Critical Theory defined itself through critique of others rather than systematic positive statements

Evidence

At the very heart of Critical Theory was an aversion to closed philosophical systems. To present it as such would therefore distort its essentially open-ended, probing, unfinished quality. It was no accident that Horkheimer chose to articulate his ideas in essays and aphorisms rather than in the cumbersome tomes so characteristic of German philosophy. Although Adorno and Marcuse were less reluctant to speak through completed hooks, they too resisted the temptation to make those books into positive, systematic philosophical statements. Instead. Critical Theory, as its name implies, was expressed through a series of critiques of other thinkers and philosophical traditions. Its development was thus through dialogue, its genesis as dialectical as the method it purported to apply to social phenomena. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 186

At the very heart of Critical Theory was an aversion to closed philosophical systems. To present it as such would therefore distort its essentially open-ended, probing, unfinished quality. It was no accident that Horkheimer chose to articulate his ideas in essays and aphorisms rather than in the cumbersome tomes so characteristic of German philosophy. Although Adorno and Marcuse were less reluctant to speak through completed hooks, they too resisted the temptation to make those books into positive, systematic philosophical statements. Instead. Critical Theory, as its name implies, was expressed through a series of critiques of other thinkers and philosophical traditions. Its development was thus through dialogue, its genesis as dialectical as the method it purported to apply to social phenomena. Only by confronting it in its own terms, as a gadfly of other systems, can it be fully understood. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 186

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what ‘Critical Theory’ structurally is: a negative, dialogical mode rather than a systematic philosophy, which explains why Horkheimer wrote essays and aphorisms.
• XREF: Connects to the general intellectual-history trope of the Frankfurt School’s deliberate fragmentariness (also relevant to Nietzsche’s aphorisms and Adorno’s later ‘Minima Moralia’). — connects to: Social theory stopped being critical and negative by the late nineteenth century; Horkheimer’s critique of Lebensphilosophie defined Critical Theory’s foundations — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 214; Critical theory can only remain negative, offering no bridge to the future. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 887 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 186