Critical Theory and Normativity in a Destabilized World

This paper explores the potential of critical theory in our destabilized world. One classical critical theoretical approach is immanent critique (Benhabib). The paper argues that this approach remains relevant in the context of current crises. It follows the three steps of immanent critique, focusing on the case of natural resource extraction (Wenar). The arguments presented draw on key sources within the critical theory tradition of the Frankfurt School, applying their ideas to the context of international relations in natural resource extraction. The first stage of immanent critique could be termed 'internal critique' (Jaeggi). According to this approach, countries that express recognition of other peoples’ rights to their natural resources can be blamed for failing to fulfil their promises. In the context of natural resource extraction, many countries have ratified international human rights treaties which assert that a country's natural resources belong to its people. However, this right is contradicted when democracies purchase oil and gas from autocratic regimes that fail to give their populations a say in, or control over, their own natural resources. Immanent critique reveals additional layers. First, it reveals the ways in which institutional practices undermine recognised goals. Rather than merely describing these practices, it will focus on the reasons that 'legitimise' them (Forst). These reasons may be ideological, in that they overestimate their own legitimising qualities (Geuss). The claim is that progress towards global justice can be made by exposing such ideological practices. One of the paper's central claims, based on Habermas's work, is that all forms of voice-suppressing power can be reduced to two basic types. According to consequential or instrumental reasoning (type one), we claim to require natural resources for our own purposes. According to appropriateness reasoning (type two), we act as others do (and they seem to accept it). This may be seen as a type of ideological hypocrisy, whereby actors' ignorance is rooted in a sense of legitimacy that is too weak to provide the full legitimacy they claim to have. This second step thus reveals how the promise to support the voice of the people is being suppressed by other logics. This exposes a deeper layer to what initially seemed to be mere hypocrisy. In the third layer of immanent critique, we return to the question of norms (Jaeggi and Fraser). Here, the promise of recognition could be interpreted as entailing the opposite of the mechanisms that suppress recognition, as diagnosed in the second step (Honneth). Democratic recognition is thus understood as an infrastructure for the mutual exchange of perspectives (Habermas). This finding highlights the importance of such infrastructures. The paper’s argumentation indicates the universal structure of such perspective-exchange among everyone affected (Habermas). It argues that, in the current world, those affected encompasses not only those living now, but also those who will live in the future, and often even in the past. Immanent critique thus reveals the deeper norms underlying our international relations, norms that even those who undermine them rely upon when claiming legitimacy.