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Critical theory

"Critical sociology" redirects here. For the journal, see Critical Sociology (journal).
Not to be confused with Critical thinking or Critical philosophy.

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Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are fundamentally shaped by power dynamics between dominant and oppressed groups.[1] Beyond just understanding and critiquing these dynamics, it explicitly aims to transform society through praxis and collective action with an explicit sociopolitical purpose.[2][3][4]

Critical theory's main tenets center on analyzing systemic power relations in society, focusing on the dynamics between groups with different levels of social, economic, and institutional power.[5][6] Unlike traditional social theories that aim primarily to describe and understand society, critical theory explicitly seeks to critique and transform it. Thus, it positions itself as both an analytical framework and a movement for social change.[7][8][9][3] Critical theory examines how dominant groups and structures influence what society considers objective truth, challenging the very notion of pure objectivity and rationality by arguing that knowledge is shaped by power relations and social context.[10][11][7][12] Key principles of critical theory include examining intersecting forms of oppression, emphasizing historical contexts in social analysis, and critiquing capitalist structures. The framework emphasizes praxis (combining theory with action) and highlights how lived experience, collective action, ideology, and educational systems play crucial roles in maintaining or challenging existing power structures.[3][13][14][15][16]

The historical evolution of critical theory traces back to the first generation of the Frankfurt School in the 1920s. Figures like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and others sought to expand traditional Marxist analysis by incorporating insights from psychology, culture, and philosophy, moving beyond pure economic determinism.[17][1][14][18][19][3][20][7][21][22] Their work was significantly influenced by Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, particularly how subjective experience shaped human consciousness, behavior, and social reality.[3][1][18][23][24] Freud's concept that an individual's lived experience could differ dramatically from objective reality aligned with critical theory's critique of positivism, science, and pure rationality.[18][25][26]

Critical theory continued to evolve beyond the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Jürgen Habermas, often identified with the second generation, shifted the focus toward communication and the role of language in social emancipation.[3] Around the same time, post-structuralist and postmodern thinkers, including Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, were reshaping academic discourse with critiques of knowledge, meaning, power, institutions, and social control with deconstructive approaches that further challenged assumptions about objectivity and truth. Though neither Foucault nor Derrida belonged formally to the Frankfurt School tradition, their works profoundly influenced later formulations of critical theory.[17][27] Collectively, the post-structuralist and postmodern insights expanded the scope of critical theory, weaving cultural and linguistic critiques into its Marxian roots.[3][14][17][28][29][30]

With the emigration of Herbert Marcuse, contemporary critical theory has expanded to the United States and today it covers a wide range of social critique within economics, ethics, history, law, politics, psychology, and sociology, with a diverse list of subjects including critical animal studies, critical criminology, dependency theory and imperialism studies, critical environmental justice, feminist theory and gender studies, critical historiography, intersectionality, critical legal studies, critical pedagogy, postcolonialism, critical race theory, queer theory, and critical terrorism studies.[3][31][32][33][34][35] Modern critical theory represents a movement away from Marxism’s purely economic analysis to a broader examination of social and cultural power structures with the incorporation and transformation of Freudian concepts and postmodernism, while retaining Marxism’s emphasis on analyzing how dominant groups and systems shape and control society through exploitation and oppression[36] along with social and political praxis, the adaptation and reformulation of multiple Marxian conceptual frameworks (including alienation, reification, ideology, emancipation, base and superstructure), and a general skepticism towards and critique of capitalism.[18][37][3][20]

Criticism of critical theory have come from various intellectual perspectives. Critics have raised concerns about critical theory’s reliance on Marxist revisionism[38][39][40] and its frequent emphasis on subjective narratives, which can sometimes be at odds with empirical methodologies.[41][42][43] They also point to issues of circular reasoning and a lack of falsifiability in some critical theory arguments, as well as an epistemological and methodological stance that challenges or conflicts with traditional scientific methods and ideals of rationality and objectivity.[44][45][46][47][48][49][50]

