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Critical theory

 A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. It argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.

Critical Theory (capitalized) also refers to a school of thought practiced by Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. Hokheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate hunan beings from the circumstances that enslave them." Although a product of modernism, and although many of the progenitors of Critical Theory were skeptical of postmodernism, Critical Theory is one of the major components of both modern and postmodern thought, and is widely applied in the humanities and social sciences today.


The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosoohy distinguishes Critical Theory (capitalized) as the product of several generations of German philosophers and social theorists of the Frankfurt School on the one hand, and any philosophical approach that seeks emancipation for human beings and actively works to change society in accordance with human needs (usually called critical theory without capitalization) on the other. Philosophical approaches within this broader definition include feminism, critical race theory, and forms of postcolonialism.

Mark Horkheimer first defined critical theory (German: Kritische Theorie) in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory," as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, enancipatory form of Marxist philosophy, Horkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by logical positivism, and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism. Critical theory involves a normative dimension, either by criticizing society in terms of some general theory of values or norms (oughts), or by criticizing society in terms of its own espoused values (i.e. immanent critique).

The core concepts of critical theory are that it should:
  • be direct at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time)
  • improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology
Postmodern critical theory is another major product of critical theory. It analyzes the fragmentation of cultural identities in order to challenge modernist-era constructs such as metanarratives, rationality, and universal truths, while politicizing social problems "by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to revitalize their findings."

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