Crisis and Critique

This chapter provides an exposition of critical international theory as currently expressed and practised. It situates the discussion in perception of disciplinary and global crisis, arguing that crisis is a condition of theoretical critique and critical international theory itself. The chapter discusses the link between knowledge and interests, in which critical international theory’s engagement with the philosophical exercise of self-reflection is a fundamental process of Kantian Enlightenment. The chapter then elaborates the various ways critical international theorists have conceived emancipation and political transformation. The normative, sociological, and praxeological dimensions of critical international theory are considered in relation to the emancipatory rethinking and restructuring of international relations. As a form of reflexive social philosophy in which meta-theoretical imperatives to problematize the self are privileged, mastering dialectical philosophy was and remains essential to the formation of the critical persona in whom critique is both a theoretical attitude and a lived experience.