Robert Sinnerbrink

What Kompridis admirably describes as the transformative power of disclosing critique should be incorporated into a renewed model of critical theory. At the same time, disclosing critique should be regarded as supplementing, rather than supplanting, those normative forms of analysis and reflection that remain rooted in experiences of social suffering, which are precisely what continue to give critical theory its normative ground and theoretical impetus. In this way, we could agree with Kompridis that practicing world-disclosing critique, and thereby retrieving the aesthetic critique of modernity, will ensure that critical theory continues to have a future worthy of its past. Adapted from the source document

Nikolas Kompridis has recently argued that the future of critical theory depends upon a critical appropriation of Heidegger’s concept of ‘world disclosure’, and hence on a transformation of critical theory into a form of ‘world-disclosing critique’ oriented towards the future. This article engages in a critical dialogue with Kompridis' account of world-disclosing critique, arguing that critical theory should embrace it as an innovative way of retrieving the forgotten tradition of aesthetic critique of modernity