2017/12/01 by Elena Esposito · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy #Critical Realism in Sociology #Political and Economic history of UK and US
paper · doi:10.1177/0725513617740966
openalex publication_date 2017/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21
This paper proposes an extended idea of critique, bypassing the paradox of a critique of critique. It reconstructs the semantics of critique from ancient commentary to autonomous interpretation, identifying the blindness of critical theory in the claim to detect crises and to indicate how to overcome them. The critique of critique is achieved not by rejecting critique but by moving to second-order observation. In this understanding, critique does not refuse what is normal but observes it as improbable. Critical observation is understood as reflection on normality, its opposite, and its alternatives. The debate on risk society is presented and commented on as an example.