  1. ^ a b c "Critical theory". Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2025. Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed.
  2. ^ Ludovisi, S.G. ed., 2015. Critical theory and the challenge of praxis: Beyond reification. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Bohman; Flynn, Jeffrey; Celikates, Robin. "Critical Theory". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 ed.).
  4. ^ Elizabeth, Depoy (2016). Naturalistic Designs. Critical theory represents a complex set of strategies that are united by the commonality of sociopolitical purpose. Critical theorists seek to understand human experience as a means to change the world.
  5. ^ Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T.W. and Noeri, G., 2002. Dialectic of enlightenment. Stanford University Press.
  6. ^ Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum, 1970.
  7. ^ a b c Horkheimer, M., 1972. Traditional and critical theory. Critical theory: Selected essays, 188(243), pp.1-11.
  8. ^ Marcuse, H., 2013. One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Routledge.
  9. ^ How, A., 2017. Critical theory. Bloomsbury Publishing.
  10. ^ Naturalistic Designs (2016). Critical theory is a response to post-Enlightenment philosophies and positivism in particular. Critical theorists 'deconstruct' the notion that there is a unitary truth that can be known by using one way or method.
  11. ^ Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory. "Horkheimer and his followers rejected the notion of objectivity in knowledge by pointing, among other things, to the fact that the object of knowledge is itself embedded into a historical and social process: 'The facts which our senses present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ' (Horkheimer [1937] in Ingram and Simon-Ingram 1992, p. 242). Further, with a rather Marxist twist, Horkheimer noticed also that phenomenological objectivity is a myth because it is dependent upon 'technological conditions' and the latter are sensitive to the material conditions of production. Critical Theory aims thus to abandon naïve conceptions of knowledge-impartiality. Since intellectuals themselves are not disembodied entities observing from a God’s viewpoint, knowledge can be obtained only from a societal embedded perspective of interdependent individuals."
  12. ^ Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Pantheon Books, 1977.
  13. ^ McKerrow, R.E., 1989. Critical rhetoric: Theory and praxis. Communications Monographs, 56(2), pp.91-111.
  14. ^ a b c Bronner, S.E., 2017. Critical theory: A very short introduction (Vol. 263). Oxford University Press.
  15. ^ Steffy, B., & Grimes, A., 1986. A Critical Theory of Organization Science. Academy of Management Review, 11, pp. 322-336.
  16. ^ Masschelein, J., 2004. How to Conceive of Critical Educational Theory Today. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38, pp. 351-367
  17. ^ a b c Rush, F.L. and Rush, F. eds., 2004. The Cambridge companion to critical theory. Cambridge University Press.
  18. ^ a b c d "The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  19. ^ Kellner, D., 1989. Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity. Polity.
  20. ^ a b Outhwaite, William (2009) [1988]. Habermas: Key Contemporary Thinkers (2nd ed.). Polity. pp. 5–8. ISBN 978-0745643281.
  21. ^ Marcuse, H., 2013. One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Routledge.
  22. ^ Adorno, T.W., 1990. Negative dialectics. Routledge.
  23. ^ Genel, K., 2016. The Frankfurt School and Freudo-Marxism: On the Plurality of Articulations between Psychoanalysis and Social Theory. Actuel Marx, pp. 10-25.
  24. ^ Whitebook J. The marriage of Marx and Freud: Critical Theory and psychoanalysis. In: Rush F, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press; 2004:74-102.
  25. ^ Genel, K., 2016. The Frankfurt School and Freudo-Marxism: On the Plurality of Articulations between Psychoanalysis and Social Theory. Actuel Marx, pp. 10-25.
  26. ^ Whitebook J. The marriage of Marx and Freud: Critical Theory and psychoanalysis. In: Rush F, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press; 2004:74-102.
  27. ^ Landry, L.Y., 2000. Beyond the ‘French Fries and the Frankfurter’ An agenda for critical theory. Philosophy & social criticism, 26(2), pp.99-129.
  28. ^ Ritzer, George (2008). "Sociological Theory". From Modern to Postmodern Social Theory (and Beyond). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. pp. 567–568.
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference Agger was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  30. ^ Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Routledge. 1990.
  31. ^ Abromeit, J. and Cobb, W.M. eds., 2014. Herbert Marcuse: A critical reader. Routledge.
  32. ^ Jay, M., 1996. The dialectical imagination: A history of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (No. 10). Univ of California Press.
  33. ^ Wiggershaus, R. (1995). The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (M. Robertson, Trans.). MIT Press
  34. ^ "The Left Hemisphere". Verso. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
  35. ^ "Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
  36. ^ Fuchs, Christian (2021). "What is Critical Theory?". Foundations of Critical Theory. Routledge. pp. 17–51. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139196598.007.
  37. ^ Kellner, D., 1989. Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity. Polity.
  38. ^ Disco, Cornelis. "Critical theory as ideology of the new class: Rereading Jürgen Habermas." Theory and Society (1979): 159-214.
  39. ^ Anderson, P. (1976). Considerations on Western Marxism.
  40. ^ Kolakowski, L., 1978. Main currents of Marxism: its rise, growth, and dissolution. Philosophy, 54(210).
  41. ^ Morrow, R.A., Morrow, R.A. and Brown, D.D., 1994. Critical theory and methodology (Vol. 3). Sage.
  42. ^ Thompson, M.J., 2016. The domestication of critical theory. Rowman & Littlefield.
  43. ^ Oliveira, G.C., 2018. Reconstructive methodology and critical international relations theory. Contexto Internacional, 40(01), pp.09-32.
  44. ^ Latour, B., 2004. Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical inquiry, 30(2), pp.225-248.
  45. ^ Crews, F. 1986, Skeptical engagements, Oxford University Press, New York.
  46. ^ Gross, P.R. and Levitt, N., 1997. Higher superstition. JHU Press.
  47. ^ Sokal, A.D. and Bricmont, J., 1999. Fashionable nonsense. Macmillan.
  48. ^ Otto, S., 2016. The war on science.
  49. ^ Fuller, S. (2017). Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game
  50. ^ "Bruce Pardy, "How Canada's secular religion of cultural self-hate took hold"". Retrieved 10 January 2025.
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