Non‐ideal theory and critical theory and their relationship to standpoint theory

This paper brings together two distinct areas of philosophy that have so far not received much attention together: Critical Theory and non-ideal theory. Its main argument is that these two yet distinct areas of philosophy share a methodological stance when it comes to analyzing social reality, namely standpoint theory. While there is a well-acknowledged relation between Critical Theory and standpoint theory, the claim that non-ideal theory is committed to standpoint theory as a methodology deserves further explanation. In a co-authored paper, Johanna Müller and I (2022) argue for a descriptive claim, they urge non-ideal theorists to engage in an act of self-clarification about the way in which they are doing non-ideal theory and argue that the commitment to start from real world injustices always already entails a commitment to standpoint theory. According to this claim, any theorist is embedded in a given ideology and, thus, needs methodological tools to overcome the ideological arrogance that might prevent them from analyzing particular instances of injustice.1 Here, I want to make an explicitly normative claim, namely that taking seriously the pervasiveness of ideology and the resulting challenge of false consciousness, means that any endeavor in non-ideal theory that is not committed to standpoint theory is fruitless. This claim is not just about self-clarification. Instead, it proposes a way in which non-ideal theory should proceed.2 To do so, I am guided by three claims: First, if non-ideal theory is theory that is non-idealizing (as Hänel Khader, forthcoming; and Mills, 2005 show), then ideology is a barrier to such theorizing. Second, critical standpoints (as advanced by versions of standpoint theory) can function as a tool to overcome such barriers, yet, critical standpoints have to be achieved or struggled for and are not necessarily given due to a person's social group memberships or social identities. And, third, being subject to (intersecting) oppressions can be an epistemic advantage insofar as it provides the moral ruptures or internal contradictions needed to achieve a critical standpoint. It should be noted that the paper's aim is rather modest insofar as none of its claims are original in themselves, rather I am relying on the toolbox of Critical Theorists, standpoint theorists, and non-ideal theorists. What is new is (a) the way in which I let these traditions talk to each other and (b) my focus on the "trap of ideology"; neither do non-ideal theorists concern themselves with this particular dimension of ideology as an obstacle for theorizing, nor do contemporary standpoint epistemologists pay much attention to this problem. In recent years, feminist philosophers and other moral and political philosophers have been increasingly disappointed with the dominant Rawlsian paradigm of doing normative theory in which the main question is what a perfectly ideal and just society would look like. They argue that this paradigm is of little help when it comes to practical matters; instead, normative theory should be influenced by real-world injustices. However, as many have pointed out, this methodological turn comes with diverse strategies and no unified view on how to theorize adequately (cf. Brennan, 1999, 860; Friedman, 2000, 211; Jaggar, 2000, 452–3; and in later years Jubb, 2012; Robeyns, 2008; Stemplowska, 2008; Swift, 2008). Although it is far from obvious what precisely non-ideal theory amounts to, it has been associated with one or all of the following but rather heterogenous features: partial compliance, realistic, transitional, and/or non-idealizing.3 Here, I focus on just one of these descriptions, namely non-ideal theory as non-idealizing (Mills, 2005). While many feminist philosophers describe non-idealizing theory merely as a turn towards injustices in the real world—instead of generalized principles in a perfectly ideal world—, it can be argued that they are influenced by a specific methodological turn that takes into account the perspective of those oppressed or marginalized and thus suffering from said injustices (cf. Hänel that is, about what we can know and how we know what we know. In fact, both non-ideal theory (as non-idealizing theory) as well as Critical Theory are aware of the social relations and limits of knowers; yet, this feature has been neglected in analyses of what non-ideal theory amounts to—with the notable exception of Mills (2005), Khader (forthcoming), and Hänel and Müller (2022). I argue that both non-ideal theory (as non-idealizing theory) and Critical Theory rely on some form of standpoint theory, i.e., the view that social position is relevant to knowledge acquisition. In fact, as I argue together with Johanna Müller (2022), non-ideal theory that is non-idealizing and concerned with real-world injustices necessarily includes the idea that theory should start from the perspective of the oppressed and the injustices they suffer from. Interestingly, the very same idea can be found in early Marxists as well as some scholars of the Frankfurt School; in short, the working class has to form a critical epistemic standpoint of class consciousness in order to emancipate itself, a point that was developed in different ways by Marxist feminist standpoint theory with regard to marginalized standpoints of women.4 In the following, I want to shed light on how non-ideal theory (as non-idealizing theory) and Critical Theory share this methodological stance. To do so, I show that the phenomenon of false consciousness—widely discussed in Critical Theory—forces the non-idealizing theorist to subscribe to standpoint theory. However, this methodological stance is not without problems as the critical epistemic standpoint is not a given; that is, although social position is relevant to