A Book Review from Books At a Glance
by Gary Steward
Carl Trueman has written an extraordinarily helpful work on critical theory intended to serve as an introductory exposition that explains “the basic elements of early critical theory” in their historical context (4). In his words, “this study is an attempt to expound the critical theoretical ideas of a few chosen thinkers associated with the early development of critical theory in order to help us engage with more clarity on some of the most pressing issues of our age,” especially the issue of how we understand human nature (2-3). Trueman’s work seeks not so much to criticize or appropriate the insights of the early critical theorists, but to fairly expound and understand their ideas as they developed over time, keeping his response muted until the closing chapter.
Critical theory is a complicated social philosophy which has evolved over time. Since the dominance of thinkers like Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School, new forms of critical theory have emerged under the influence of the French social theorist Michel Foucault and the post-structuralism found in the later part of the twentieth century. Foucault self-consciously tried to abandon the Hegelian Marxism of the earlier critical theorists connected with the Frankfurt School. Even so, Trueman’s focus is on these early critical theorists, given their philosophical sophistication and their connection to later forms of critical theory, including forms of critical race theory (CRT) that have recently captivated the public discourse in America. In his words, “the fundamental logic of critical theory can be found in the work of the early Frankfurt School” (9).
Critical theory advances an approach to human nature that shapes its whole philosophical enterprise. According to Trueman, “The main problem with critical theory…is its anthropology, its understanding of human nature. Standing in the tradition of Hegelian Marxism, there is a deep suspicion of essentialism, that is, the belief that things have stable “essences” or, we might say, that things have fixed qualities that determine who or what they are and are thus how they are to act” (5). For critical theorists, “contemporary understandings of human nature” are understood “as contingent and functions of dominant ideologies” (10). Tragically, according to Trueman, critical theory “ultimately offers no vision of what it means to be human, whether because (as with the Hegelian Marxists) human nature has yet to be realized or, with the more postmodern critical theorists, it is ultimately a meaningless question” (14).
After a brief introduction, Trueman begins his historical survey with an exposition of the ideas of Hegel and Marx, which are essential to understanding the ideas of later critical theorists. From these he moves on to the contributions of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Korsch, and Georg Lukacs, who all laid the philosophical foundation for the Frankfurt School. In his discussion of the Frankfurt School itself, the thought of Max Horkheimer is central to Trueman’s discussion. Trueman spends the better part of a full chapter elaborating on key points found in Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s 1947 Dialectic of Enlightenment, which he refers to as “a, if not the, foundational text of the broader tradition” (141). A subsequent chapter explores Freud’s impact on Marcuse, Adorno, and Wilhelm Reich in helping bring about the transformation of gender and sexual norms that contemporary strands of critical theory have embraced. The following chapter is the most significant of them all, describing the Frankfurt School’s varied thoughts on “the culture industry,” mass communication, and role of aesthetics in shaping values and behaviors. Trueman uses the insights of the critical theorists here to call evangelical Christians to reflect upon the role that aesthetics and media play in their lives. Trueman closes his work with an equally helpful chapter about how Christians should respond to critical theory overall.
In his conclusion, Trueman argues that Christianity provides the answers to the problems that critical theorists point out: “All of the central challenges to human existence identified by the critical theorists are resolved in Christ” (226). Christians can appreciate the questions raised by the critical theorists while opposing their overall assessment of humanity’s social ills: “The critical theorists of the early Frankfurt School saw something important, that humanity was not what it should be. They recognized how the forces of modernity, with its industrialization, its bureaucracies, its exaltation of efficiency, productivity, and profit margins, and its addiction to the cheap products of the culture industry ultimately prevented human beings from being truly free. And Christians surely have no quarrel with the central claims of such analysis. But they see these things as the result not of bourgeois culture created by capitalism but of human fallenness. Thus, they paradoxically see real hope, not in making earth into heaven, as the Marxists wished, nor in an endless dethroning of the powerful, but in embodying a little bit of heaven on earth in the church, the in-breaking of the end of time into time. The challenge to which critical theory therefore summons the church is to show, not merely to argue, that she has the answers. Critical theory does not so much provide Christians with a useful tool to think about the world as clarify a set of questions to which we have the answers already, if only we open our eyes to see them” (227).
Overall, Trueman’s To Change All Worlds is a philosophical tour de force. He writes about philosophical ideas in a way that is clear and easy to follow, though his subject matter will be admittedly difficult for the general reader to at times fully grasp. Even so, this is a book to be read slowly and carefully. Any who want to engage the currents of contemporary culture will be greatly helped by a thoughtful reading of this important book.
Dr. Gary Steward
Colorado Christian University