Critique as the epistemic framework of the critical social sciences

Michael Thompson

pp. 231-252

in: The Palgrave handbook of critical theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter explores the different features of the critical method as an epistemological and methodological underpinning for the critical social sciences and for critical theory more generally, and furthermore calls into question the prevailing methodological assumptions and theses that underpin the mainstream contemporary social sciences. It argues that critique as a method of knowledge production breaks with the most basic and deeply entrenched methodological assumptions and logics of the mainstream social sciences. The author explores the basic pillars of the critical method: the nature of reality as dynamic and processual rather than discrete and static, the nature of the unification of "factual" knowledge claims and "normative" or "evaluative" knowledge claims, and the relation between essence and appearance in the comprehension of social facts and social reality more generally. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the nature of critical judgment as an essential aim of critical theory or critical social sciences.