closely
linked with notions of redemption and perfection. By redemption I
mean the making good of present (and possibly past) deciency: the idea
of redemption refers to a condition in which all relevant obstacles to
human ourishing would nally be removed. It thus has an evident
emancipatory dimension: in the projected condition of redemption,
human beings would be released from present suffering. Evidently, it
also has a connotation of perfection: the idea of redemption conjures a
state of absolute sufciency, a condition in which deciency would once
and for all have been overcome. In short, the redemptive dimension of
critical social theory consists in its evocation of an idea of the good life
that would be best for human beings. Not best in the sense of most
adequate to our present needs (for our present perceptions of our needs
might be distorted) but best in the transcendent, absolute sense of
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incapable of being bettered. We could also say that critical social
theory is concerned to criticize forms of social imperfection and that,
conceptually, criticism of imperfection presupposes a more or less deter-
minate idea of perfection. Thus, Rousseaus criticisms of amour propre
project the idea of a social condition in which human beings would
relate to each other and to their own subjectivities freely and virtuously,
without corrupting dependence on the opinions of others. Or again,
Marxs criticisms of alienated labour conjure the idea of a social con-
dition in which the essential powers of the individual would be gen-
uinely self-conrming. In each case, criticism of socially produced
deciency evokes an idea of perfect sufciency in terms of the perfect
realization of human potentials.
In cases such as these, social criticism is guided by more or less deter-
minate images of the good society.
25
These images are characterized
by metaphysical closure: they project a picture of a social condition of
self-sufciency and self-transparency. Insofar as the static, ahistorical,
absolutist metaphysical moment of its emancipatory perspective is
unavoidable, the challenge facing critical social theory is how to
accommodate this metaphysical moment without falling prey to the
dangers of bad utopianism, on the one hand, and nalism (with its
tendency towards totalitarianism) on the other.
In my view, to give up utopian thinking on grounds of its meta-
physical character would be disastrous for critical social theory, com-
promising its context-transcending, emancipatory perspective. By
utopian thinking I mean the ability to conjure up vivid ethical pictures
of a good society that would be possible only if certain currently hostile
social conditions were transformed. As we have seen, critical social
theory is a mode of ethical reection on society that is guided by images
of an alternative, better social order one in which the social obstacles
to human ourishing would have been overcome. Thus, like utopian
thinking in general, it relies on images of a good society in which
certain detrimental mechanisms of social reproduction and social insti-
tutions would have been replaced by ones that are conducive to human
ourishing.
26
Without such images, its emancipatory perspective would
suffer from a justicatory and motivational decit. Lacking any pictorial
aspect, the good society would amount to the empty object that some
poststructuralist thinkers postulate as the goal of ethical activity. Ernesto
Laclau, for example, argues that the ethical goal of democratic struggles
is an empty signier an object devoid of any particular determi-
nation.
27
Political representations of the ethical are incarnations of an
object that not alone always exceeds its particular representations and
is, as such, unattainable; it is also utterly devoid of content. This raises
the question of how it can exercise the motivational power that Laclau
attributes to it. If the ethical object is, as he insists, empty, it is quite
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unclear how it can exert a cognitive or affective pull and set in train
transformative social action. In fact, Laclau is ambiguous as to whether
it is the ethical object or its incarnations that exert a cognitive or affec-
tive pull. But in either case, he faces a problem: if he attributes it to the
former, it is unclear how an empty object can have motivating power;
if he attributes it to the latter, it is unclear why we should regard the
motivation as ethical. A second question concerns the relation between
the ethical object and particular representations of it. If the ethical object
is devoid of content, no normative bridge can connect it with the
particular incarnations of the ethical that gain hegemony as a result of
democratic struggles. If disconnected from its particular representations,
however, the ethical object is unable to provide any kind of ethical curb
on particular claims to universality. This opens the door for conven-
tionalism: the sole normative standard for assessing claims to univer-
sality is now conformity with socially institutionalized ideas of ethical
rightness with the prevailing Sittlichkeit. It is not surprising, therefore,
that Laclaus rejoinder to Slavoj ieks objection that he makes
hegemony a matter of pure decision is to appeal to conventional
standards of validity: he points to the ensemble of sedimented practices
constituting the normative framework of a certain society.
