Critical Theory

Formed as the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) in 1923, Frankfurt School scholarship is distinctive in its fusion of Freudian psychoanalysis, Marxism, Weberian sociology, and left-Hegelian philosophy. The fundamental insight of Critical Theory is that a complex relationship exists between constitutive power, rationality, consciousness, and desire. As such, from a Critical Theory perspective, any meaningful analysis of society must surrender all pretensions to “objectivity.” All thought, including reflexive scholarly inquiry, retains the inherited form of the sociopolitical system. Critical Theorists appreciate that all research is therefore political, either reinforcing or challenging the social order. Subsequent “critical theories” have emerged in addition to the Frankfurt School’s approach, drawing on these principles; however, many are methodologically and politically divergent from their German forefather. For example, in the early twenty-first century, some consider deconstructionism, post-structuralism, and decolonial thought to be forms of critical theory. This article follows convention, and, in keeping with the capitalized “C” and “T” of the title, refers strictly to “Frankfurt School” Critical Theory. This is not stated as part of a broader territorial dispute, nor as part of a pointed “ground clearing” exercise. Rather, the acknowledged convention of capitalization for Frankfurt School Critical Theory serves to maintain disciplinary coherence. The methodological innovations and political sentiments captured by Michel Foucault’s critical theory, for example, are highly different to those of Theodor Adorno. That stated, one must be careful not to implicitly consider “Frankfurt School Critical Theory” to be a homogenous, harmonious whole. While a reweaving of the tapestry of ideas offered by Marx-Freud-Hegel-Weber provides a loose coherence across the different eras of Critical Theory, Frankfurt School scholarship is formally demarcated into three “generations.” The “first generation” refers to the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and their Frankfurt School contemporaries. First-generation scholarship was united by a Marxian philosophical foundation and an explicitly anti-capitalist politics. “Second-generation” Critical Theory refers to the work of Jürgen Habermas and his embrace of insights from analytic philosophy, linguistics, and formal pragmatics. “Third-generation” Critical Theory focuses on the work of Axel Honneth and the Hegel-inspired Critical Theory of Recognition. There is even sporadic discussion of an emergent “fourth generation” of Critical Theory that orbits Rainer Forst’s theory of judgement. Contemporary Critical Theory is an exceedingly fraught and politically divisive enterprise, with various scholars contending that the research agenda has lost its political potency and become blunted by a philosophically untenable “neo-Idealism.” The defining characteristics of Critical Theory are themselves the subject of a heated contemporary debate.