I'll bite: what problem is that?
So saying a critical theorist is well-studied by other critical theorists says very little about the value of their positions to non-literary fields. There may have been a fact of the matter as to whether Walter Benjamin really was an inspiration for post-modernism or if he's merely confined to modernism, but I think a true critical theorist would leave that up to debate.
This is patently false if you read any critical theory, in which reaching the truth on a matter is taken much more seriously than any literary aim. You can claim that mainstream critical theory didn't or isn't reaching the truth, but it's a wild claim to say it makes no attempt to do so. Read the Wikipedia article if you don't believe me.
>So saying a critical theorist is well-studied by other critical theorists
Critical theorists are studied and used by philosophers, legal scholars, and sociologists - it's not only critical theorists in some kind of secret club where they all congratulate each other. They are studied in literary fields not because of the literary value of their writing, but because of their criticism and aesthetic positions.
>but I think a true critical theorist would leave that up to debate.
They wouldn't, because critical theorists can recognize the truth and falsity of claims. Your criticism would be better aimed at the so-called postmodernists (and it'd still be wrong).
That's pretty hard to distinguish from "just" literature; of course not all literature is fictional or journalistic. But neither criticism nor aesthetics are particularly bounded in their ability to make negative or positive claims due to the flexibility of interpretation of background assumptions that both pancritical + justificationist disciplines rely on. It's inherently subversive of any central and stabilizing intellectual tendency and I think most critical theorists admit their goals as being such.
This is why I doubt the claim that there is a central truth that critical theorists are attempting to discover when their methods are designed to be as disputative or ambiguating as possible. Even if we're in a position where no assumption can be taken for granted in the end, productive operational work (in science in policy or otherwise) always has to maintain some initial set of working goals and assumptions to guide and rationalize action, and perform interventions which can maximally orient the institution towards further action. Subversiveness stalls except in how it wants to prevent such institutions from prolonging themselves.
> Critical theorists are studied and used by philosophers, legal scholars, and sociologists
Are they all trained out of the Frankfurt school by any chance? Yes they're sometimes worth responding to, no they're not worth taking seriously except as a means to an end.
> They wouldn't, because critical theorists can recognize the truth and falsity of claims. Your criticism would be better aimed at the so-called postmodernists (and it'd still be wrong).
I am earnestly interested in learning more about non-postmodern critical theorists. The pragmatists of the freshwater school (Sellars and Brandom mainly) are the only people on the top of my head that sing that note due to the way they deal seriously with the problem of interpretation in foundations and the way they want to internalize Hegel, while still having the aims of scientific inquiry in mind. But that's analytic philosophy assimilating continental philosophy rather than the other way around, which I'm more sympathetic to precisely because analytics tend to want to bound critique rather than produce more critique for its own sake (i.e. subversion as an ends).
It's very hard for me to read that as anything but a good thing. It's one thing to say that critical theory has no value, but it's another thing to say its only value is subversion. Nevertheless, if what you're saying is true, then there is no better critic of critical theory than critical theory itself. There are central principles of critical theory (and Horkheimer wrote a whole book about it), and there are results produced by critical theory that the authors present as true (sociologists have taken up the concept of the culture industry and Marcuse's idea of one-dimensionality, for instance). I'm skeptical of the idea that CT is subversive of any tendency - no critical theorist repudiated empirical investigation, for instance. When they do criticize, they don't want to completely do away (Adorno had praise for the enlightenment project). Habermas has been one of the loudest voices against "postmodernism".
> productive operational work (in science in policy or otherwise) always has to maintain some initial set of working goals and assumptions to guide and rationalize action
That's true, but if critical theorists do not question these working goals and assumptions, and the very nature of instrumental reason, who will? It seems to make much more sense, for human emancipation and rationality, to examine what we take for granted and against what background we're working. "Maximally orienting towards further action" is precisely the uncritical approach CTs stand against, where in the same breath we guide the Ministry of War "maximally" towards "further action".
>no they're not worth taking seriously except as a means to an end.
Not only do professional philosophers of all stripes disagree, but career activists agree - a famous critical theorist (lowercase) once said that philosophers had hitherto only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.
>the problem of interpretation in foundations and the way they want to internalize Hegel, while still having the aims of scientific inquiry in mind
Scientific inquiry has many prerequisites, Hegel himself a harsh critic of pure empiricism. The difference in prerequisites is what gives rise to the Anglophone science and the German Wissenschaft.
If the point of critical theory, which since you pointed me to Wikipedia I'll quote "[is] to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them", and some class of those circumstances are the beliefs and institutions we take for granted, why shouldn't I claim that the goal of critical theory (at least per Horkeimer) is to be subersive of these beliefs and institutions? Or are there self-claimed critical theorists who propose a criterion inconsistent with this goal?
Likewise if it's critical theory best addressing critical theory then surely we should leave the critical theorists to discuss among themselves. No need for anyone else to get involved if the activists are right.
> "Maximally orienting towards further action" is precisely the uncritical approach CTs stand against, where in the same breath we guide the Ministry of War "maximally" towards "further action".
It isn't uncritical! What I'm pointing at is that achieving something within the scope of both (a) clear, explicit commitments with (b) shared interests and backgrounds establishes together good-faith interlocution and a line of distinction of what possible worlds two disagreeing interlocutors within the same frame are committing to (since the frame doesn't have to be completely specified). If there is an intervention that distinguishes which of these sets of worlds are the actual world, then you've gained information.
Issues come when you don't decide to create commonalities between yourselves in a debate. It gives room for at least one of these interlocutors to not accept or gain any information due to it being possible to shift their commitments by loosening up the interpretation of the evidence. Good-faith/intellectual honesty is the only hedge I know against this and it means understanding what you won't simply leave up to interpretation because it allows something to go wrong.
You're still allowed to have dialectic here but it's dialectic that advances through the solution of problems rather than the production of non-evidentialised counter-interpretation, which are almost always possible to produce at the verbal level.
> Scientific inquiry has many prerequisites, Hegel himself a harsh critic of pure empiricism. The difference in prerequisites is what gives rise to the Anglophone science and the German Wissenschaft.
After the Duhem-Quine thesis it's been pretty clear to Anglo-American schools that observations are theory-laden which is why Pragmatism caught on, and is still being worked on to this day by the likes of Sellars, Brandom, McDowell, Wimsatt, Laudan, Van Fraasen... I don't believe any of them are going to be overtly spiteful of Hegel as all of them are dealing with science as a social activity to some extent or another and the structuralist/constructivist/intersubjective theses that get pulled into there. But they all feature prescriptive programmes which are meant to enable the solution of problems, which once again in my mind points to a standard of inquiry that can be truth-finding versus continual deconstructions.
I'm not sure what "difference in prerequisites" is pointing to but would hope you would elaborate.