28
However,
this response shows only that hegemonic decisions are not normatively
arbitrary; it gives no clues as to how they may be distinguished from
one another on ethical grounds. Thus, by appealing to the Sittlichkeit
of particular communities, Laclau avoids the accusation of decisionism,
but at the price of opening himself to the charge of conventionalism.
The weaknesses of a conventionalist response are evident. The ensemble
of sedimented practices constituting the normative framework of a
certain society may be right-wing or totalitarian in tendency and hostile
to liberal-democratic ideas of freedom or equality.
29
In short, by cutting
the normative bridge between the ethical object and its particular
representations, Laclau appears to exclude the possibility of context-
transcending critical evaluation: his conception seems to rule out non-
conventional, normative arguments for critically assessing the content
of the ideas of the good society that gain hegemony as a result of demo-
cratic struggles.
For these reasons, which I elaborate elsewhere,
30
critical social
theory would pay a heavy price for giving up its substantive utopian
dimension. Rather than following Wellmer, Laclau and, possibly,
Habermas along this path, therefore, I want to propose an alternative
strategy. The strategy is based on the premise that there is no necessary
connection between the metaphysical aspect of utopian thinking and
bad utopianism, nalism and totalitarianism.
The strategy I propose requires a distinction between the meta-
physical content of the idea of the good society and its epistemological
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status. Although the content of the emancipatory perspective guiding
critical social theory has an unavoidably static moment of metaphysi-
cal closure, its claim to validity can and should be construed dynami-
cally, as inherently open to critical interrogation.
The challenge is twofold. It requires us to negotiate the tensions
between closure and contestability and between attainability and elu-
siveness.

In order to negotiate the tension between closure and contestability,
critical social theory must understand the claim to validity it makes for
its emancipatory perspective fallibilistically. Although it projects the
image of a social condition that is beyond history and context, it must
acknowledge the fallible character of this ethical projection, opening it
to challenge on the basis of good reasons. The ethical projections
inherent contestability is due in part to human nitude, in the sense of
the unavoidable contingency of human existence on factors outside of
human control, but also in part to human freedom, understood as the
ability to react creatively to events and phenomena in the world.
Whereas the nitude of human existence precludes the possibility of the
perfect knowledge necessary for the realization of absolute freedom,
justice, happiness and the like, the faculty of human freedom precludes
any nal specication of what the good life would entail. Taken
together, nitude and freedom imply that the content of a given utopian
vision may itself have to be revised in light of human reactions to new
situations. On a fallibilist view, therefore, social criticism is guided by
a metaphysical idea whose social and political implications, and whose
validity, are contingent on the nite interpretations and evaluations of
actual human beings in historically specic social situations. It may thus
be described as evoking an image of the absolute that is conditional.
However, the apparent contradiction here can be dispelled by distin-
guishing between three aspects of the idea of the good society: rst, its
determinate content for concrete individuals in concrete situations (this
content may not be capable of being articulated fully); second, its social
and political implications; and third, its epistemological status.
Although, on the fallibilist view, a utopian vision evokes a metaphysi-
cal image that has a determinate content for specic social agents in
specic situations, its implications for social and political transform-
ation can be elaborated only pragmatically, by way of the interpretative
and evaluative efforts of historically situated human beings. Further-
more, the validity-claim raised for the content of the vision is construed
fallibilistically, as always in principle open to challenge in historically
specic interpretative contexts on the basis of good reasons. In this way,
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a fallibilist conception is connected with a view of the process of history
as open-ended.

The second part of the challenge is to negotiate the tension between
attainability and unattainability. On the one hand, critical social theory
must project an image of a social condition that is seen as attainable by
way of the transformative action of social agents. On the other hand,
as a condition beyond the inuences of history and context, the good
society must be recognized as a ction as an imaginative projection
that is not attainable by nite human beings.
As we have seen, bad utopianism is a form of imaginative thinking
that remains too distant from social reality, failing to link up with the
needs and interests of concrete social agents.
31
One danger here is that
utopia becomes a mere fantastic scheme, not attainable by way of the
transformative action of social agents. In order to avoid this danger,
contemporary critical social theory identies utopian potentials within
existing social reality (Habermas, as we saw, draws attention to the
emancipatory potentials implicit within everyday practices of linguistic
communication). At rst glance, the metaphysical aspect of utopian
thinking seems to pose a problem in this regard, for it seems to imply
that the good society is unattainable. If, as Wellmer, suggests,
Habermass emancipatory perspective evokes a metaphysical image
the image of a social condition beyond history and context the real-
izability of this condition by way of social action is put in question.
