ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the tradition of critical theory in the light of its failure to grasp the inevitably political constitution of frameworks for economic action. The idea of an endgame that is already being played is constitutive for critical theory. Adorno’s theoretical position entailed a view of modernity as focused on a certain conception of the economic, that is, capitalism as economic modernity, in alliance with a certain view of the epistemic, that is, the world to be known in as far as it is measurable and carved up into quantifiable elements. A tendency towards self-cancellation can be diagnosed with regard to individual aspects of the problematique of modernity. The forms of knowledge in question were, in particular, a political philosophy that translated its conception of justice into ideas about a political community of responsibility, and a socio-economic theory that could balance apparently opposed interests in the framework of a broader theory of society and its development.
