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journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 31 , no. 2, 2017
Copyright © 2017 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
JSP 31.2_02_Sarkela Page 218 22/12/16 5:06 PM
Immanent Critique as Self-Transformative
Practice: Hegel, Dewey, and Contemporary
Critical Theory
Arvi Särkelä
university of lucerne
abstract: There are two traditions of immanent social critique. One of them, prom-
inent in contemporary Frankfurt school critical theory, regards the immanence of cri-
tique as a quality of the standard employed. Such a conception of immanent critique
needs to show, prior to the concrete practice of critique, how the standard is immanent
in the object of critique. Showing this is the task of a “model of immanent critique.” The
other tradition, going back to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and practiced in particular
by Dewey in his later works, regards the immanence of critique as the form of critical
practice itself. Because such a conception of immanent critique does not, at the outset,
ask how the standard is immanent to its object, it also does not need a model licensing
critical practice. Indeed, it must be inherently hostile to any attempt at modeling imma-
nent critique because the immanence lies in the power of critical practice to transform
any models it applies.
keywords: immanent critique, critical theory, John Dewey, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, Frankfurt school