A Study Of Loewenthal’s Cultural Critical Theory

Since modern times,sociological research and critical theory have become two approaches to study the relationship of society and culture.It shows the tension of theory by entanglement of scientism and humanism respectively,and both exposes their own defects and deficiencies.As the capitalist society has entered the contemporary form and presented more complex political economic and cultural characteristics of human civilization and into the more rich multivariate survival plight,ambiguity and different standard definition of "culture" has been difficult to analyze "people" problem,more difficult to balance the conflict between critical theory and realistic authenticity.How to incorporate cultural studies into the category of philosophical reflection and how to provide a new direction for cultural criticism requires,we need a new theoretical thinking and methodology.Loewenthal,as the theoretical scholar who has the most extensive analysis of popular culture in the Frankfurt School.His cultural criticism will provide a new philosophical method and theoretical thinking paradigm.Lowenthal inherited the tradition of empiricism in cultural sociology,and reflected on the theoretical premise of cultural sociology with philosophical disciplinary reflection methods,which transcended national and individual emotional experience,and formed a unified system of theoretical thinking,got a grip on reality and in theory showed the leading practices and shaping the way of thinking and thinking power of civilization.In Lowenthal’s criticism of culture,it is concentrated on the tension between literature and society,and on the dialectical criticism of mass culture.Lowenthal has taken popular culture as a research object to conduct a theoretical study of critical reflection,which has constituted a new philosophical intermediary method.Lowenthal deeply grasped Marx’s historical materialism,formed the disciplinary method of examining "cultural man",and formed the unique theory of literary communication by the way of interdisciplinary fusion.Lowenthal changed the theoretical structure of one-way output and reflection of literary culture,and added social content and practical consciousness to the critical understanding of literary culture.Lowenthal took the intermediary nature of popular culture as the breakthrough and starting point,focused on the contradiction between high culture and popular culture,pointed out the long-standing criticism of the two cultural paradigms and their objects and contents,tried to analyze and explain the contradiction between promoting cultural consumption and consumption alienation,and separated the moral criticism and practical difficulties of cultural consumption.The negative influence of consumption alienation on human beings and the positive subjective initiative are separated to form a more objective and rational cultural sociological criticism which is not dominated by moral criticism and ideological criticism.Finally,through the conclusion that "communication itself also forms social content",Lowenthal constructed a more profound theory system of cultural criticism theory,placing the relationship between superstructure and individual existence,microscopic object and cognitive intermediary in a more historical and reflective theory.Lowenthal has paid attention to the broader reality of literary formation,and divided the analysis of this reality into two ways: one is the reality of social relations of material production,which forms the production of literary texts;the other is the reality of human subjectivity,the real psychological expression formed through abstract literary texts.The coherence inherent to the two paths,similar to the method of Marx’s critique of political economy,Lowenthal understands the "general" of literary production,must use the "abstract" of literary sociology,specific concrete stipulation of the authors,publishers,and the audience must pull away temporarily,but the concreteness is evident in criticism after the difference of its nature,form more comprehensive,free regulation.Therefore,the "natural" humanity in the text is "unnatural" in reality,and the "literary humanity" is formed after the "abstract general".However,it contains the "free nature" and "life force" of people without any difference.After pulling away from the specific and individual "natural humanity",the different cultural manifestations of different nationalities,historical stages and regions clearly reflect the specific and different social relations.Loewenthal always put the real needs and subjectivity of human beings in the core position,re-examined the relationship between intellectuals and the public in cultural criticism,investigated the cultural mission of philosophy as a scholar,and liberated the thoughts of cultural criticism from the limitations of the discipline.For literature itself,Loewenthal created a new research path,which was different from the logical positivism of "philosophy of language" and the social critical theory of contextualism,but a new cultural critical path combining cultural sociology and historical materialism.Lowenthal always regards the two roads divided into two paths as one road.In his eyes,reality and theory are not two roads that have to be chosen.The relationship between the involvement of realistic phenomena with philosophical abstract concepts or sociological quantitative analysis is not a relationship between you and me,but a relationship that jointly creates realistic utility.Correspondingly,there are differences between humanistic authenticity and scientific authenticity,philosophical reflection authenticity and sociological method authenticity.How to judge and distinguish between two different kinds of truth? First of all,we need to start from the dual reality of individual experience and reflective abstraction,the author realizes the difference between objective reflection and internal subjective judgment of literary texts.Secondly,the text context is distinguished from the natural context and social environment by focusing on the historical context.Finally,the universal standard of humanities should be established,and the scientific and authentic discourse of philosophical reflection should be established.Lowenthal’s process of establishing authenticity standards is consistent with his attitude towards popular culture.When facing mass cultural phenomena,he always returns to the specific historical context and enters into "history" meditation instead of speaking in the face of "reality".The mainstream position of the Frankfurt School is to use the principle of totality to overlook the capital operation of society and establish a new critical system to "counter the system".However,it is precisely such a critical method that Loewenthal downplays,thus revealing the deep power of historical materialism facing cultural phenomena.Generally speaking,Loewenthal’s cultural criticism not only analyzes the theoretical thinking of social reality,but also reflects on and criticizes the premise of theoretical thinking of the theoretical discipline itself.Lowenthal’s cultural thinking beyond the epoch and region provides a paradigm for new philosophical research and a possibility for new research methods.How the scientific method of positivism and humanism unifying reflection,how to rebuild literature at a height of theoretical thinking and social relations,how to find real joint in social theory of realistic proposition of totality,this is Lowenthal cultural critique to stay,Lowenthal suffers from theory Angle position and time limit have not been completed theory system construction of thinking,we need to continue to excavate and rediscover,form more vivid and powerful theoretical results,and find more profound philosophical thinking paradigm and its practical significance.