Simpson, Gary M. Critical Social Theory: Prophetic Reason, Civil Society, and Christian Imagination Guides to Theological Inquiry. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002.

The Author

Gary Simpson is a professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN and an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

From the Foreword by Paul Lakeland

“Gary Simpson initiates a dialogue between critical social theory and the Protestant prophetic imagination. On the one hand, he charts the emergence of an understanding of critical theory in the work of the Frankfurt School, principally in the thought of Max Horkheimer, and shows how Jürgen Habermas’s views both correct and advance the notion of critical theory into a full-fledged philosophical and political account of the contemporary world. On the other, and interwoven with this, is the fascinating story of Paul Tillich’s early associations with the Frankfurt School, and the dialectical relationship between the notion of critical theory and Tillich’s views on prophetic criticism. This emerges in an important constructive proposal for the role of contemporary Christian congregations as ‘public companions,’ which restores the prophetical dimension to the notion of servanthood. Simpson’s work is important for the continued understanding of Christian relevance to the postmodern world. It offers a stimulating reading of critical theory, will give new vigor to debates on the social role of Christianity, and above all shows the fruitfulness of continued dialogue between secular and religious thought.”^⁠1

Part One. Critical Social Theory and Christian Imagination—Genesis and Engagement

Horkeheimer: The Idea of Critical Social Theory

“Horkheimer agrees that there is some truth regarding the obscurity of knowledge’s origin. Still, he is unsatisfied with Kant’s mystification and agnosticism regarding the human subject’s knowledge of the world. He argues that Kant’s conceptualization of human knowing mirrors and, indeed, reinforces the dominant forms of heightened atomistic individuality that Horkheimer calls “bourgeois.”

Bourgeois thought, in reflecting on the subject that exercises such thought, is forced by logical necessity to recognize an ego that imagines itself autonomous. Bourgeois thought is essentially abstract, and its principal characteristic is an individuality that believes itself to be the ground of the world, or even to be the world, without qualification, an individuality separated from events. In this way Kant is the offspring of Descartes.

Horkheimer’s critical theory by contrast, locates the ‘whence’ of the individual’s knowledge in real history and actual societies rather than in Kant’s suprahistorical, asocial, transcendental ‘whence.’ Horkheimer finds important insights regarding the ‘whence’ of knowledge in Hegel and Marx.”^⁠2

“Hegel rejected [Kant’s] notion of subjectivity. Horkheimer joins Hegel in ‘opposing the idea of an absolute, suprahistorical subject or the possibility of exchanging subjects, as though a person could remove himself from his present historical juncture and truly insert himself into any other he wished.’ Hegel proposed to discover the human contribution to knowledge by probing the historical and social path that human knowers have traversed. Horkheimer’s critical theory exploits this insight. The human knower ‘is rather a definite individual in his real relations to other individuals and groups, in his conflict with a particular class, and finally, in the resultant web of relationships with the social totality and with nature.’”^⁠3

Tillich: Christian Engagement with Critical Social Theory

“”Rational criticism ‘is the standpoint of the ideal by which the particular form is measured…[it] presupposes a definite standpoint by means of which it is able to pronounce its Yes or its No. It is a rational procedure, even though [or when] the criterion itself has not been reached in a rational way.’ By ‘prophetic criticism,’ Tillich means ‘that which lies beyond the creation of form…[by which] form-creation as such is brought into question….[Prophetic] criticism possesses no criterion at all; for that which lies beyond form-creation is not a form that can be used for the measurement of other forms. Therefore, it does not pronounce a Yes or a No, but combines an unconditional No with an unconditional Yes.’”^⁠4

Simpson draw the prophetic imagination from Tillich, but in a modified way. He seeks to “situate the Christian prophetic imagination in a nonoracular space, or, rather, to refashion oracular and hierarchical social spaces into more participatory and deliberative spaces.”^⁠5

Part Two. Enter Habermas—The Communicative Imagination

Criticism: The Transformation of Critique

Max Weber—Instrumental Reason

“Both Christianity and rationalist philosophy maintained ‘complete agreement’ that a real totality existed. They disagreed only on how to access that totality whether by means of the church’s authoritarian interpretation of revelation or by philosophical reason and analysis.

“The controversy ended in a stalement. Reason would rule the public realms of politics and society, and revelation would rule the private and ecclesiastical realms.”^⁠6

Georg Lukacs

Reification and commodification

“Habermas notes, ‘Reason, once instrumentalized, has become assimilated to power [that is, domination in the service of self-preservation] and has thereby given up its critical power.’”^⁠7

Niettzche’s Way

“Horkheimer and Adorno followed Nietzche’s aesthetic cue by nominating mimesis to take the place once occupied by reason…They gave up, therefore, on a critical theory of society.”^⁠8

nihilism

Theory: The Theory of Communicative Reason and Action

The Linguistic Turn

Wittgenstein: Language and social practice.

Gadamer: linguisticality. Fusion of horizons.

Austin and Searle: speech as Action-Events

Society: The Civil Society and Deliberative Democracy

Lifeworlds and Systems

Economic and Politic systems have colonized the lifeworld, thus stripping people of freedom and communicative action. Through communicative action in the public sphere, the lifeworld can exist in proper balance with the world systems.

Part Three. Prophetic Reason and Communicative Imagination

Civil Society and Congregations as Prophetic Public Companions

“In summary, certain marks characterize the vocation of the communicatively prophetic, public companion. As prophetic public companions, missional congregations acknowledge a conviction that they participate in God’s ongoing creative work. In a communicative civil society, these congregations exhibit a compassionate commitment to other institutions and their moral predicaments and to contesting the systemic colonization the lifeworld. In these two sense, congregations as communicatively prophetic public companions are thoroughly connected, both to God and to the social and natural world. This vocational conviction and commitment yields a critical and self-critical, and thus fully communicative, practice of prophetic engagement. Finally, as communicatively prophetic public companions, congregations participate with other institutions of communicative civil society to create, strengthen, and sustain the moral fabrics that fashion a life-giving and life-accountable world.”^⁠9

¹ {Simpson, 2002 #439@vii-viii}

² {Simpson, 2002 #439@18}

³ {Simpson, 2002 #439@22}

⁴ {Simpson, 2002 #439@36}

⁵ {Simpson, 2002 #439@52}

⁶ {Simpson, 2002 #439@62}

⁷ {Simpson, 2002 #439@66}

⁸ {Simpson, 2002 #439@69}

⁹ {Simpson, 2002 #439@144-145}