In Defense of Critical Theory

"Against Uncritical Theory"

Critical Theory is the best attempt in existence for creating a new religion for all of Western Civilization.

Let me explain.

This article is a response to an article by Bentham’s Bulldog, entitled “Against Critical Theory.” His article is informed by Dan’s Williams, “Contra Critical Theory,” which you can check out here.

Before I go any further, I want to make the following disclaimer clear:

These articles contain good arguments that I agree with. I am responding to these arguments because I think they are the best arguments against Critical Theory, and they steelman the case against CRT. There are plenty of weird conspiracy theories about “cultural Marxism” that I could BTFO if I was interested in beating up on a strawman, but that is not my intention. I am not refuting these arguments in an absolute sense, but augmenting them by placing them in a larger context.

I’m also not going to reproduce word-for-word Bentham’s article, not because I want to misinterpret him, but because I respect the paywall, and think you should pay him if you want to read it. However, in the interest of not misrepresenting Bentham, I will briefly put Bentham’s arguments into my own words:

Critical Theory is anti-western.

Despite the west being the best at fulfilling the moral values of critical theory (harm reduction, anti-racism, anti-sexism, sexual freedom) critical theorists unfairly malign western civilization. In calling the west “racist, sexist, homophobic,” they might as well be arguing that “India is a small country.” Sure, India is small compared to the galaxy at large, but in relative terms to other countries, India is huge! Critical Theorists should stop criticizing the west, and start attacking the third world, which is much more racist, sexist, and homophobic.

Critical Theory is silent on animal torture.

According to Critical Theory, “silence is violence,” and therefore, Critical Theory is violent against animals, because it focuses on the harm that humans do to each other, while ignoring the harm that humans do to animals. Critical Theorists should dedicate less time and energy to critiquing white supremacy and the patriarchy, and more time and energy to critiquing factory farming and the power of Big Agriculture.

Critical Theory prefers unfalsifiable claims to empirical ones.

Critical Theorists focus on “unseen psychological harm” over material harm. For example, they will spend untold hours ranting about how black students should be segregated from white students, to protect them from the threat of microaggressions. Instead, they could have spent that time and energy advocating for malaria nets to save the lives of Africans. So long as people are dying of preventable disease and starvation in mass numbers, Critical Theory is wasting precious time and ideological capital on invisible or unfalsifiable claims.

Critical Theory opposes “neo-colonialism.”

If I advocate for foreign aid to Africa to stop people from dying, Critical Theorists will oppose this on the grounds that my motivations come from a “white savior complex.” They argue that Africa should be left to its own devices, or that only black Americans should be allowed to organize aid to Africa. At worst, they might even argue that black Americans have “internalized white supremacy,” and therefore, even black Americans would be racist by advocating for aid to Africa.

Critical Theory makes the perfect the enemy of the good.

Critical Theory is axiomatically deontological rather than pragmatic. It opposes capitalism, racism, and sexism, even in cases where that opposition creates more harm than good. For example, let’s say that America is 7% racist and 47% sexist. In other words, 7% of white Americans oppose interracial marriage, and 47% of voters preferred Trump over Biden. America is also a capitalist country. Yet, at the same time, America provides foreign aid to poor countries. For a Critical Theorist, this foreign aid is “dirty” or “sinful,” even if the net effect is good, because it originates from a country which is imperfect. Critical Theory advocates for the Land Back movement, which has no chance. Even if it did, the destruction of capitalism would result in far more death than the status quo.

Critical Theory is obscurantist.

Critical Theory makes no sense, and that’s not because it is high IQ, but because it is a status game. It’s no coincidence that the founders of critical theory were all continental philosophers or Heideggerians — they are attracted to vocabularies which hide, rather than reveal, truth. They use jargon to make themselves seem smart, to create ambiguity, and avoid scrutiny from common sense objections.

In Defense of Religion

I agree with Bentham’s critiques. Critical theory is obscurantist, it is anti-western, it is perfectionist, it is idealist, it is against foreign intervention of all kinds, it is silent on animal torture, and it is largely unfalsifiable. Critical theorists aren’t “living in the real world.” They are religious fanatics defending a dogma without any empirical evidence.