But, equally, the metaphysical aspect of utopian thinking seems to
support the position that the good society is actually attainable; hence,
it appears to encourage nalism and totalitarianism. For, if utopian
thinking projects an image of the good society that is an image of a
condition in which the salient obstacles to human ourishing would
once and for all have been overcome, it seems to deny the nitude of
human knowledge and the creativity of human free will, closing off the
process of history.
I have attributed a metaphysical, redemptive aspect to the idea of
the good life guiding context-transcending social criticism. I use the term
redemption in a general sense to refer to a projected condition in which
present and possibly past deciency would nally be made good.
32
The idea of redemption is a key characteristic of utopian thinking, for
utopian thinking always projects beyond the present to a condition in
which the social impediments to human ourishing would once and for
all be overcome. However, it is clear from philosophical discussion of
the idea of utopia that a great deal depends on how this redemptive
moment is construed.
33
Broadly speaking, conceptions of utopia can be
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distinguished as to whether they project a future that may someday be
realized. On a nalist conception, emancipatory social transformation
may bring about a condition within history in which human ourish-
ing is possible. On a fallibilist conception, by contrast, the projected
condition is inherently elusive. Utopia is, literally, nowhere: it is
construed as a perfect place beyond history that, due to our dissatis-
faction with existing social conditions, we long to inhabit, but that
always evades our attempts to do so. To this extent, a fallibilist con-
ception of utopian thinking is linked with a transcendent and tran-
scending idea of human ourishing. The projected idea of the good
society is transcendent insofar as it evokes a condition of absolute
sufciency in which all the relevant obstacles to human ourishing
would once and for all have been overcome. It is transcending in the
sense that it refers to a condition of perfection that can be imagined,
but never achieved, by nite human beings. The reason for its inherent
elusiveness can be claried through reference to the concept of a regu-
lative idea.
By regulative idea I mean an idea of perfection that compels the
human mind to endeavour to attain it but that transcends all its powers
to do so.
34
Thus, such ideas are inherently elusive. But why exactly are
they unattainable? My answer is that regulative ideas are inherently
unattainable because they negate essential features of what it is to be
human and thus some aspect of the unavoidable nitude of human exist-
ence. It could be argued, for example, that the Kantian idea of moral
freedom is inherently unattainable because it negates the self-directed
motivations of the empirical will, which are, in Kants view, anthropo-
logically grounded. Similarly, it could be argued that Habermass idea
of an ideal speech situation is inherently unattainable because it negates
the nitude of human knowledge, which, again, is anthropologically
grounded. Importantly, however, regulative ideas, though unattainable,
have a regulatory capacity which means that they also have motivating
force. Since their power to motivate is psychologically rooted, a psycho-
analytic theory might be expected to cast some light on it.
35
However,
this kind of explanation requires supplementation since it explains only
the desire for perfection in general. It is not an abstract desire for per-
fection that moves human beings to be guided by regulative ideas but
rather a concrete desire for the specic form of perfection that a given
regulative idea expresses. In order to explain this kind of concrete desire
for perfection, we must assume that the form of perfection in question
negates a specic form of imperfection. Thus, in the case of Habermas,
his utopian idea of the ideal speech situation is a regulative idea that
negates the distorted communication, imperfect procedures and limited
insight of actual discourses; or again, in the case of Adorno, his utopian
idea of a communicative relation between human and non-human
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beings is a regulative idea that negates the fear of nature, and conse-
quent successive attempts to control nature, that has actually obtained
throughout human history. However, from the point of view of critical
social thinking, even this kind of attempt to make sense of the
motivating power of regulative ideas remains insufcient. For the
purposes of critical social theory it is not enough that regulative ideas
express a desire for a condition in which certain specic forms of imper-
fection would not obtain; these forms of imperfection must be capable
of being overcome by transformative social action. The obstacles to
Habermasian communicative freedom, or to achieving an Adornian
state of reconciliation, must be revealed as socially produced forms of
imperfection that could, in principle, be overcome by human effort.