knowledge acquisition, there is no direct relation between social position and a critical epistemic standpoint (or epistemic privilege). I argue that non-ideal theory (as non-idealizing theory) and Marxist or Frankfurt School Critical Theory not only share similar assumptions about standpoint theory, but that it can also be helpful to look at the ways in which Critical Theory has responded to the above mentioned problems. Doing so, allows us to conclude that non-ideal theory (as non-idealizing theory) should in fact proceed in line with standpoint theory. The argument proceeds as follows. First, I give a brief overview of non-ideal theory as non-idealizing theory and show that non-idealizing theory that is not committed to standpoint theory is fruitless. Second, I show that pervasive ideology poses a threat to analyzing instances of injustice adequately by drawing on Simone de Beauvoir's example of women being complicit in their own oppression. Yet, if this is true then ideology seems to also pose a threat to standpoint theory—and, since standpoint theory is, according to my argument, one of the main methodological tools of both non-ideal theory and Critical Theory, ideology poses a threat to both of them. I proceed to give an overview of standpoint theory, both from a Marxist and feminist viewpoint, including the insight that a critical standpoint is, if at all, only a potential standpoint and not necessarily given due to a person's membership in a specific social class. Fourth, I argue that this problem is developed in detail by standpoint theorists. I then develop a way in which to understand critical standpoints in light of these problems drawing heavily from Marxism. I conclude that non-ideal theory as non-idealizing theory and Critical Theory not only share a methodological stance, but that Critical Theory also provides solution to the ideology trap that non-ideal theory faces. Charles Mills (2005) argues that non-ideal theory is theory that is not idealizing. According to this argument, ideal theory is in the business of making models about how things should be—for example, how the world should look like to be fully just. However, the notion of 'ideal-as-model' in Mills' words (Mills, 2005, 166) can be spelled out in two distinct ways: (a) ideal-as-descriptive-model, and (b) ideal-as-idealized-model. The former describes a certain phenomenon by looking at its essential character and the way it works; by doing so it uses abstraction and simplification focusing on the phenomenon's most crucial aspects while ignoring other aspects. The latter describes the process of constructing an idealized model of the phenomenon, in other words, "of what the phenomenon should be like" (167). However, this second approach will most naturally lead to a gap between what the phenomenon is like in real life and the idealized model of it; or a gap between the ideal-as-descriptive-model and the ideal-as-idealized-model, which in turn might lead the investigation to try to make the phenomenon in question more like the idealized model. According to Mills then, ideal theory can be distinguished from non-ideal theory not because it uses ideals but because it relies "on idealization to the exclusion, or at least marginalization, of the actual" (168). Ideal theory is unhelpful because it leaves out the very conditions from which we start when we aim for justice and, hence, makes it impossible to ever achieve that aim.5 Mills is here inspired by Marx insofar as The German Ideology highlights "the importance of descending from the idealizing abstractions of the Young Hegelians to a focus on 'real, active human beings,' not 'human beings as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived,' but 'as they actually are,' in (class) relations of domination" (Marx cf. Mills, 2005, 170). It is an ignorance that requires a carefully orchestrated and laboriously maintained form of epistemic neglect, an unknowingness carefully generated and supported by an entire range of institutions, practices, habits, and attitudes. This ignorance does not bear the mark of passivity but actually takes a lot of agency. (2008, 313–314) that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it (Baldwin 1993, 5; cf. Spelman 2007, 119). Imagine an ignorance that resists. Imagine an ignorance that fights back. Imagine an ignorance militant, aggressive, not to be intimidated, an ignorance that is active, dynamic, that refuses to go quietly—not at all confined to the illiterate and uneducated but propagated at the highest levels of the land, indeed presenting itself unblushingly as knowledge (Mills, 2007, 13). White ignorance, or any other form of ideological reasoning, can pose a serious problem for any theory that is in the business of analyzing existing instances of injustice, because it traps the theorist (and anyone else) in an ideological framework that is detrimental to a critical standpoint. Oppression and other social injustices are structural; they are linked to our social position and relations with others and the world (cf. Young, 1990, 2001, 2; Frye, 1983, 15–16). This implies that we—as social agents and theorists—are necessarily a part of it; depending on the context, either in positions of power or in positions of oppression. As I will outline in more detail shortly, our social positions and relations have an effect on what we can know and how likely we know what we know. In other words, our social positions and power are operative in ways that are epistemically significant. Critical Theory has argued for this insight with the help of ideology theory. In short, because we are situated within an ideology, we are ignorant of how the world really is. In line with most Critical Theorists, I understand ideology as a form of consciousness that stands in relation to social practices; it is a practical form of consciousness. According