On the critical intention of the social theory of knowledge

Abstract

Within the framework of its conception of the history of reason as a process of rationalization of reality, the Frankfurt School theory of knowledge, and Adorno in particular, point out the complicity of the traditional theory of knowledge in the process of reducing the individual to a mere number and moment of the production process. Apart from any "humanist" attempt to recover the value of the individual, there is an insistence on the need to recognize the vital dynamics of society as the content of all logic, whose laws must be understood as the expression and arbitration of social experiences. The traditional logic of identity has contributed to the conservative, violent and unjust exaltation of the immutable, so another instance of validity is necessary in which the question of an absolute truth is replaced by the consideration of work and social action as conditions of knowledge.