Critical Theory

Critical theory is an assessment and critique of society and nature. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories, one in sociology s and the other in literary criticism. This has led to the very literal use of 'critical theory' as an umbrella term to describe the imaginary critique.

Critical Theorists:

Critical theory, in the sociological context, refers to a style of Marxist theory with a tendency to engage with non-Marxist. Critical Theory has a narrow and a broad meaning in philosophy and in the history of the social sciences. “Critical Theory” in the narrow sense assigns several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. According to these theorists, a “critical” theory may be different from a “traditional” theory.

Critical Theorists have long required distinguish their aims, methods, theories, and forms of explanation from standard understandings in both the natural and the social sciences. “Frankfurt School” of theorists is most commonly associated with critical theory: Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Jürgen Habermas,

Two Primary Definitions:

The two meanings of critical theory—from different intellectual traditions associated with the meaning of criticism and critique—derive ultimately from the Greek word kritikos meaning  decision or judgment. To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas in 1968, critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics.

Critical theory as social theory:

Critical theory was first defined by Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School of sociology in his essay Traditional and Critical Theory in 1937. Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward criticizing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it.

Centre concepts : 1)  Critical social theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity and (2)  critical theory should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology.

One of the different characteristics of critical theory, as Adorno and Horkheimer elaborated in their Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), is a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence which gave rise to the “pessimism” of the new critical theory over the possibility of human liberation and freedom.

Questions:

• Name of three theorists associated in critical theory from Frankfurt school?
• Write the centre concepts in social theory?