to this understanding, ideology is a frame of intelligibility that is induced by social practices—the way in which we do things—and, at the same time, has practical consequences in shaping how we understand what we do. This is summed up by Rahel Jaeggi when she writes: "ideologies constitute our relation to the world and thus determine the horizons of our interpretation of the world, or the framework in which we understand both ourselves and the social conditions, and also the way we operate within these conditions" (Jaeggi, 2009, 64). The idea being that this frame of intelligibility allows us to smoothly take part in and enact social practices and coordinate our behavior with others, but at the same time, it brings it about that we naturalize and legitimize—whether consciously or subconsciously—unjust practices of oppression while participating in them. Thus, the ideological frame of intelligibility masks unjust practices and structures such that we can be complicit in the oppression of others and in the oppression of ourselves. Refusing to be the Other, refusing complicity with man, would mean renouncing all the advantages an alliance with the superior caste confers on women. Lord-man will materially protect liege-woman and will be in charge of justifying her existence: along with the economic risk, she avoids the metaphysical risk of a freedom that must invent its goals without help. (Beauvoir, 1949/2011, 10). In other words, women—sometimes for good reasons—choose to stay complicit and therewith help maintain and reproduce a partial and distorted view of the world taken from the standpoint of those in power (read: men).6 Hence, they continuously either dismiss their potential to acquire a critical standpoint about their own situation(s) or ignore such a standpoint and instead (choose to) stay within the dominant framework.7 Beauvoir's analysis is still applicable today. The public response to the #MeToo movement provides more than one example of how women stand behind men accused of sexual misconduct and violence. Bari Weiss famously defended Aziz Ansari when he was accused of dismissing the verbal refusal of a woman who came to be known as Grace,8 Catherine Deneuve published an open letter in which she describes the "witch-hunt" against men in wake of the Weinstein scandal and fears that #MeToo (and its French equivalent #BalanceTonPorc) threaten our sexual freedom,9 and Ghislaine Maxwell was recently found guilty for facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of young women by Jeffrey Epstein and his friends.10 This point sounds familiar from the above discussed theories of white ignorance. Here, being in the grip of the ideology of white supremacy causes (and provides an incentive for) white people to be ignorant of their own role as oppressors (cf. Mills, 2007). According to myself and Müller (2022) as well as Mills (2005) and others, standpoint theory might provide a solution to the trap of ideology. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in feminist standpoint theory11 that can be described as part of the more general interest in investigating social injustices, including epistemic injustices, which is often ascribed to non-ideal theory.12 The basic underlying idea of feminist standpoint theory is the idea that knowers are not interchangeable; rather, the social position (or identity) of knowers is of epistemic relevance.13 Not only can differences in experiences lead to differences in perspective, but a differently located knower might not be able to have the same perspective even if they had the same experience. Some examples of bodily experiences are quite obvious; the pain during childbirth cannot be known by anyone who has never given birth. This is far from contested. Yet, feminist standpoint theory has expanded on this insight by arguing that differences in knowers are not random (whoever has the experience of childbirth vs. who has not), but are socially structured such that there are many experiences differentiated along the lines of social location and social group membership. On the one hand, this implies that if we know the world and interact with it through our specific perspective, we only see a certain part of the world and miss some other knowledge about it. Hence, our perspective not only shapes what we see and how we see it but also limits what we see. On the other hand, the importance of social location and social group membership is not that simple. It is neither the case that different experiences result in different knowledge nor that one's social location or one's social group membership results in some specific form of knowledge necessarily (cf. Intemann 2010, 783–4). Rather, as Gaile Pohlhaus summarizes, "the situations resulting from one's social positioning create 'common challenges' that constitute part of the knower's lived experience and so contribute to the context from which they approach the world" (Pohlhaus, 2012, 716–717; cf. Alcoff, 2000 and Alcoff, 2006; Collins, 2000). The argument is not that there is a direct link between having a certain experience or a certain social location or group membership and therefore necessarily obtaining some specific knowledge. Instead, what we develop are 'common challenges' or, in Heidi Grasswick's words, 'a perspective' (Grasswick, 2018).14 situated knowledge: "For certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some non-epistemic social facts about that agent" (Toole, 2019, 2); epistemic privilege: "some epistemic advantage can be drawn from the position of powerlessness" (Toole, 2019, 3); and achievement: "knowledge accessible from a particular social location is not given, but must be struggled for" (Toole, 2019, 3). This idea can be generalized. Elizabeth Anderson, for example, writes that "people in powerful positions rarely have the characteristic experiences through