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This book participates in the ongoing debate about the alleged "death of theory" and the current post-theoretical condition, arguing that the "finitude" of theoretical projects does not mean "end", but rather contingency and transformation of thinking, beyond irreconcilable doctrines. Contributors from different cultural and scholarly backgrounds and based in three different continents propose new areas of investigation and interpretive possibilities, reopening dialogues with past and present discourses from a plurality of perspectives and locations. After a first section that reassesses the status and scopes of critique, theory, and literature, the book foregrounds new or neglected critical vocabulary, literary paradigms, and narrative patterns to reread texts at the intersection with other branches of the humanities--history, philosophy, religion, and pedagogy. It then explores geopolitical, cultural, and epistemological domains that have been historically and ideologically overdetermined (such as postsocialist, postcolonial, and cosmopolitan spaces), recodifying them as unstable sites of both conflicts and convergences. By acknowledging the spatio-temporal and cultural delimitations of any intellectual practice, the book creates awareness of our own partiality and incompleteness, but treats boundaries as zones of contact, exchange, and conceptual mobility that promote crossings and connections

"The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory particular established at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. Tarr's investigation focuses on three key issues. The first is the Frankfurt School's original program of providing a general theory of modern capitalist society. The second is the claim to represent a continuation of the original Marxian theory through the school's Critical Theory. The third is the scientific validity of Critical Theory in light of the generally accepted canons of the natural and social sciences. Tarr proposes that in the last analysis, Critical Theory is simply another existentialist philosophy. As such, it is a specific expression of certain socio-historical conditions and of the situation of a particular social group, the marginal Jewish bourgeois intelligentsia of Central Europe. This European-Jewish contribution became apparent after the great metaphysical impulse of the pre-Socratic and Platonic-Aristotelian philosophies had run their respective courses. Both philosophies represented philosophical schools of ethics, and both wanted to help man take up a defense against the storms of passions and fate. It was from these ancient sources that the Frankfurt School emerged. The Frankfurt School derived its impetus in the twentieth century, in which Tarr claims a shift occurred from the ontological to the subjective realm. This in turn led to deep changes in philosophical theory and practice which led to a more psychologically oriented mode of social thought. This in-depth study covers the entire career of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory from 1923 to 1974. It does so by applying the same standards of criticism to its primary doctrines as it turned on other theories, but with a keen sense of balance and fairness."--Provided by publisher.

Of Critical Theory and its Theorists is an intelligent, accessible overview of the entire Critical Theory Tradition, written by one of the leading experts on the subject. Filled with original insights and valuable historical narratives, Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists covers the work of major philosophical thinkers such as Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas and revisits the contributions of lesser-known figures such as Karl Korsch and Ernst Bloch. Bronner measures the writing of these theorists against each other, postmodernist philosophers and t.

The author shows why implementing the project of a critical social theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School based on recognition theory can yield promising results. In this context, the category of recognition is of special value because by using recognition theory, social relationships can be both analyzed and criticized. This is shown in the exemplary interpretation of classical texts (Hegel, Marx, Habermas and others).

This book contributes five novel tenets for building a critical theory of leadership studies. Drawing from transdisciplinary insights, these tenets help shape the emerging field of inquiry. They also facilitate the examination of normative social processes that reinscribe hegemonic power relations -- because much of what is accomplished in current leadership scholarship, teaching, and practice reinforces these power relations. The book begins by contrasting critical theory with positivist approaches to analyzing social phenomena, and what follows is an exploration of four broad disciplines using sub-components of leadership as an investigatory lens. The resulting five tenets are presented and discussed so that they may be picked up and used by scholars contributing to the developing field of critical leadership studies.

