Critical theory
The phrases "Critical Theory, critical theory" and "Frankfurt School" are commonly used to refer to a tradition of philosophy and social theory that emerged in Germany between the World Wars in response to what were perceived to be deep flaws in modern Western culture and Western world, society. Centered in Frankfurt, its ''first generation'' of thinkers included such figures as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin; the preeminent representative of the ''second'', post-World War II generation was Jürgen Habermas, who began his academic career as Adorno's assistant. The ''third generation'' of critical theorists, to which McCarthy belongs, was from the start rather more international in its makeup, and more global in its outlook. McCarthy's contribution to this tradition of thought comprises, first, further development of its philosophical and methodological underpinnings, particularly on issues surrounding the putative Universality (philosophy), universality of modern Western ideas, practices, and institutions; second, interpretation and elaboration of Habermas's ideas that brought them into closer contact with Anglo-American traditions of philosophy and social theory, especially American Pragmatism; and third, application of the critical-theoretical perspective so developed to issues of racism and imperialism, which had been relatively undertheorized in the work of the first two generations. These contributions, together with his general editorship of the series "Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought" (MIT Press, c. 100 volumes), and his graduate training of some two dozen members of the ''fourth generation'' of critical theorists, are the grounds upon which McCarthy is generally held to be a founding member of the American branch of critical, social and political theory.Race and empire
In the first decade of the present millennium, in a series of articles and papers that culminated in a book on ''Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development'' (Cambridge UP, 2009), McCarthy turned his attention to the ideologies of race and empire that generally accompanied the rise of the West, and to the particular versions thereof that were integral to shaping Culture of the United States, American culture and society. His organizing theme is that ideas of sociocultural development—civilization, progress, modernization, etc. -- have been the principal lens through which the relations of the West to the rest of the world have been viewed. Through that lens, differences have appeared to be hierarchically ordered along various lines, from talent and temperament to morals and aptitude for self-government. McCarthy develops this theme by examining both racial theories of difference—from Immanuel Kant, Kant, through social Darwinism, to the cultural racism of the present—and universal histories of cultural development that underwrote imperialism and neoimperialism. He concludes that despite the depredations and dangers of ideologies of progress, we have no alternative in a rapidly globalizing world but to rethink our conceptions of development so as to accommodate the multiple modernities now taking shape, without however, renouncing the aspiration to Unity in diversity, unity-in-difference for which there is no sensible substitute.Selected bibliography
* The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (MIT Press, 1978); * Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory (MIT Press, 1991); * Critical Theory, coauthored with David Hoy (Blackwell, 1994); * Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge University Press, 2009); * General editor, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought (MIT Press, 1981–2009); * Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn. Essays in Honor of Thomas McCarthy. W. Rehg & J. Bohman, eds. (MIT Press, 2001); * Book Symposium in Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy 8 (2012), online at http://sgrp.typepad.com/sgrp/2012/04/new-symposium-on-thomas-mccarthy-race-empire-and-the-idea-of-human-development-2009.html; * Book Symposium in Neue Politische Literatur 57 (2012): 25–31, online at http://www.neue-politische-literatur.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=3323&L=0.References
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCarthy, Thomas A. 1940 births 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century essayists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American philosophers 21st-century essayists American expatriates in Germany American logicians American male essayists American male non-fiction writers American philosophy academics American political philosophers American social commentators Boston University alumni Continental philosophers Critical theorists Epistemologists Lecturers Living people Metaphysicians Northwestern University faculty Ontologists Philosophers of culture Philosophers of history Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mathematics Philosophers of social science Philosophy writers Social philosophers Theorists on Western civilization Writers about activism and social change Writers about globalization