"We have known for a long time that ‘critique’ – as a guide for judgement – emerged as a rule for telling apart the proper limits of reason from its various forms of error or misconception. Critique, by definition, establishes the limits of reason; it forges the laws, ends and beginnings of thought. Critique legislates the judicious use of reason by separating it from any metaphysical or dogmatic origin, so that any risk of being carried away by the fictitious or merely pleasing is curtailed by the rule of philosophical judgement. And it is only when philosophy becomes critique that it is then able properly to articulate reason and what is essential to it – that is to say, the judicial and judicious limits of reason over and against its various improprieties (madness, metaphysics, etc), which cannot be thought about without creating unease. In this sense, critique is constituted as a defense against – or a victory won over – that of unreason; a victory that, conversely, shows critique to be always shadowed or at risk from the various lapses that would founder or rend it..."
Click here to read the entire article by Professor David Marriott in the June 2018 issue of Radical Philosophy.