And that’s good!

Obscurantism.

Every religion throughout history has practiced esoterica and obscurantism. This serves a few purposes. Firstly, it serves as a kind of IQ test. By requiring that people learn a new language (Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Critical-Theorist), this filters out dumb people from the priest class.

More importantly, this also filters out unmotivated or uncommitted people. Because of the sunk cost fallacy, those who are willing to suffer through obscurantism are more likely to be committed fanatics by the end of their religious education. This is a good way of maintaining dogmatic stability within a religion. If anyone could become a priest after a 5 minute certification process, the authority structure of the religion would collapse.

Instead of using obscurantism as an IQ test, a group of high IQ people could be selected for by an actual IQ test, which is much faster and more efficient. However, an IQ test does not create ideological conformity or commitment to a specific set of beliefs. Obscurantism does, because of the sunk cost effect.

Dogmatism.

Do we need a shared set of religious beliefs about the world to have a functioning civilization? On this question, I am a historicist. If something has never existed before in history, I assume that thing is impossible without positive evidence to the contrary. For example, I am fine with assuming that new technologies will develop, and these new technologies will lead to new forms of culture and governance. However, there is no form of technology I can conceive of that would eliminate the necessity of dogmatic commitment to shared beliefs.

In AI, the term “alignment” refers to the problem of trying to make AI do things that humans want, as opposed to doing things humans don’t want. Alignment is important in AI, but it’s also important for society at large. When human beings within a society are not dogmatically aligned, when they do not share the same moral beliefs and values, nothing is possible, because polarization and selfishness result in a collective action problem.

At this point, I hope that the reader agrees that we need a shared set of values and beliefs about the world, but may persist in thinking that critical theory is the worst possible set of values and beliefs. I disagree. I think there are worse ones, such as Christianity and Naziism.

good, perfect, and non-existent.

Can we do better than critical theory? Sure. I would agree with that. However, so far, we haven’t.

Many agnostics, conservative-atheists, moderates, and libertarians believe they have a better Civic Religion than Critical Theory. They do not. I am unconvinced by their claims.

If the government had unlimited, unrestricted, totalitarian power, it could basically get anyone to believe anything. It could make people worship the Kim family in North Korea, or make them into Maoists, or make them into pagans, cannibals, pedophile-apologists, Nazis… the list goes on. What it cannot do, however, is force the masses to half-heartedly believe in rationalist utilitarian Bayesian inference. That is not just empirically impossible, but logically impossible.

The type of belief I am speaking of is regarding faith. Moderates “believe” in centrist policies. But are they willing to die for these things? By the nature of the label, “moderate,” the answer is no. Tautologically, moderates can never inspire true belief, or faith, and idealism, which are required for humans to sacrifice their life for a cause.

Critical theorists are willing to die for critical theory. Or, if they are too cowardly for that, at the very least they are willing to send racists to death camps. This is the level of dedication which is required for a state to preserve itself. The idea that states can be preserved by the calculation of utils is laughable and absurd. The only people smart enough to trick themselves into this belief are highly intelligent, highly individualistic, and have low intuitive empathy. I call these cluster of traits the “non-religious libertarian personality”:

1. Non-religious libertarians are high in personality traits like individualism, disagreeableness, and openness, and tend to have higher IQs than the average American.

2. Non-religious libertarians tend to have lower levels of intuitive empathy. Here, I am using the term “empathy” to refer to “a shared sense of pain which occurs at the thought of another person becoming upset.” People with low intuitive empathy aren’t bothered by the fact that their ideas are counter-intuitive, and upset or confuse the majority of people.

3. As a result of their unusual personality traits and low intuitive empathy, they have less “common sense” when it comes to the psychology of the average American. Non-religious libertarians have a bias toward projecting their openness, individualism, and intelligence onto others.

By intuitive empathy, I mean “gut level empathy,” like a sick feeling in your stomach when you see someone who is suffering. This isn’t to say that these people aren’t “logically empathetic” or morally utilitarian. They generally believe their ideas will result in less human suffering overall.

