Abstract

The Frankfurt "critical theory" presents in its long history a complex sequence of critical paradigms: the critique of ideology and traditional theory that characterizes the first approach of M. Horkheimer, the "negative" dialectic of the late Adorno, the reconstruction of counterfactual assumptions of communication by J. Habermas and, finally, the normative and critical character of the spheres of recognition in the recent work of A. Honneth. This history seems to swing between an immanent (and context- dependent) account and a transcendent (or transcendental) account, in which standards are represented by an ideal and normative point of view. But all these different accounts are only variations around a fundamental paradigm: the model of the Hegelian determinate negation.