Hardly any other philosophical program asserts so clearly a necessary connection between theory and practice as critical theory since its foundation by Max Horkheimer. In his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory social criticism is not primarily described as a theoretical activity, but as a practical activity, a form of “behavior”. This “behavior” negates existing social conditions and seeks to change them. However, how the normative standard of such practical criticism can be justified is the subject of intense debate.

In the talk I would like to take up this debate. After a brief reconstruction of the question raised above about the standard of critique (1.), two prominent, contrary answers to this challenge will be reconstructed and problematized (2.). One of these is Horkheimer's own answer (2.1.), which tries to derive sources of evaluation from currently existing practices – a methodology that is still influential today under the name of immanent critique. However, Horkheimer's strategy fails (2.2.), because by refusing to provide any normative criteria that stand above existing social practices, he is not in a position to differentiate between harmful and productive tendencies.

The second answer to the challenge, brought forward from Rainer Forst, is ignited by this criticism. (2.3.). With reference to figures of thought from Kant and Habermas, he attempts to anchor the normative standard of critique in the validity claims of reciprocity and generality, which every participant in a moral discourse must implicitly presuppose. If a normative statement cannot be shown to be general and reciprocal for good reasons, it cannot function as a criterion for practical criticism. However, this stronger foundation runs into two problems of its own (2.4.). On the one hand, this approach is hardly able to address social pathologies. On the other hand, it misses a central insight by Horkheimer: the normative standard of a comprehensive social critique cannot only hover over its object as an abstract ought. Otherwise, the change of this object can be normatively justified, but not sufficiently as motivational and realizable.

The talk derives a further option from the weaknesses of both answers (3.). It identifies the existential interest of members of society in self-determined control over their own life as an appropriate yardstick for practical criticism. Such an approach can both build on existing motivational resources and thus be considered realistic, as well as highlight social imbalances of all kinds as systematic blockades of self-determination that should be changed. It thus moves precisely between the other two variants.

By reconstructing, problematizing and justifying these different variants, the lecture attempts to find a systematic answer to a fundamental problem of a school of thought that does not merely want to interpret the world theoretically, but to change it practically.