I also think openness, individualism, and disagreeableness used to be much higher in America’s past. In this sense, the non-religious libertarian personality type harkens back to an archaic form of American, the kind that founded the country and made it what it is today. Although I sound critical, I have deep respect for these people.

Critical theory might be wrong, but at least it’s an ethos.

“Effective altruism” is not something that can be packaged to sell to the masses. It might be capable of influencing policy by convincing smart people of its virtue, but it is not virulent enough in its own right that it can effectively govern. At best, moderate and centrist “pragmatism” can only exist within the framework of an existing society. It can never uphold the state monopoly on violence on its own. I am not dismissing the efficaciousness of effective altruism as an addition to or augmentation to an existing, functioning system. I am saying that it is a peripheral or second-order ideology, which can only influence a pre-existing first-order mass-oriented system.

Currently, Critical Theory and Christianity are competing to fulfill the role of the first-order system, and Critical Theory is winning. It is winning by simply destroying Christianity from the outside; it is winning by forcing Christians to admit that racism is worse than heresy; it is winning by spreading Critical Theory within the church. Critical Theory is conducting full spectrum warfare, and devastating the enemy. It is smarter, more virulent, younger, and more powerful. The end result will be total victory, unless Christianity or some third religion can significantly alter the current dynamic. “Rational pragmatism” is not a candidate. “Rational pragmatism” is second-order, and will have to exist as a side project or “consort” to the winner.

The myth of “Switzerland.”

Libertarians are generally the greatest critics of this argument. They believe that states like Singapore or Switzerland prove that you don’t need a fanatical Civil Religion in order for a civilization to survive.

Switzerland is the exception rather than the rule, but even here, it is impossible to escape from primordial and primaeval forces, like religion, blood, and soil:

Machiavelli writes about the Swiss as a model of a “free people.” Their geography allows them more freedom than other states to experiment with tolerance (rather than the Nile River, which tended toward bureaucratic centralization). Still, although Switzerland is linguistically diverse, it has a strong historic ethnic majority. From 1831 to 1991, 10 out of 11 of the Swiss Chancellors were German. In 1950, 72.1% of Swiss spoke German, and 77% of government documents are still published in German to this day.

Like Germany, it is historically divided between Catholics and Protestants, leading to the development of strong secular institutions to reinforce the state against sectarianism. This divide also meant that Freemasonry and Republicanism became extremely popular in Switzerland. When German radicals got in trouble for being atheists, they often fled to Switzerland. Switzerland is ethnically and historically a majority German culture, religiously Freemasonic-Calvinist, with a strong liberal commitment to tolerance, pluralism, and multi-culturalism. This is a very rich and stable foundation for a state, albeit one which has no imperial ambitions or ability to expand beyond its borders. A perfectly fit mythology for the “bankers of Europe.”

The “Swiss” Origins of Critical Theory.

Some have argued that Critical Theory is just the tip of the leftist spear. Curtis Yarvin has argued that the left is descended from Calvinism, and therefore, Protestantism. Others have argued that leftism is a descendent of Christianity writ large. Neither of these are necessarily wrong in absolute terms, but I would like to specifically augment these claims: it is also true that wokism, modern leftism, and Critical Theory are all descendants of Biblical Criticism.¹

Since Marx was a student of Biblical Criticism, it is, at the very least, possible that Critical Theory is a direct descendant of Biblical Criticism. This is a genealogical argument and historical, which is not necessarily convincing in itself, since many ideas mutate over time and invert themselves. For example, we could say that modern-day Satanism is “descended” from Christianity in some sense, in that it inverts Christian symbolism, but this doesn’t prove any sort of logical connection between the two ideas. Still, I will lay out the historical background for those who are unfamiliar, partially because I think it is fascinating.

Calvin was not a Biblical Critic, but most of the first Biblical Critics came out of the Protestant tradition that he helped invent. Like many Biblical Critics and dissidents, he fled to Switzerland. In this sense, Switzerland is the birthplace of Biblical Criticism.

Well, not literally. I’m exaggerating and using hyperbole. But figuratively, yes. If we take the term “Switzerland” in a metaphorical or allegorical sense, to refer to a “neutral zone,” or “no-man’s land,” then yes, all Biblical Criticism originates from “Switzerland.”