Clearly, this raises a question regarding the unattainability of regulative
ideas. We appear to be faced with two contradictory perspectives. On
the one hand, regulative ideas are supposed to evoke a condition in
which socially produced obstacles to human ourishing would have
been surmounted by transformative human action. On the other hand,
regulative ideas are supposed to be unattainable because they negate
essential features of what it is to be human. If the rst perspective is
asserted at the expense of the second, the result is nalism and, hence,
closure of the historial process. If the second perspective is asserted at
the expense of the rst, the result is bad utopianism and, hence, loss
of its transformative dimension. If it is to avoid both of these dangers,
therefore, critical social theory must endeavour to keep both perspec-
tives in productive tension. On the one hand, it must acknowledge the
need for motivational utopian images of a condition in which trans-
formative social action would nally have overcome socially produced
obstacles to human ourishing; on the other, it must recognize that such
utopian visions are imaginative projections that negate essential features
of what it is to be human and that, as such, can be imagined but never
achieved by human beings.

The ability to maintain this kind of double perspective amounts to an
ability to negotiate the tensions between closure and contestability, and
between attainability and unattainability; it appears to be connected
with the ability to accept the fallibility of knowledge and the ctive
aspects of many of our mental constructions. Under conditions of
modernity, a fallibilist consciousness is a prerequisite for participation
in public processes of critical interrogation on validity-related matters;
however, such a fallibilist view of knowledge cannot consistently be
maintained on the level of everyday behaviour. Habermas makes this
point in his recent writings on the concept of truth. Truth, in his view,
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is a janus-faced concept and, as such, requires us to adopt a double
perspective. On the one side, as participants in rational discourses, we
proceed fallibilistically, acknowledging that even propositions that
appear to be justied can turn out to be false. On the other side, as
participants in everyday action contexts, we proceed dogmatically, pre-
supposing the unconditional validity of a host of propositions on which
we rely in our everyday behaviour; otherwise, even the simplest activi-
ties such as eating a meal or crossing a bridge would be impossible.
36
If, as inhabitants of modernity,
37
we are able to negotiate the tension
between fallibilism and dogmatism in relation to truth, it seems likely
that we will be able to negotiate the tensions between closure and con-
testability, and between attainability and elusiveness, in relation to
utopia. This point resonates with theories of reexive modernity. In
their recent work, Ulrich Beck, Bruno Latour, Scott Lash and others
describe the contemporary modern world as one of reexive or
second modernity: as a stage within the development of modernity that
is characterized by explicit awareness of the ctive nature of the mental
constructions by means of which we make sense of and regulate our
daily lives. They draw attention, in particular, to the way in which
boundaries for example, legal or political ones are established whose
articial, ctive character is freely acknowledged, but which are
nonetheless recognized as legitimate boundaries. Similarly, they show
how, under reexive modern conditions, the idea of an acting and
deciding subject has an as-if character and is accepted as a necessary
ction.
38
Indeed, Beck and associates are just the latest representatives
of a school of thinking most famously associated with Hans Vaihinger
that emphasizes not only the indispensability of ctions in multiple
areas of social life but also their self-reexive aspect: the expediency of
ctions goes hand in hand with consciousness of their ctive character
and awareness that coincidence with reality is excluded from the
outset.
39
Endeavouring to maintain a productive tension between closure and
contestability, and between attainability and elusiveness, has the follow-
ing advantage: it enables critical social theory explicitly to acknowledge
its commitment to a metaphysical idea of the good society without
succumbing to bad utopianism and nalism, with its attendant risk
of totalitariansim. By doing so it allows critical social theory to retain
its utopian dimension and, with this, its power to justify and to motivate
transformative social action.
Department of German, University College, Dublin, Ireland
PSC
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Notes
1 K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Harmondsworth, Mx:
Penguin Books, 1967), pp. 11418.
2 Cf., for example, Wellmers critique of Adorno, Reason, Utopia and the
Dialectic of Enlightenment, in R. Bernstein (ed.) Habermas and Modernity
(Cambridge: Polity, 1985), pp. 3566, esp. pp. 4551.
3 In consequence, Marcuse regards the concept of utopia as obsolescent,
claiming that it refers to projects for social change that are considered
impossible whereas today . . . any transformation of the technical and
natural environment is a possibility. H. Marcuse, Five Lectures: Psycho-
analysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. J. Shapiro and S. Weber (Harmonds-
worth, Mx: Penguin, 1970), here p. 62.