which they would learn that what they are doing to social inferiors is wrong" (Anderson, 2014, 8), Pohlhaus writes that "a marginally situated knower is more likely than not to find gaps in the predominantly held epistemic resources for making sense of what is noticeable to them in view of their situatedness" (Pohlhaus, 2012, 719), and Mills famously argued that epistemology of ignorance is "a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions … producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made" (1997, 18). Being positioned marginally is therefore epistemically both disadvantageous and advantageous. It produces circumstances in which most of the available epistemic resources are not in sync with one's experiences and interpretations of the world, but it also allows one to have an advantageous position to understand the world more objectively, since one's vulnerability enables one to see the world both from the oppressor's eyes as well as from one's own—as was famously argued for by W.E.B. du Bois under the term 'double consciousness'. Feminist standpoint theory has taken this idea on board, using it to grasp the sexual division—instead of class division—of labor. Dorothy Smith has argued for the epistemic advantage of women sociologists for understanding both sociology as made by men and having their own embodied lives as women (cf. Smith, 1974). Lorraine Code has argued that the sex of knowers is epistemologically significant in understanding gendered power relations (cf. Code, 1981; Code, 1991). Nancy Hartsock has argued that women's role in care work gives them unique experiences from which to understand patriarchal institutions and ideologies (cf. Hartsock, 1983a, 1983b). Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks have used these ideas in a more intersectional way by arguing for the development of Black feminist thought (cf. Collins, 2000) and sites of resistance (cf. Hooks, 1990). However, as we have seen with Beauvoir's example of women who are complicit in their own oppression, ideology's web traps most of us in a way that makes it questionable whether experiences of oppression can in fact result in an ideology-critical standpoint. In fact, as exemplified by the achievement-thesis above, feminist standpoint theories have argued that an advantageous standpoint is not a given simply because of one's social location or social group membership. Instead, it involves a political engagement in which the systematic structure of power relations is revealed and a critical standpoint is achieved. Yet, the achievement-thesis has not attracted the same attention as the other two theses in recent writings despite the fact that it remains an open question of how well individuals located in ideologies can develop a critical standpoint. when virtually the whole of a society, including supposedly thoughtful, educated, intelligent persons, commits itself to belief in propositions that collapse into absurdity upon the slightest examination, the reason is not hallucination or delusion or even simple hypocrisy; rather, it is ideology. And ideology is impossible for anyone to analyze rationally who remains trapped on its terrain. (Fields, 1990, 100) Feminist standpoint theory is deeply influenced by Critical Theory in general and Marxism in particular—as can be seen, for example, by MacKinnon's writings on consciousness raising, that are starkly influenced by Critical Theory's arguments for class consciousness. To understand the trap that ideology (in all its forms) poses for actualizing the potentiality of standpoints, we can turn to Marxist theories of false consciousness. Doing so, I aim to show that insights from Critical Theory's ideology critique can help to sketch a solution to the ideology trap. Critical theorists have long argued that people can be complicit in their own oppression—similar to the ways seen above—and thus fail to access the specific knowledge related to their social position. Wilhelm Reich famously stated "what has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why the majority of those who are hungry don't steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don't strike" (Reich, 1975, 53). Critical theorists in the Marxist tradition answer by pointing to ideology, the product of a social system that engenders a form of consciousness that prevents its subjects from acting according to their own interests; as Adorno wrote, ideology is "necessary false consciousness" (1974, 169).18 When we speak of false consciousness, what we have in mind is practical false consciousness, not cognitive false consciousness or distortions of identity (cf. Rosen, 1996, 72 for this distinction).19 Practical false consciousness describes the distorted way "in which we respond to and act within the world" (Rosen, 1996, 72), for example, by being distorted in our beliefs, desires, interests, or will, in our values, ends or norms, or in our emotions. So, one Marxist explanation for why the hungry don't steal and the exploited don't strike is that they have a poor perception of their own interests; their interests and "desires have been organized by a system which depends on their docility" (Meyerson, 1991, 7) and have been shaped according to commercial values and consumer goods. Here, their "immediate" interests are being taken for "real interests" (Marcuse, 1964, xiii). The idea then is that we, as social actors imbued with ideology, fail to see what our real interests are and instead succumb to our immediate interests. Some women, according to what we have seen above, help in their own unfreedom by choosing immediate interests such as pleasing men or being sexually submissive for the protection and (false) recognition that these acts bring while failing to see that it is in their real interest to resist patriarchal and sexist values and norms. Building on Adorno's