Paolo A. Bolaños, Figurations of French Critical Theory, Kritike Volume 16 Number Four (February 2025) 128-136
DOI:10.25138/18.4.a6
Abstract:
In this brief article, I merely present a schematic presentation of the “figurations” of French critical theory. I rehearse the historical and institutional circumstances of French academia that produced progressive thinkers, such as, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, inter alia. I, then, highlight the privileged position of philosophy in French society and how such privilege nurtured the culture of social and political critique and praxis in France. The influence of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche on French intellectuals is given relative attention. Moreover, I identify Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche as the link between French critical theory and the Frankfurt School. Towards the end, I argue that French critical theorists share with their Frankfurt counterparts the normative assumptions of critical theory laid out by Max Horkheimer in the 1930s: the anthropological, the practical, and the emancipative.
Keywords:
Critical theory, Frankfurt School, French philosophy, theory and praxis
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