Spinoza, for example, could only have survived the expulsion from the Jewish community because of the religious tolerance of the Netherlands. Without that, he would have been forced into a binary between Christianity and Judaism. Because of the religious toleration of the Netherlands, he could explicate his weird deist pantheism, and set the stage for later Biblical Criticism.

The Enlightenment generally was a movement for “freedom of thought,” that I would argue stretches back to the non-sectarian Rudolf II. Its luminaries, like Voltaire and Gibbon, were extremely critical of Christianity, but had not yet formalized a school of Biblical Criticism. Still, the broader Enlightenment, in arguing for religious toleration, created fertile ground and protected Biblical Criticism from potential persecution. Voltaire and Gibbon were the “canaries in the coalmine”: if they could attack Christianity on moral grounds, surely theologians could attack the Bible on archaeological or historical grounds.

The early Biblical Critics were mostly German, not Swiss. But Germany between the 17th century and 1871 was “Swiss” in its confederate political formulation, when compared with France or England. The German principalities had a remarkable level of political and theological independence from one another, like nowhere else in Europe. If you disagreed with one prince, you could just move to another town a few dozen miles away. It was a libertarian paradise.

One of the notable exceptions to the German domination of Biblical Criticism was Ernest Renan (b. 1823), who helped invent civic nationalism as well as racial determinism and modern philo-semitism.² But most of the rest were Germans: Hermann Samuel Reimarus (b. 1694), Johann Salomo Semler (b. 1725), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (b. 1729), Johann Jakob Griesbach (b. 1745), Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (b. 1752), Georg Lorenz Bauer (b. 1755), Ferdinand Christian Baur (b. 1792), and David Friedrich Strauss (b. 1808).

Reimarus believed Jesus was a mortal, and that Christianity was fabricated. “Lessing’s Ditch,” describes the insufficiency of supposed miracles as proof of the veracity of the Bible (because we must first believe in the Bible for any account of those miracles having actually happened). Semler rejected that the Old Testament was equal to the New Testament. Griesbach gave his name to the “Griesbach hypothesis,” which is now called the “two-gospel hypothesis.” Eichhorn proposed the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis, arguing that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were derived from a "proto-gospel" (Ur-Gospel) which was later lost or destroyed. Georg Bauer, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that, in order to preserve the goodness of Christianity, all things mystical must be removed in order not to distract from its rational and moral elements. Ferdinand Baur founded the Tübingen School of theology, and argued that the good of Christianity was derived from Socrates and Plato rather than the Hebrew tradition. Finally, David Strauss argued that miracles never occurred. Most of these developments occurred between 1755 and 1835, spanning the period between the American and French Revolutionary movements up until the foundation of Marxism.

Hegel (b. 1770) was not a Biblical Critic himself, but was influential on the Biblical Critics, and he was born in Stuttgart (Württemberg), studied in Jena (Thuringia), and died in Berlin (Prussia). His student, Bruno Bauer (b. 1809), was born in Eisenberg (Thuringia) and died in Berlin. Bauer was removed from the University of Bonn in 1842 because of his Biblical Criticism. Until 1841, Bruno Bauer was a close friend with Marx. This relationship between Bauer and Marx helps establish the relationship between Biblical Criticism and later forms of leftism.

The critical connection.

In addition to the genealogical and historical argument (which could be called circumstantial evidence), I will offer a structural argument: Biblical Criticism, like Critical Theory, was a form of self-criticism. That is, the early Biblical Critics were all Christian theologians. They were not atheists sniping from the sidelines (like Voltaire or Gibbon). They were educated and wrote from within the institutions of Protestantism, and revolutionized religion from within. This could also be said of the proto-critics Luther and Calvin, who were educated from within the Catholic system.

Critical Theory is animated by a spirit of self-criticism. It focuses on criticizing the west, not the third world. Christian theologians for the last 2,000 years have placed more moral guilt on Christians than on non-Christians. This is a tradition shared by Judaism, which states that Jews have greater moral obligations than non-Jews. There is nothing unique or new about the self-critical orientation of Critical Theory.

Summary.