ideas, Debord brings forward a detailed theory of the spectacle as "a Weltanschauung which has become actual, materially translated" (Debord, 1994, 13), highlighting the way in which ideology is real in so far as it produces the actual social relations and practices in which we engage.20 This means conceiving of ideology as both real and unreal—or, quoting Adorno's famous remark, in ideologies "truth and untruth are always entwined" (Adorno, 1972, 465; translation in Jaeggi, 2009, 66)—in so far as the distorted or false ideas of ideology leave an imprint on the social reality. This relates to the idea of "necessary false consciousness" because consciousness here is false in so far as it contains a false understanding of reality, yet, at the same time, it corresponds to reality by being socially induced.21 Hence, according to Debord and other critical theorists, the spectacle or the ideology is both "the outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of production", "it is the very heart of society's real unreality" (Debord, 1994, 13). Debord then continues to show the way in which the working class is alienated within the spectacle of capitalist society, helpfully describing the spectacle as a map of the social structure for the workers to navigate and, thus, showing the very real way in which the working class is situated within the given ideology; helping to reproduce it simply by living within in and navigating through it (cf. Debord, 1994, 23). In an incredibly rich paper on the material relation between "women's lives" and knowledge, Rosemary Hennessy (1993) argues for a revival of such a Marxist analysis of material conditions of exploitation against the general tendency to shy away from analysis of social structures and towards systems of belief. Nowadays, many social philosophers and standpoint epistemologies accept the ways in which material conditions and social structures have consequences for our knowledge practices. Yet, similar to Hennessy's complaint, the specific relation between social position as important for knowledge acquisition and the embeddedness in ideological social structures is often underdeveloped.22 This is problematic because an understanding of ideological structures proves to be fruitful for a proper understanding of the achievement-thesis and the problems that standpoint theory faces because of it. Here, I want to make a similar argument to Hennessy and offer an explanation for the problem of false consciousness as outlined in the last section by focusing on Marxist analysis of social structures of oppression and ideology. According to Hennessy, we have to turn to ideology critique—that is, to a critique of that which produces false consciousness—to see how emancipatory standpoints can be achieved. Drawing on work by Althusser as well as Gramsci, Hennessy argues that the concept of materiality of knowledge as well as the concept of hegemony are particularly fruitful for a materialist feminist understanding of standpoint. … ideology is understood as always an uneven and contested ensemble of discourses, the space from which critique issues need not be outside ideology …. Instead, the alternative narrative of critique can be thought of as a counterhegemonic discourse, the enabling conditions for which are the contradictions produced by exploitative and oppressive social relations …. (Hennessy, 1993, 27) Part of the idea here is, and I borrow from intersectionality, that the position of Black women can never be fully stripped of one of its parts; it is not either woman or Black but both. Hence, it provides resources to see the contradictions and diverse perspectives of what it means to be a woman—both within feminist struggles and ideological patriarchal contexts—and the contestation of antiracist resistance within an overall racist social structure. For example, Elaine Brown narrates her experiences of sexism within the Black Panthers, writing that "a woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant", continuing that "if a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood, to be hindering the progress of the black race" (1992, 357). Here, we can see how the struggle with feminism in the lives of black women can form ruptures in what they experience within anti-racist movements and, similarly, vice versa. Being aware of such ruptures or contradiction, where for example the respectful treatment within one context is missing in the next, can then give rise to the will to achieve a broader understanding of the structural injustices and intelligibility frameworks that are at work.23 Generalizing this thought, we can say that the ruptures of the hegemonic discourse provide space for alternative discourses which can be used as "epistemological basis or authority for ideology critique" (Hennessy, 1993, 23). Let me briefly summarize what I have said so far. I have started with some examples of the way in which some women fail to actualized a critical standpoint regarding gender oppression and, instead, are complicit in the unjust system. I have then argued that we need to have a closer look at the achievement thesis as it forms an important yet recently neglected aspect of feminist standpoint theory and that a fruitful way to do so is by taking into account what Critical Theory has said. Here, we can see that a theory of false consciousness that derives from a particular understanding of ideology can explain (a) why some women are complicit in so far as they are unaware of the workings of said ideology and prioritize their false interests over their real interests, as well as (b) how being located at the intersection of both racist and sexist ideologies and having access to a critical understanding of one of these ideologies can unmask the contradictions of the other. Hence, the understanding of ideology used above both poses a challenge as well as an