13 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's analysis of how Enlightenment reason, aimed at human liberation, reverses into a new form of domination and myth.
The Institute for Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt — home of Critical Theory, Western Marxism's most influential synthesis of Marx, Freud, and Hegel applied to modern capitalism and culture.
German-American Frankfurt School philosopher who argued that advanced industrial society produces one-dimensional thought — a totalizing integration that eliminates opposition — and became the philosophical voice of the 1960s New Left.
German philosopher and the leading figure of second-generation Frankfurt School critical theory, who developed the theory of communicative action — rationality is embedded in the pragmatics of communicative practice — and discourse ethics.
German philosopher who directed the Institute for Social Research and co-developed Frankfurt School critical theory with Theodor Adorno.
Herbert Marcuse's analysis of advanced industrial society as a totalizing system that eliminates genuine opposition by integrating the working class through consumer satisfaction and technological rationality.
German research institute affiliated with Goethe University Frankfurt, founded in 1923, that became the institutional home of the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
Jürgen Habermas's two-volume systematic work developing the theory of communicative action as the foundation for critical theory and social rationality.
German philosopher and musicologist who co-developed the Frankfurt School's critical theory, analyzed the culture industry as a mechanism of domination, and developed negative dialectics as a method resisting identity thinking.
Same as Theodor Adorno (ID 43). German philosopher and musicologist who co-developed Frankfurt School critical theory and negative dialectics.
Herbert Marcuse's synthesis of Freud and Marx — arguing that civilization's repression of Eros (sexuality/pleasure) serves the interests of capitalism, and that sexual liberation is essential to genuine political liberation.
Herbert Marcuse's 1964 critique of advanced industrial society — arguing that capitalism has absorbed the possibility of genuine opposition by satisfying false needs and creating 'repressive tolerance.'
A legal and academic framework, founded in the 1980s by legal scholars including Derrick Bell, that examines how race and racism are embedded in law and social institutions — and challenges the liberal assumption that color-blind law is sufficient for racial justice.