So far, I have endeavored to demonstrate the following:

1. “Switzerland,” in a metaphorical or allegorical sense, leads directly to “Critical Theory,” rather than saving us from it. Moderates cannot escape the necessity of “religious belief” at the core of civilization.

2. Obscurantism is part of every establishment religion.

3. All Christian sects (including Critical Theory) are primarily self-critical, rather than “chauvinist.” They pride themselves on their ability to self-criticize. This is a feature, not a bug.

4. All Christian sects (including Critical Theory) are perfectionist. Again, this feature persists not because it is “rational” or “pragmatic” at an individual level, but because perfectionism is a strong psychological tool of social and moral control.

5. All religions have unfalsifiable claims about the nature of “sin.” Critical Theory is no different.

Critical Theory is not pragmatic, at all. It is just as nonsensical as any other religion. Call me “anti-rationalist” if you like, but I think on some deep psychological level, this is the type of social technology humans crave. They want something crazy, perfectionist, alien, and beyond human comprehension. Critical Theory provides that. It’s unavoidable.

Attempts to create “Switzerland” and maintain a religious “void” at the center of civilization are doomed to fail. Richard Dawkins was surprised by the rise of wokism, but we should not be surprised by the result of the “Switzerland” experiment. This is a conclusion based on history, not wishful thinking. Our psychological needs have not changed much in 2,000 years. We are just as religious as we have ever been.

The remaining issues with Critical Theory which I have not yet addressed are fairly problematic. Foreign intervention is necessary for a global order, and criticizing foreign aid as “racist” is unhelpful. Silence on animal torture is a flaw that needs to be fixed.

Critical Theory is relatively new and still in flux. I believe reform is possible. But it is not possible by sniping from the sidelines. If you want to improve Critical Theory and make it better, you must first accept that religion in some form is necessary, even if it is secular or atheistic. You must tolerate some level of obscurantism, dogmatism, idealism, perfectionism, and self-criticism, even when it is irrational or illogical. If you remain in “Switzerland,” totally detached from religion, without any alternative, then your fantasy of “Homo economicus” is even more destructive than that of the Critical Theorist.

Non-religion as a void.

I am skeptical of any attempt to deconstruct our system without putting forth a viable alternative. Civil Rights and Critical Theory are two systems of law and political theology which are imperfect. They could be improved. However, improvements are never going to come by advocating for disestablishment without an alternative. You cannot replace a psychological need with a void. You cannot dismiss the king, and put nothing in his place. That is anarchism. I say this as a former anarchist: anarchism in all its various forms is in denial of human nature. We need leadership, we need direction, even if that direction or leadership is flawed, imperfect, incompetent, and perverse.

People are like babies. It is better to have a mentally ill caretaker than no caretaker at all. Without a caretaker, a baby will certainly die. But even a sick caretaker provides the baby with a chance for life. I am open to the idea of replacing Critical Theory with something else, so long as that alternative fulfills the human need for fanatical, dogmatic, non-rational faith. But “Switzerland” or “pragmatic rationalist utilitarianism” does not fulfill basic psychological-religious needs.

I am a “weak rationalist.” This means I think rationality is good, and should be maximized in an uneasy coexistence with irrational forms of authority. This is distinct from “strong rationalism,” which believes that rationality can replace religion entirely.

“Strong rationalism” contends that we are inherently rational creatures, and then religion comes along and fools us or tricks us. Religion “perverts” our nature and makes us irrational. If that were true, we could simply remove religion and liberate ourselves from irrationality. “Weak rationalism” claims that religion merely fulfills irrational urges, in the same way that sex fulfills sexual urges. Some forms of sex are safer than others; some sex partners are better than others; some sex is good and some sex is bad; but we need sex. Denying sexual needs and denying religious needs both lead to poor outcomes.³

No society has ever existed without some form of religion. The more we attempt to convince ourselves that we are free of religion, the more religious we become. If we understand religion as the “modern day devil” according to the “strong rationalists,” then these words of the Pope gain new meaning. I will replace the word “devil” with “religion”:

Nowadays we are witnessing a strange phenomenon regarding religion. At a certain cultural level, it is held that it simply does not exist. It would be a symbol of the collective subconscious, or alienation; in short, a metaphor. But “the cleverest ruse of the religion is to persuade you it does not exist!” as someone wrote. Religion is astute: it makes us believe that it does not exist, and in this way it dominates everything. It is cunning. And yet our technological and secularized world is teeming with magicians, occultism, spiritualism, astrologers, sellers of spells and amulets, and unfortunately with real religious sects. Driven out the door, religion has re-entered, one might say, through the window. Driven out of faith, it re-enters with Critical Theory. And if you are a leftist, you are unconsciously conversing with religion.

