Abstract
This handbook grants the reader access to the tradition and the core concepts and approaches of critical theory. What has been attempted here is not only a survey of critical theory as a concept, but also an effort to delineate the major impulses of the traditions, irrespective of current academic fads and fashions. The purpose of this handbook is therefore not only to guide the reader through the most essential aspects of critical theory and its major areas of concern, but also to seek to offer new perspectives on a still vibrant, very much active domain of research and method of thinking about the world. These contributing authors therefore survey much of the core themes, ideas, thinkers, and epistemological concerns of critical theory as a structure of thought, keeping alive many of the basic concepts and approaches that the critical theory tradition has at its core and the flame of rational, immanent social criticism burning for a new generation, who will, in time, seek to transform their world.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abromeit, John. 2013. Max Horkheimer and the foundations of the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2014. The origins and the model of early critical theory in the work of Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. In Critical theory to structuralism: Philosophy, politics and the human sciences, ed. David Ingram, 47–80. New York: Routledge.
Adorno, T.W. 1973. Negative dialectics. New York: Continuum.
———. 1998. Aesthetic theory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Adorno, T.W., and Max Horkheimer. 1972. Dialectic of enlightenment. New York: Continuum.
Adorno, T.W., et al. 1950. The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row.
Antonio, Robert. 1981. Immanent critique as the core of critical theory. British Journal of Sociology 32(3): 330–345.
Apel, Karl-Otto. 1980. Towards a transformation of philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Aronowitz, Stanley. 2015. Against orthodoxy: Social theory and its discontents. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bernstein, Richard J. 2010. The pragmatic turn. Cambridge: Polity.
Bloch, Ernst. 1988. The Utopian function of art and literature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bohman, James. 1996. Public deliberation: Pluralism, complexity and democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 1999. Theories, practices, and pluralism: A pragmatic interpretation of critical social science. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29(4): 459–480.
Borman, David. 2009. Labor, exchange and recognition: Marx contra Honneth. Philosophy and Social Criticism 35(8): 935–959.
Bronner, Stephen Eric. 1994. Of critical theory and its theorists. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 2004. Reclaiming the enlightenment: Toward a politics of radical engagement. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dahms, Harry. 2002. Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of critical social theory in Lukács and Habermas. Sociological Theory 15(3): 181–214.
Dallmayr, Fred. 1984. Polis and praxis: Exercises in contemporary political theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Feenberg, Andrew. 2014. The philosophy of praxis: Marx, Lukács and the Frankfurt School. London: Verso.
Fraser, Nancy. 1995. From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘post- socialist’ age. New Left Review 212: 68–93.
Fromm, Erich. 1941. Escape from freedom. New York: Henry Holt.
———. 1955. The Sane society. New York: Henry Holt.
———. 1984. The working class in Weimar Germany: A psychological and sociological study. New York: Berg Publishers.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. The prison notebooks. New York.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. Knowledge and human interests. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1984. The theory of communicative action, vol 2 vols. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1987. The philosophical discourse of modernity: Twelve lectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 1996. Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 1998. The inclusion of the other: Studies in political theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Held, David. 1980. Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Honneth, Axel. 1995a. The fragmented world of the social. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
———. 1995b. The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2011. Das Recht der Freiheit Grundriss der demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt.
Horkheimer, Max. 1972. Critical theory. New York: Continuum.
Howard, Dick. 1977. The Marxian legacy. New York: Urizen Books.
Jay, Martin. 1986. Marxism and totality: The adventures of a concept from Lukács to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Jütten, Timo. 2015. Is the market a sphere of social freedom? Critical Horizons 16(2): 187–203.
Kellner, Douglas. 1989. Critical theory, marxism and modernity. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Korsch, Karl. 1967. Karl Marx. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanhalt.
———. 1970. Marxism and philosophy. London: New Left Books.
———. 1971. Three essays on marxism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Lukács, Georg. 1923. Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. Berlin: Der Malik Verlag.
———. 1970. Writer and critic and other essays. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.
———. 1972. Tactics and ethics: Political essays, 1919-1929. New York: Harper.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1955. Eros and civilization. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1964. One-dimensional man. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1978. The aesthetic dimension: Toward a critique of marxist aesthetics. Boston: Beacon Press.
Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The mass psychology of fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Schroyer, Trent. 1973. The critique of domination: The origins and development of critical theory. New York: Braziller.
Tar, Zoltan. 1985. The Frankfurt School: The critical theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W Adorno. New York: Shocken Books.
Thompson, Michael J. 2016. The domestication of critical theory. London: Rowman and Littlefield.
Weber, Max. 1972. Wirtschaft und Geselleschaft. Tübingen: Paul Siebeck.
Wellmer, Albrecht. 1971. Critical theory of society. New York: Herder and Herder.
Zurn, Christopher. 2005. Recognition, redistribution, and democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s critical social theory. European Journal of Philosophy 13(1): 89–126.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Thompson, M.J. (2017). Introduction: What Is Critical Theory?. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55800-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55801-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)