The Mechanics of Critique

Abstract

Immanent critique is often presented as a distinctive approach to political and social philosophy. But Rachel Fraser argues that immanent critique cannot satisfy three plausible criteria that characterise it as a distinctive approach: it cannot be normatively significant, social, and make no appeal to external standards. This paper develops a model of immanent critique that answers her challenge. I first argue that the normative significance of immanent critique should not be modelled on agent‐based practical rationality. I then recast the problem of external standards as a problem of normative grounding, arguing that the force of critique derives from the practical interests of those situated within historically determinate social systems. On this basis, I then claim that immanent critique is best understood not as the application of principles to facts, but as the apt deployment of normatively charged terms to socially organised realities. Its distinctive telos is transformative: it aims to alter our perspective on social systems in ways that connect diagnosis to action.