Immanent Critique of Capitalism as a Form of Life. On Rahel Jaeggi’s Critical Theory

An immanent critique of capitalism as a form of life: this is one of the crucial points of the new critical theory proposed by Rahel Jaeggi, and it is to this conceptual point, which includes various themes, that the present special issue of Critical Horizons is mainly devoted. This special issue offers some considerations above all of Jaeggi’s programme aimed at developing the key features of an immanent critique of capitalism as a form of life – rather than on topics like alienation, solidarity or progress. More particularly, at the heart of our critical discussions there are five basic theoretical elements to this research programme: immanent critique, the critique of ideology, the critique of capitalism, the concept of form of life, and the economy in a wide sense. In so doing, in the pages of Critical Horizons we have continued the critical discussion started in a workshop held at the University of Parma in 2017, which started from five of Jaeggi’s essays devoted to these five topics, collected by Marco Solinas in a book entitled Forms of Life and Capitalism.5

Introduction to the Special Issue of the journal "Critical Horizons" dedicate do Rahel's Jaeggi social philosophy