Abstract
José Sazbón’s theoretical-political intervention can
be understood as the attempt to link intellectual his-
tory and critical theory. A critical theory of histo-
graphy —that sets a normative direction to the lat-
ter— and an intellectual history of the critical theory
—that makes the latter aware of the historical con-
ditions of its own possibilities and difficulties—: both
orientations condense in a wide program of critical
history of western Marxism. We explore this pro-
gram in three steps. First we show how critical the-
ory became one of the main objects of Sazbón’s inte-
rests. Secondly, we recover his effort to disclose the
affinities between intellectual history and critical
theory, as convergent ways of a cultural history of
bourgeois modernity. Finally, we point out the way
in which Sazbón sets critical theory up as judge of
certain dominant historiographical conceptions in
the second half of the 20th century.