Abstract

The aim of this article is to illuminate the distinctive challenges of liberating social criticism. The article’s primary concern is an account of the nature of critical social thought that, while intuitively attractive, goes missing in many institutionally central philosophical conversations about such thought. This is because the account presupposes a heterodox conception of rationality that often is not even registered as a legitimate possibility, much less seriously discussed. Yet the relevant conception of rationality informs influential philosophical treatments of liberating social criticism, including, for instance, some notable contributions to Critical Theory. It is possible to mount a defense of this conception, thereby providing support for the appealing image of critique it brings within reach, by reconstructing - with some substantial criticisms and additions - an argument from mid twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy of the social sciences, viz., the argument that forms the backbone of Peter Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science. Winch draws his guiding insights from the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, and one payoff of reevaluating Winch’s work against the backdrop of congenial work in Critical Theory is that this makes it possible not only to decisively contesting the deeply engrained idea that Wittgenstein’s later thought has a politically conservative bent but, more positively, to demonstrate the great value of his thought for emancipatory criticism. The larger payoff of this ecumenical method is nothing more and nothing less than advancing the enterprise of critique.