Critical theory defined itself against specialized sociology as total social analysis.

Evidence

Deserving as it may be to point out the horrors of German or Russian despotism, the effort of conceptual thinking has, in my opinion, still to be concerned with the social development in industrialized society as a whole. To conceive the horror is as horrible as to see the night. The horror in the human world should be understood as the verdict against specific forms of social self-preservation. Today the world has become too much of a totality as to justify the isolation of one power block so as to oppose it to the rest of civilization as good or bad, or better or worse. Such a procedure is justified in practical respects but not when it comes to theoretical thinking. Here, I must say the principle of the lesser evil is even more dangerous than in politics. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 684 (#expands, via linked claim)

Where it seems to go beyond this discourse, as in its logical purifications, only the skeleton remains of the same universe—a ghost much more ghostly than those which the analysis combats. If philosophy is more than an occupation, it shows the grounds which made discourse a mutilated and deceptive universe. To leave this task to a colleague in the Sociology or Psychology Department is to make the established division of academic labor into a methodological principle. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 701 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Critical theory must analyze industrialized society as a whole rather than rank power blocs — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 684; Handing critique off to sociology makes academic division of labor a methodological principle — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 701

Broader Connections

• Critical theory must analyze industrialized society as a whole rather than rank power blocs #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 684
• Handing critique off to sociology makes academic division of labor a methodological principle #expands (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 701