Conclusion.

Effective altruists, as far as I am aware, do not claim to be devising a new religion to replace Critical Theory. I am not claiming that this is their intention, or that they have “failed” in this regard. Rather, I am cautioning against the discarding of Critical Theory without first attempting reform.

I am skeptical of criticisms of Critical Theory which do not compare its flaws in relative or comparative terms to other state religions. Critical Theory should be afforded the same sort of Schmittian exceptions we offer to other religions, rather than being held to the standard of “mere ideology.” This is because it is a dominant ideology among the elite. There are also Christian elites, but they are waning, and have lost the “mandate of heaven.”

I would have made the same argument in favor of respecting Christianity and not criticizing it if we were living in medieval Europe. I would have ultimately been convinced by Calvin and Luther, however, because they offered genuine, positive, and substantial alternatives, not just critiques.

Yes, Critical Theory is obscurantist; but is it any more or less obscurantist than other religions? Yes, it makes unfalsifiable claims about harm; don’t all religions do this, in their metaphysical doctrines of sin? No, it is not pragmatic or practical, but which religion is better in this respect than Critical Theory?

One could offer a return to Christianity as an alternative, but I am doubtful that Christianity is better than Critical Theory, given its flaws. I am also doubtful that Christianity can ever recover from its multi-century decline among the western intelligentsia.

Outside of Christianity and Critical Theory, I am struggling to see candidates to fulfill the religious function. Naziism probably represents the most recent attempt for a “third option,” but it failed spectacularly.

I will repeat this, to avoid the appearance that I am unfairly assigning blame or guilt: It is not the job of effective altruism to invent new religions or defend old ones. I am unbothered by their attempts to liquidate their assets and convert them into malaria nets. Not everyone has to understand religion and its necessity. But calling Critical Theory “a putrid combination of banal observations and bizarre claims” lacks valuable historical context. All religions make bizarre claims. Just as India is a big country, Critical Theory is a relatively advanced religion, by historical standards.

If Critical Theory was abolished, would civilization collapse? Not immediately. But no civilization can survive without religion. Even Machiavelli, who criticized Catholicism relentlessly, admitted as much. Critics of the church eventually decided that Catholicism was corrupt enough that they demanded change. They called themselves Protestors, or Reformers, and eventually formed an entirely new religious system.

But non-religion is not an option. In fact, non-religion ends up becoming a breeding ground for new religions. It was from the tolerance of Switzerland that Lenin rode forth to carry out the revolution, leading to the deaths of millions. Be careful when you wish for the death of the king, because you might not like his replacement.

1. Critical Theory clearly descends from Biblical Criticism, because they both have the word “critical” in the name. Case closed.

2. “Judaism, which has served so well in the past, will still serve in the future. It will serve the true cause of liberalism, of the modern spirit. Every Jew is a liberal ... The enemies of Judaism, however, if you only look at them more closely, you will see that they are the enemies of the modern spirit in general.”

Ernest Renan, “De l’identité originelle et de la séparation graduelle du judaisme et du christianisme,” in Oeuvres complètes de Ernest Renan, vol. 1, 907–24, ed. Henriette Psichari (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1947), 922.

Cited from: https://www.pdcnet.org/85258185005E992B/file/232E42CD3D8A863785258186004906E4/$FILE/gatherings_2015_0005_0000_0005_0024.pdf

3. In fact, one of the very few restrictions on human sexuality comes from religion, so you could argue that the need for religion is even stronger than the need for sex… Or, you could even argue that sex in itself is the most primitive form of religion — a ritual, and act of worship!