4 One of Sorels examples of a non-rationalist imaginative construction is the
myth of the general strike. See G. Sorel, Reections on Violence, trans. T.
E. Hulme (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1914), pp. 2240.
5 I use the terms nalism and its opposite fallibilism primarily to refer to
conicting views of human knowledge. Whereas nalists see absolute and
nal knowledge as a human possibility, fallibilists maintain that even prop-
ositions that are rationally justied can turn out to be false in the light of
new experiences, evidence, etc.
6 I. Berlin, Georges Sorel, in his Against the Current (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989), pp. 3312.
7 This is the kind of metaphysical thinking that Habermas criticizes in Kant.
See J. Habermas, Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter, in Moral
Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. S. Weber Nicholsen and
C. Lenhardt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 120.
8 As we shall see, this is the kind of metaphysical thinking that Wellmer
criticizes in Habermas.
9 Cf. J. Habermas, Themes in Postmetaphysical Thinking, in Postmeta-
physical Thinking, trans. W. M. Hohengarten (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1992), pp. 2853.
10 In The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion
of Utopian Energies, in The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the
Historians Debate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), Habermas advo-
cates a mode of utopian thinking that operates historically and formally;
however, he does not spell out the details of his proposal. For a brief account
of the utopian content of his theory of communicative rationality, see M.
Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study of Habermass Pragmatics
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 3850.
11 The normative basis for this aspect of Habermass utopian vision is unclear.
See my critical remarks in Cooke, Language and Reason, pp. 1447.
12 See J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, trans. T.
McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 37986.
13 Habermas focuses on the problem of justication that arises when critical
social theory fails to locate emancipatory potentials within existing social
reality: see his Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, pp. 3786. Cf.
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S. Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986).
14 A. Honneth, Struggle for Recognition, trans. J. Anderson (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1995).
15 M. Seel, Versuch ber die Form des Glcks (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1995), pp. 1011.
16 On my proposal, formality is not a necessary component of utopian
thinking that seeks to avoid bad utopianism, nalism and totalitarian-
ism. Rather, formality is a pragmatic requirement of such thinking. A
projected utopian image must be indeterminate enough to appeal to a wide
range of social agents with varying evaluative commitments and convic-
tions, yet determinate enough to motivate them to engage in transformative
social action. Moreover, the line dividing formal and substantive accounts
of the good society is always inexact and provisional.
17 A. Wellmer, Ethics and Dialogue, The Persistence of Modernity, trans. D.
Midgley (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 113231, esp. pp. 1608;
A. Wellmer, Truth, Contingency, and Modernity, in Endgames, trans. D.
Midgley (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 13754.
18 This is evident in his most recent writings. See note 21 below.
19 J. Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences, in Writing and Difference, ed. and trans. A. Bass (London:
Routledge, 1978), p. 292.
20 Wellmer himself does not focus on the problem of motivation. Instead, as
Micha Werner observes, his main point is one about meaning. Wellmer
claims that we are unable to understand what the concept of the ideal
speech situation means because we are unable to imagine it as real; he then
uses this point about meaning to make the further point that regulative
ideas are nonsensical: it is absurd to use a concept we cannot understand
as a regulative idea. See M. Werner, Pragmatism Without Regulative Ideas?
Report on the Symposium in Essen on June 13 and June 14 1997.
http://micha.h.werner.bei.t-online.de/Werner-1997c.htm
21 Wellmer, Truth, Contingency, and Modernity; A. Wellmer, Der Streit um
die Wahrheit. Pragmatismus ohne regulative Ideen, in D. Boehler, M.
Kettner and G. Skirbekk (eds), Reexion und Verantwortung. Auseinan-
dersetzung mit Karl-Otto Apel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003); A.
Wellmer, Gibt es eine Wahrheit jenseits der Aussagenwahrheit?, in L.
Wingert and K. Guenther, Die Oeffentlichkeit der Vernunft und die
Vernunft der Oeffentlichkeit, Festschrift fr Jrgen Habermas (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001). Cf. J. Whitebooks critique of Wellmer
in his Perversion and Utopia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995),
pp. 15264.
22 Habermas now accepts the validity of Wellmers criticisms of his idea of an
ideal speech situation, at least with regard to his theory of truth. See J.
