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Inspired by the thoughts of M. Walzer, this article examines conventional meaning of criticism shared by the philosophical tradition and the most opponent sociological models: critical sociology (P. Bourdieu) and pragmatic sociology of critic (L. Boltanski). It shows that this perspective focuses on only one kind of criticism  the social critic  and maybe something else: the ideal of emancipation for an intellectual people. For a better understanding of the different forms, effects and social factors of social criticism (i.e. criticism taking place in society), it proposes a non-normative definition of criticism contrasting with the social scientist's propensity to conceive the (true) critic as necessarily radical, lucid, theoretically framed, inseparable from emancipation, sociologist's role and left wing legacy.