{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","uuid":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","normalized_title":"criticaltheoryofcommunicationnewreadingsoflukácsadornomarcusehonnethandhabermasintheageoftheinternet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","isbns":["9781911534044","9781911534051","9781911534068","9781911534075"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Critical%20Theory%20of%20Communication%20New%20Readings%20of%20Luk%C3%A1cs%2C%20Adorno%2C%20Marcuse%2C%20Honneth%20and%20Habermas%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20the%20Internet","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/search"},"page":{"printed_page":21,"pdf_page":25,"physical_index":25,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"95969b81363ded9eb96bee51b2f022a488ae46468f8cfa34e60e061538feeee0"},"chapter":"C H R I S T I A N F U C H S CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION","content":"Already Marx elaborated upon the dialectical relationship of general and specific categories as a fundamental epistemological principle of critical theory. This principle is most systematically expressed in the Grundrisse’s introduction.\n\n1.2.13. Marx’s Introduction to the Grundrisse: The Method of Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete\n\nIn the introduction to the Grundrisse, Marx (1857/1858, 101) characterises his own method as ‘rising from the abstract to the concrete’. One would have to analyse e.g. diferent levels of organisation of society, such as a) the population, b) classes, c) wage labour and capital (Marx 1857/1858, 100). Traditional theory would simply start with abstract categories and then move analytically towards ever more concrete ones (100). Marx sees such a method as limited and argues that critical theory starts with concrete categories that contain the abstract ones in them, and then develops along with a concrete critical theory the more abstract categories.\n\nThe concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception (101).\n\nMarx mentions as example that the analysis of exchange-value presupposes the existence of classes and of a population:\n\nFor example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc. It can never exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete, living whole (101).\n\nMarx’s epistemological method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete allows us to understand that capitalism contains within itself sublations of all previously existing societal formations. It therefore becomes possible to analyse older societies and society in general when we conduct an analysis of capitalism.\n\nBourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc. Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known. The bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient, etc. (105).\n\nIntroduction: Critical Theory of Communication\n\n21","previous_page":20,"next_page":22}