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Revived Weimarera “radical conservatism” and fresh “New Right” and “paleoconservative” theories offer a radical cultural critique of global capitalism and liberal democracy. Expressing a broader retribalization and perceived failure of modernization, their defense of communal particularity attacks the multicultural nationstate, liberal rights, and universal citizenship. This essay links reactionary tribalism to a recurrent 20thcentury theoretical tendency, the “total critique of modernity”—a fusion of oversimplified Nietzschean and Weberian ideas. Historically, total critique has promoted convergence between right and left, such as the current overlapping facets of “radical conservatism” and “strongprogram postmodernism.” Total critique counters the “historicist” method of “internal critique” and the “communication model” characteristic of reflexive social theory. The discussion uncovers the mediating role of social theory in the problematic relationship of science and partially disenchanted public spheres in plural, democratic cultures.

Although a very important figure in interdisciplinary social theory, Nietzsche is absent from sociological theory, especially in the United States. Equating rationalization with cultural homogenization and liquidation of particularity, Nietzsche saw "decadence" where modern social theorists saw progress. He held that sociology drapes cultural domination, regimentation, and exhaustion with the appearance of legitimacy. This essay explores his views about the depletion of social resources stressed in modern theory. It elaborates his "antisociology" and then traces the impact of this framework on three divergent currents of social theory. Nietzsche is read against the backdrop of modern theory in order to explore his continuing challenge to this tradition and his relevance to sociology.

From the start, emancipatory theory has been plagued by contradictory and incompletely elaborated normative underpinnings that weaken its sociological and ethical credibility. Jurgen Habermas, the leading contemporary critical theorist, has attempted to address this problem in an extensive reconstruction of the theories of Marx and Weber that appropriates elements of American pragmatist thought. Yet he resorts to an evolutionary normative argument that undermines the sociological powers of the two classical theories and contradicts the pragmatists' historical approach to values. This essay explains the significance of Habermasian theory for the emancipatory tradition, analyzes certain problems of the theory, and argues that an expanded dialogue with American pragmatism would strengthen both its sociological and its normative dimensions. Though the explicit focus is on the emancipatory tradition, the essay raises broader critical questions about pseudohistorical, normative justification in general sociological theory.