No single reads important principle. It took over anyhow.
The concepts of vital principle “are the impulses of the political and cultural discussion of our age,” as Carl Trueman puts it in his new guide To Change All Worlds: Essential Theory from Marx to Marcuse states. The phrases and ideas of vital theorists frequently burst into daily life, from the Biden presidency to HR departments to business media.
Critical race theory transitioned with the Black Lives Matter uprising, then back to the classroom as advocate instructors seize the opportunity. Corporate interests grew more focused on gay and important gender theories and were pro-noun obsessed with the new national holiday known as Pride. There is no getting away from it, as Trueman observes,” You may not be interested in gay idea, but gay hypothesis is interested in you”.
To Change All Worlds is an excellent entry that walks visitors through its enhancement because Trueman, an intellectual writer and teacher at Grove City College ( and, in truth, a colleague of mine at the Ethics and Public Policy Center ), has read the publications of important principle. This is actually condensed, but it often feels rushed or lacking in vital factors. He writes evidently, in contrast to the often-opaque affectations of critical scientists, who, as he notes, request to discomfit and disturb through their pretty writing style.
Trueman moves both through the intellectual record of important concept, particularly the Frankfurt School, and the other direction, where we can discover the origins of the crucial race and gender ideas that currently afflict us. Trump is truthful to his content, doesn’t argue with his content, and doesn’t protest wokeness or cultural Marxism. This restriction makes his assessment of vital principle, and his description of why Christianity may accept or digest any of its varieties, all the more compelling. Important theory is ultimately opposed to Christianity, and has been from its Communist causes.
Incapable of Offering Solutions
The failures of earlier iterations of Marxism, which could not discuss why a socialist trend triumphed in Russia while failing in Germany, and afterwards why so much of the European working group favored the Nazis over the communists, contributed to the development of essential concept. Trying to address these challenges led to refinements of the role of theory in revolution, the nature of alienation, false consciousness, reification, and more.
The resulting theories were more sophisticated, cultural, and psychological than the “vulgar Marxism’s” crude economic obsessions. Liberation was no longer just about freeing labor from capital, but about sex, family, race, colonialism, mass media, and, well, anything and everything. Sources of oppression were discovered everywhere, as all aspects of life came under revolutionary inspection.
These critiques sometimes have a point, the world is a target-rich environment for criticism. Critical theory, however, is incapable of providing solutions because it “lacks the ability to articulate in clear terms what should replace it” despite “being clear on what is wrong with society — pretty much everything.” In the end, it doesn’t give a clear definition of what being human means. Critical theory has no positive vision of the true, good and beautiful, of what it means to be human, or what constitutes a good life. Its normative anthropology is either deferred to the future communist eschaton, or absent altogether.
The most critical theory, according to Trueman, is” the pious hope that an unalienated humanity will emerge from the historical process, though we have no way of knowing in advance of that moment what such might look like.” And that is the upbeat iteration of critical theory, because” with Foucault and company, there is no such eschatological fulfillment or revelation, but only the constant flux of discourses of power.” Critical theorists are notoriously hateful and hopeless because, in their own words, they only have bitterness and despair and academic jargon on top. This is why.
Critical theory’s self-conscious task is not seeking truth in the traditional philosophical sense of rightly understanding the world, but to instead enable revolutionary action to transform the world. Trueman explains that the” theorist’s task is to make social change possible by making it conceivable”.
And because critical theory doesn’t want to see only limited improvement, but rather real improvement, through prudent reform, it will always be radical. Instead, it relentlessly criticizes the” contemporary system with the intention of overthrowing it entirely.” Trueman notes that Trueman’s champions are not “pushing for justice or equality in terms understood by the current dominant society,” but rather that they are pushing for a complete overhaul of that dominant society, including those very concepts ( such as justice or equality ) as they are understood by the dominant society.
We might add that this is why committed critical theorists appear to be uninterested in running a successful society. They lack any conceptual frameworks for how good government would differ from the already-existing system. Additionally, their revolutionary commitments turn them against even the most ostensibly obscure and mundane aspects of good government. After all, having safe streets, effective fire departments, happy families, and so on would only legitimize and strengthen the system that critical theorists want to overthrow. As far as their revolutionary aspirations are concerned, the worse the better.
And things often are worse. Because critical theorists lack any vision of the good, their advances are destructive. An example is provided by the sexual revolution, which was championed by critical theorists. This was, Trueman notes,” an anthropological revolution” that has radically changed our understanding of what it means to be human. Yet far from true r fro m liberation, it is” clear that sexual freedom has, perhaps more than anything in today’s world, turned people into things”. People are treated as objects that can only be used for egotistical purposes in pornography and hookups. People are portrayed in transgenderism as meat puppets that can be hacked and rebuilt. And amidst it all, Americans are lonelier, having less — and less satisfying — sex.
The sexual revolution’s catastrophe demonstrates why Christians should reject critical theory because it rejects the reality of our God-given human nature. It also leads to ruin. Although both Christian and critical theorists occasionally disagree on the world, their disagreements are rooted in fundamental disagreements. As Trueman explains,” The Christian’s critique of power must arise from a normative understanding of human nature. We can’t just be engaged in the game of demonstrating the immanent contradictions of any particular social arrangement, nor can we even be so engaged in negation.
A Better Way of Life
It isn’t enough to criticize critical theory in its own right, for it won’t be defeated by arguments alone. ( Besides, critical theorists will simply dismiss Trueman’s arguments as the products of a cis-hetero white male Christian conservative. ) Nonetheless, Christians should be confident that we have something better to offer. Our response to critical theory is not just theoretical. Similar to Socrates ‘ appeal to Callicles at the end of Plato’s Gorgias, we offer a better way of life, a life in Christ and His church.
Critical theorists and their woken followers are in need of Jesus. As Trueman observes, the “underlying problem” of alienation that critical theorists struggle with is “already overcome in Christ” and” the church is the place where alienation is overcome”. It is” God’s grace, not the economic transformation of society” that “alone can overcome the problems of the alienated human condition”. Christians must demonstrate that “alienation is not unavoidable and insoluble” in our daily lives. There is a better way of life even in this troubled world, as well as hope for what is to come, than by despairing rebellion or hopes for some distant Marxist eschaton.
To take one example, Trueman argues that” the answer to the sexual revolution is not an argument. It is a place where properly organized, effective sexual relationships occur within a wider context that acknowledges the larger obligations that sex entails, particularly for the children who are affected by them. Christian marriage within the church community is the remedy for the perils of the sexual revolution.
What little hope it has behind a revolutionary eschaton is hidden behind critical theory. Christians, in contrast, can point to the continuing instantiation of Christ’s kingdom through the church. And despite our frequent failures, this work continues, providing the answers to human sorrow and sinfulness that critical theory cannot. Trueman is correct that” Christ addresses all of the fundamental problems in human existence identified by the critical theorists.”
Nathanael Blake is a member of the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a senior contributor to The Federalist.
