ABSTRACT
Critical theory can be understood to be an ongoing project of escaping picture-thinking. Consciously or unconsciously most of us use a concept of knowing that is fundamentally representational: a good theory is basically a good model. Both mainstream social science methodologies and the bulk of counter-mainstream methodologies are stuck in picture-thinking. When we try to articulate a theory about the practice of theorizing itself from within a structure that is basically a picture or a model we encounter the infinite; contradictions of ontological significance. This is the not-finite. This would be simply a matter of interest to philosophers concerned with paradoxes of self-reference if it were not the case that knowing is also being, not about being but being itself, when we seek to understand ourselves, our fundamental relations with each other. Any methodology that does not have a way of explicating the problematic of the infinite can result in oppressions, power-knowledge fusions, reductions of human beings and societies to manipulable objects. This chapter presents a history of efforts to incorporate the infinite in social philosophy and theory: from transcendental and quasi-transcendental schema through dialectics to contemporary critical communicative pragmatism.
