Inheriting Nietzsche: The Frankfurt School and Foucault on the Foundation of Critique

My dissertation examines the theoretical ramifications that rejecting a metaphysical foundation has for providing critical and normative resources. While commentators often dismiss post-metaphysical philosophies as contradictory variants of anti-metaphysics, I demonstrate using the work of Nietzsche that they proceed from a deliberate "methodological decision" to suspend metaphysical assumptions. For this reason, while the methodological commitments of post-metaphysical critical social theories establish a theoretical orientation for their inquiries, they must forgo analyses that attribute domination to the distorting effects of illusion, error, or illegitimacy, and would thus cast liberation from domination as a return to a metaphysical foundation. In this light, Horkheimer's critique of instrumental reason ultimately fails insofar as it invokes a rational, human essence in need of liberation from the distorting effects of Western reason. Alternatively, Foucault's conception of critique, "the art of voluntary insubordination," succeeds as a viable post-metaphysical practice since it uniquely advances a form of social and political resistance that refrains from appealing to any such essences. In the end, my dissertation establishes the coherence of post-metaphysical methodologies in general as well as the import of the Frankfurt School and Foucault's normative resources specifically, both of which continue to be a source of debate in critical social theory.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Shea, George

Contributors dc:contributor

• James Swindal
• Daniel Selcer
• Thomas Rockmore

• Critical Theory
• Foucault
• Frankfurt School
• Nietzsche
• Post-Metaphysical

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1181

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-2197