"In The Critique of Religion and Religion's Critique: On Dialectical Religiology, Dustin J. Byrd compiles numerous essays honouring the life and work of the Critical Theorist, Rudolf J. Siebert. His "dialectical religiology," rooted in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, especially Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leo Löwenthal, and Jürgen Habermas, is both a theory and method of understanding religion's critique of modernity and modernity's critique of religion. Born out of the Enlightenment and its most important thinkers, i.e. Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, religion is understood to be dialectical in nature. It contains within it both revolutionary and emancipatory elements, but also reactionary and regressive elements, which perpetuate mankind's continual debasement, enslavement, and oppression. Thus, religion by nature is conflicted within itself and thus stands against itself. Dialectical Religiology attempts to rescue those elements of religion from the dustbin of history and reintroduce them into society via their determinate negation. As such, it attempts to resolve the social, political, theological, and philosophical antagonisms that plague the modern world, in hopes of producing a more peaceful, justice-filled, equal, and reconciled society. The contributors to this book recognize the tremendous contributions of Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert in the fields of philosophy, sociology, history, and theology, and have profited from his long career. This book attempts to honour that life and work. Contributors include: Edmund Arens, Gregory Baum, Francis Brassard, Dustin J. Byrd, Denis R. Janz, Gottfried Küenzlen, Mislav Kukoč, Michael, R. Ott, Rudolf J. Siebert, Hans K. Weitensteiner, and Brian C. Wilson"--

1. Marx's critique of political economy as a problem-posing framework -- 2. Conceptualization and critique in Marx and today -- 3. The meaning and significance of Marx's critique of the method of political economy -- 4. Making analytical and practical sense of Marx's critical/dialectical procedure -- 5. Ontological underpinnings of the critical/dialectical procedure -- 6. Retroduction and empiricism in Marx's practice and theory of understanding -- 7. Labour as the objective basis of materialist dialectics.

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School has undergone numerous and at times fundamental changes over the last ninety years. Since the late 1960s, it has been characterized primarily by Jürgen Habermas's "communicative turn" and a focus on normative foundations. Today, that "second generation" exists side-by-side with a "third generation" represented most prominently by Axel Honneth's turn toward recognition, ethical life, and the normative reconstruction of social institutions. This volume brings together critical voices on the state and direction of Frankfurt School theory today by examining Honneth's theory in light of both current challenges and the intellectual and political ambitions that have shaped the tradition from its beginning. United in their strong commitment to critical scholarship, the authors collected here approach Honneth's work from different backgrounds, employ a wide variety of methodologies, and write in different genres, ranging from the sober scholarly analysis to programmatic and political appeals. The collective aim of these reflections is not to reject Honneth's theory but to build upon his work and incorporate his themes of recognition and social freedom into a new project of critical theory that can prove adequate to the political and social crises of our time.--

This book radically re-examines Europe's imaginaries of its origin in the ancient Greek world. Extracting central concepts of critical theory in its widest sense - beyond the Frankfurt School - like the human, force, spirit and domination, it allies them to characters, mythologies and motifs in ancient thought. Just as the stories of Achilles, Helen and Odysseus have become central to our modes of self-understanding, so we can also examine the roots and routes of the concepts of social theory out of the ancient earth and its myths. An important book for scholars and students of critical theory, social theory, aesthetic theory and the history of the human sciences, it alerts us to the catastrophe that we are facing in the 21st century - a catastrophe of domination and ecological collapse that has its origins in the ancient world and the ways in which it began to define a certain sense of humanness. Considering the artistic production of the ancient world in relation to the thought of Adorno, Critical Theory and the Classical World argues that it is only by understanding the persistence of the haunted motifs of the past into the present that we can begin to re-forge our critical theory of society and re-found our social formations on a new basis.

This volume explores Andrew Feenberg's work in critical theory. Feenberg is considered one of the key 'second generation' critical theorists, with a keen interest in philosophy of technology. He has made a vital contribution to critical theory in ways that remain of interest given the pressing technological issues of our time. The authors of this book highlight not only the ways that Feenberg has begun to make good on what is often characterized as "the broken promise of critical theory" to address issues of technology, but also the continued importance of critical theory more generally, and of Feenberg's contributions to understanding this tradition.