Abstract

Political critique in the Enlightenment tradition, following the Kantian legacy, depends upon an appeal to a regulative ideal of reason posited as the goal of progressive universal history. I argue that this goal is so far removed from our current historical situation that judging which practical steps will promote its realization is extremely unclear. The link between political critique and practice remains so radically underdetermined that the critique cannot reasonably be taken to be action guiding in any rich sense. Hence, I argue for an alternative, historically-situated approach to political critique which appeals to historical narrative to disclose a more immediate horizon of possibility for political action. In this way, history can mediate between critique and action in a way that provides political actors with the ability to make practical moves. ;I begin my dissertation with a detailed analysis of Kant's treatments of universal history and political judgment in both his Critique of Judgment and his other political and historical writings. Then I consider two present day attempts to overcome the limitations of Kant's position. First, I discuss Michel Foucault's critical historiography as a model for developing critical/historical narratives from within our current historical horizon. However, drawing primarily from the Foucault/Habermas debate, I argue that Foucault's approach fails to adequately complete this critical/practical link. I argue that Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory of reading can complete this link. Ricoeur's theory of reading, by accounting for the reception of texts, can provide the reader with a moment of critical distanciation from present thought, institutions, and practices in a way which nonetheless remains connected to a horizon of practically realizable possibilities for action. This link between critique and practice, I argue, also provides a means to address the more general problem of the link between theory and practice