Fred Dallmayr reviews Nikolas Kompridis's Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future.
In Kompridis's view, critical theory's renewal has to rely on alternative resources, including insights "central to the German tradition from Hegel to Heidegger and Adorno" and phenomenological explorations of the "life-world." In this context, a crucial resource is Heidegger's notion of "world disclosure," articulated variously under the labels of "Erschlossenheit," "Lichtung," and "Ereignis." The basic point of the notion of disclosure is that "we operate 'always already' with a pre-reflective, holistically structured, and grammatically regulated understanding of the world" -- which means that our thinking and reasoning is always embedded in a pre-cognitive experiential setting. In Heidegger's own terms: If there is to be any understanding of something "as something," then "our understanding must itself somehow see as disclosed that upon which it projects." The implications of this insight are obviously immense and bound to reverberate through all modes of philosophizing, including critical theory. Kompridis is by no means naïve about the obstacles facing the recuperation of Heideggerian insights. As he writes: "The idea that Heidegger's thought can contribute to the renewal of critical theory is more likely to be greeted with disbelief (if not derision) than with curiosity." For, as is well known, "Heidegger's person and his thought have played the role of critical theory's 'other': he is the very antithesis of the critical intellectual as critical theorists imagine 'him'." Not daunted by these obstacles, Kompridis wagers that the benefits of the recuperation outweigh possible drawbacks.
