Review: Bernard E. Harcourt, ‘Critique and Praxis’
Review of Bernard E. Harcourt’s Critique and Praxis: A Critical Philosophy of Illusions, Values, and Action (Columbia University Press, 2020), 684 pages.
Abstract
Critique and Praxis is a major work on critical theory. It also includes a serious discussion of the role of praxis and its relationship to theory. It is in part autobiographical in that the author, Bernard Harcourt, the Isodor and Sevulle Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of political science at Columbia University, discusses his own political activism and its relation to critical theory at some length. Critique and Praxis is also an up-to-date review of the literature in the field of critical theory broadly defined to include not only the works of the Frankfurt School theorists but also the works of Foucault, post-colonial theorists, feminists and those working in the field of queer theory. Running at over 536 pages of text, it is an ambitious and large book, but the language is accessible and easy to understand.
Reviewed by Ali Sadeghi
Bernard Harcourt is the Isodor and Sevulle Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of political science at Columbia University. His previous publications have been in the general field of critical political economy and political theory. His new book, Critique and Praxis is perhaps his magnum opus; running at over 536 pages of text, it is a not only a large but also an ambitious book.
Critique and Praxis, as the name suggests, is almost as much concerned with praxis as it is with theory. It is, therefore, part autobiographical and part theoretical. Harcourt recounts his decades of work as a lawyer defending prisoners on death row and tenants being evicted from their homes.
“This book was born of my own struggles- born from years, or rather decades, of torment, conflict, and contradiction between my political engagements and my critical theorizing. It is the outgrowth of a seemingly irreconcilable, intolerably frustrating rift that always separates the two and gnaws at them both-and constantly haunts me.” (466).
In one sense, at the heart of Critique and Praxis stands Marx’s idea that philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the job however is to change it. For Bernard Harcourt, the aim of critical theory is to create a more just and equal society. The question then becomes, what is the relationship between theory and praxis in bringing about a just society? Bernard Harcourt believes there can be five answers to this question. The first is what he calls critical theory as praxis. According to this, critical theory itself transforms reality. Sadly, he does not elaborate on this argument, but simply says that he rejects it, because it is too contemplative. The second model argues that critical theory is a guide to praxis. Praxis is then applied theory. Horkheimer was doing just that in his article ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ in 1944. The third model is the opposite of the second one. It argues that critical theory theorizes praxis. So, as the Owl of Minerva comes at the end of the day, we can only interpret events after the fact. According to the fourth model praxis is independent of theory. Action has a life of its own and is not dependent on theoretical debates.
Bernard Harcourt argues that there can be a fifth model, which he develops himself. According to Harcourt, there is a dialectical opposition between theory and praxis that, unlike Adorno’s negative dialectics does not end in pure negativity. Instead, critique and praxis are both elements of a permanent struggle to bring about a just society. “Our critical horizon presents a constant and unending struggle that never reaches a stable equilibrium but endlessly redistributes wealth, well-being, freedom, and life itself through the organization and reorganization of political economies” (269). Our social and political life depends on what we struggle for and how.
Bernard Harcourt develops the dialectical opposition between critique and praxis by saying that critical theory challenges political activism and praxis in turn deconstructs critique. Those engaged in praxis must be open to having their activism critiqued by critical theory. They must, at every turn, challenge themselves and ask about the theoretical foundation of their actions. On the other hand, critical theory itself must be open to critique based on practical experience gained on the ground. This back-and-forth movement between critique and praxis enriches both.
Critique and Praxis is also about critique. Here Harcourt dives into a massive review of the literature on the subject. This part of the book is a very impressive and scholarly attempt at presenting a broad picture of critical theory from Marx and Nietzsche to Axel Honneth and Amy Allen. Harcourt is more sympathetic towards Nietzsche than Marx because the former’s critique of modernity is more radical and fundamental than that of the latter. Marx works within the framework of Enlightenment modernity and believes in the idea of progress whereas Nietzsche rejects the idea of progress and is far more radical in his critique of modernity. Harcourt believes that the confrontation between critical theorists and Marx comes to a head with Foucault’s 1973 Rio lecture where Foucault critiques Marx’s argument that man’s true essence is labor. This lecture plus a few of Foucault’s books including Discipline and Punish amount to a major critique of Marx that takes critical theory into new territory.
For Bernard Harcourt, Foucault’s concept of power lies at the heart of critical theory. There are four elements to Foucault’s methodological theory of power. First, power cannot be appropriated nor controlled by anyone. Secondly, power is not localized in the state. It is everywhere. Thirdly, power does not simply reproduce certain social relations. It is in fact one of the elements of the mode of production in a society. Power “cannot be mapped onto the logic of ideology: it simply cannot be the case that power works either through coercion and violence or through hidden forms of ideology.” (93)
After World War II, the Frankfurt School went through an epistemological detour that took it away from praxis. For the second and third generation of the School as Marx began to fade, Kant and Hegel stepped in. Habermas and later Rainer Forst found their grounding in Kantian notions of universality and public sphere whereas Axel Honneth and Rahel Jaeggi turned to Hegel. Honneth, for example, went all the way back to young Hegel in his Jena years for his theory of recognition.
Despite Harcourt’s critique of Hegel, it seems, his solution to the problem of the primacy of critique or praxis is ultimately Hegelian. He proposes a dialectical relationship between critique and praxis in which, as we saw, the contradiction between the two leads to an enrichment of both. However, Harcourt’s easy dismissal of the idea that critique itself is praxis misses an important point. Theory, as Lenin said, becomes a material force when it grips the masses. In the past thirty years, the arguments of feminists and post-colonial theorists to name only two, has changed the intellectual and social landscape of most Western countries. This has had profound political implications. For example, one could argue that Edward Said’s Orientalism played a part in the election of Obama as the President of the United States. Ideas change social attitudes which in turn can have serious political consequences. This, for me, is the biggest weakness of Harcourt’s argument.
Critique and Praxis is an important and ambitious book. Its vast survey of the history of critical thought is an essential guide to all students working in the field of critical theory. Its frank autobiographical parts help put ideas in context. However, it is a powerful book about ideas that ironically, seems to downplay the power of ideas.
Ali Sadeghi received his PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics. He has since taught in the department of political science in several universities in Canada and Iran.
Email: Sadeghi_uk@yahoo.com
