Critical social theory, defined loosely by Maeve Cooke as “any mode of ethically oriented reflection that looks critically at social arrangements from the point of view of the obstacles they pose for individual human flourishing” (p. 7), necessarily relies on normative standards to indicate which social arrangements are “obstacles” to the “flourishing” of those who live in terms of them. The question arises: Exactly what is the status of these normative standards? It is this question to which Cooke devotes her admirably lucid and rigorously written book. Indeed, she uses this question as a way to present critical social theory as it exists at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I know of no work that does a better job of explicating what critical social theory is all about than this one, even as I find myself reluctantly thinking that the entire enterprise has become depressingly academic.

Cooke identifies four possible responses to the question of the status of a critical theory's normative standards: 1) conventionalist (normative standards derive entirely from the explicit ethical values of a particular society); 2) radical contextualist (standards derive from the ethical ideas of a particular society “if only [its members] were able to become more like themselves at their best,” which is to say, to live in terms of their deep-seated normative intuitions [p. 14]); 3) context-transcending (standards, though “implicit in a particular socio-cultural context,” also “represent hopes and aspirations that everyone, everywhere should have if they are to be able to fulfill their potentials as human beings” [p. 15]); and 4) authoritarian (foundational standards derive from “some transcendent power or idea whose authority is unquestionable” [p. 15]). Cooke quickly shows that only the approaches of 2 and 3 are compatible with critical social theory at least as it has developed from its roots in Enlightenment thought. Both 1 and 4 fall afoul of the antiauthoritarian aspirations of critical theory because each in its own way privileges as unquestionable some given—the present normative ideas of a given society in the case of 1, and divine will, natural necessity, the logic of history, or some other transcendent entity in the case of 4. Consequently, she focuses her attention entirely on the argument between radical contextualist and context-transcending approaches.

Cooke moves swiftly, too, to eliminate radical contextualism as an option; she does this in Chapter 2 by revealing the problems in the approach of Richard Rorty. Briefly, she claims that radical contextualism is “unable to offer a critical perspective on new normative ideas” (p. 26). As a result, it cannot provide a sound basis for a critical theory, whose whole point is to galvanize its audience to adopt new normative ideas on which to organize their lives. Cooke does allow that sophisticated versions of contextualism like Rorty's can account for rational innovation, creativity, and learning, but she concludes that they cannot assert that deep paradigmatic changes are rational, since these changes call into question the standards of rationality of a given form of life so that these standards cannot be used to warrant such changes. (I think she does this too quickly, as her argument makes no allowance for different levels and kinds of standards operating within a form of life, such that some might be used to undermine others.)

This leaves the context-transcending approach as the only standing option. Jürgen Habermas and Alex Honeth have best articulated this approach, and it is their work that Cooke presents in Chapter 3. She finds their work on the right universalist track but marred by being too willing to see its claims as merely the expression of the “deep-seated, normative intuitions and expectations that are formative of the identities of the inhabitants of modernity” (p. 55)—in other words, as ultimately contextualist. To give their insights more transcendental punch, Cooke presents in Chapters 5–7 her own construal of the context-transcending approach. In a nutshell, she argues that we should conceive the normative ideals of any particular, historically situated critical theory as universal, such that they will always transcend any particular embodiment of them. She also claims that these ideals are best expressed in “material, pictorial” images that depict these ideals in concrete practice; she calls these images “re-presentations of the good society.” These (universalist-grounded) re-presentations can serve as regulative ideas that can be the basis for radical criticisms of a given society's social arrangements and the standards by which these arrangements are justified.

Cooke does a magnificent job of sorting out the issues of the epistemic status of the basic normative principles at work in critical theory. So why my feeling in the end that critical theory has become academic in the bad sense of the term? Perhaps because the concerns that motivate Cooke and her interlocutors seem disconnected from actual political practice. Since in order to be effective a critical theory must appeal to a given audience, it must couch its claims in terms acceptable to that audience (The author herself allows this; see pp. 39 ff.); whether these standards also apply to all people at all times is a further and, from a practical viewpoint, ultimately irrelevant question. She disagrees, arguing that ideas of the good society “cannot be assessed rationally in isolation from the corresponding claim to disclose the transcendent object powerfully” (p. 121). But why the extra, transcendental, step? Why should such ideas not be judged simply by their ability to meet better our current needs and interests, which is how contextualists construe ethical justification? Perhaps some groups may think that any acceptable idea of the true and the just must be a (partially realized) instance of The True or The Good; but should any critical theory encourage its audience to think in these terms, bound as they are to underwrite arrogance and intolerance and authoritarian imposition—as history plainly shows?

In the end, Re-Presenting the Good Society fails to connect its transcendentalist justificationism to praxis. This failure is ironic: Though the book ends with a chapter on theory and practice, the model of praxis it provides makes no mention of a need for transcendental justification; indeed, the model works perfectly well without it.