Habermas, Richard Rortys Pragmatic Turn, in On the Pragmatics of
Communication, ed. M. Cooke (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998),
pp. 34382, esp. pp. 3659.
23 Several commentators draw attention to the conservative shift in
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Habermass Between Facts and Norms, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1995). See, for example, M. Beck Matutk, Habermas: A Philo-
sophical-Political Prole (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 2001); W.
Scheuermann, Between Radicalism and Resignation: Democratic Theory in
Habermas Between Facts and Norms, in P. Dews (ed.) Habermas: A
Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 15377. Although they tend
to focus on the loss of a radically democratic moment, their criticisms could
be taken more generally to point to a loss of a utopian perspective.
24 For an account of the development of critical social thinking (under the
label: social philosophy), see A. Honneth, Pathologien des Sozialen:
Tradition und Aktualitt der Sozialphilosophie, in Pathologien des
Sozialen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1994), pp. 969.
25 In my forthcoming book, I argue that this holds for critical social thinking
in general.
26 This denition is quite close to the one proposed by K. Mannheim in
Ideology and Utopia, trans. L. Wirth and E. Shiels (London: Routledge,
1991). Mannheim denes utopian thinking as a type of orientation which
transcends reality and at the same time breaks the bonds of the existing
order (p. 173). However, Mannheims denition overemphasizes the actual
transformative effect of utopian thinking (cf. his denition on p. 185).
27 See, for example, his three contributions in J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. iek
(eds), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (London: Verso, 2000).
28 Laclau in ibid., p. 82.
29 Since Laclau embraces the core ideals of modern liberal democracy, this
response is also clearly problematic from the point of view of his own
guiding concerns. See E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 2001), p. xv.
30 I elaborate these ideas in my forthcoming book on critical social theory.
31 Of course, critical social theory cannot take as its reference point actually
articulated needs and interests for example, those voiced in contemporary
social protest movements. To do so would be to deliver over social criticism
to the arbitrary standards of a particular historical epoch. Nonetheless, if
it is to be in tune with modern anti-authoritarian and democratic views of
human knowledge and human agency, it must see its critical perspective as
one that could be accepted by all human beings if only the current socially
induced distortion of their perceptions could be overcome; moreover, it
must see this as a real possibility.
32 The idea of redemption as a making good of past deciency is emphasized
by Walter Benjamin; see his Theses on the Philosophy of History, in
Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt (London: Fontana, 1973). Since the question
of whether the idea of redemption should embrace the making good of past
deciency has no relevance for my distinction between a nalist and
fallibilist mode of utopian thinking, I leave it open in my discussion.
33 This is evident, for example, in E. Hansot, Perfection and Progress. Two
Modes of Utopian Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974).
34 The notion of a regulative idea is, of course, most famously associated with
Immanuel Kant. See I. Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd edn, trans.
N. Kemp Smith (Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan, 1929), esp. pp. 53270.
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However, I use the term here in a general way that blurs a number of the
specic features Kant attributes to regulative ideas.
35 An example here would be J. Whitebooks explanation in terms of the
benign side of infantile narcissism. Whitebook makes an interesting link
between early infantile impulses and the idea of perfection. See Whitebook,
Perversion and Utopia, pp. 64, 261.
36 Habermas, Richard Rortys Pragmatic Turn, p. 364.
37 Habermas himself does not historically contextualize his janus-faced
conception of truth. I make the point that it appears to be specic to the
socio-cultural contexts typical of modernity in M. Cooke, Meaning and
Truth in Habermass Pragmatics, European Journal of Philosophy 9(1)
(2001): 123, esp. 915.
38 See the contributions of Beck, Latour, Lash and Adam to Theory, Culture
and Society (2003): U. Beck, The Theory of Reexive Modernization,
Theory, Culture and Society 20(2) (2003): 133; B. Latour, Is Re-
Modernization Occurring and If so, How to Prove It?, Theory, Culture
and Society 20(2) (2003): 3548; S. Lash, Relexivity as Non-Linearity,
Theory, Culture and Society 20(2) (2003): 4957; and B. Adam, Reexive
Modernization Temporalized, Theory, Culture and Society 20(2) (2003):
5978.
39 H. Vaihinger, The Philosophy of As If, trans. C. K. Ogden (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1924).
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