From “Constitutive Strategy” to “A New Ontological Grounding Program”——Lay Foundation Again of Normative Criteria for Social Critique

In discussions of social critique methodologies, the Frankfurt School's critical theory continues to adhere to a distinctive form of 'immanent critique. ' Immanent critique not only demands that criticism be conducted according to the object's own standards but also emphasizes that the internal criteria of critique must possess universal validity. In justifying the universal validity of these internal standards, the 'constitutive strategy' has been widely adopted. This strategy attempts to establish a universally valid normative foundation for critical standards by reconstructing the constitutive principles of social practices. However, this approach faces unresolved challenges in social ontology and normative binding force. Confronting the difficulty of ultimately grounding normative standards, contemporary scholars such as Freyenhagen and Saar have proposed maintaining critique by abandoning the ultimate grounding project. While offering cogent critiques of prevailing grounding strategies, their solutions remain problematic, as they ultimately rely on certain grounding frameworks that contradict their theoretical claims about critique. To preserve the critical dimension, critical theory cannot evade the problem of universally justifying its own normative criteria. On this point, building upon Menke's conception of the 'paradox of norms, ' a 'new ontological grounding program' can be outlined. This approach not only avoids presupposing a contradiction-free social existence but also provides robust normative justification for critique, thereby effectively addressing the challenges of social ontology and normative binding force.