This handbook is the only major survey of critical theory from philosophical, political, sociological, psychological and historical vantage points. It emphasizes not only on the historical and philosophical roots of critical theory, but also its current themes and trends as well as future applications and directions.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction: What Is Critical Theory? - Michael J. Thompson
• Part I The Hegelian-Marxist Roots of Critical Theory
• 2 Critical Theory and Resistance: On Antiphilosophy and the Philosophy of Praxis - Stephen Eric Bronner
• 3 Marx's Influence on the Early Frankfurt School - Chad Kautzer
• 4 Lukács’ Theory of Reification and the Tradition of Critical Theory - Konstantinos Kavoulakos
• 5 Totality, Reason, Dialectics: The Importance of Hegel for Critical Theory from Lukács to Honneth - Omar Dahbour
• 6 Why Students of the Frankfurt School Will Have to Read Lukács - Andrew Feenberg
• Part II Critical Epistemology and the Aims of Social Research
• 7 Critical Theory and the Historical Transformations of Capitalist Modernity - Moishe Postone
• 8 Critical Theory as Radical Comparative–Historical Research - Harry F. Dahms
• 9 The Frankfurt School and the Critique of Instrumental Reason - Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker
• 10 Materialism in Critical Theory: Marx and the Early Horkheimer - David A. Borman
• 11 Critique as the Epistemic Framework of the Critical Social Sciences - Michael J. Thompson
• Part III The Sociology of Culture and Critical Aesthetics
• 12 Theories of Culture in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory - Christoph Henning
• 13 Adorno's Aesthetic Theory - James Freeman
• 14 Art and the Concept of Autonomy in Adorno's Kant Critique - Max Paddison
• 15 Judging by Refraining from Judgment: The Artwork and Its Einordnung - Gerhard Richter
• 16 Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution - Dirk Michel-Schertges
• 17 What Does It Mean To Be Critical? On Literary and Social Critique in Walter Benjamin - Nathan Ross
• Part IV Critical Social Psychology and the Study of Authoritarianism
• 18 Theory and Class Consciousness - David Norman Smith
• 19 The Frankfurt School, Authority, and the Psychoanalysis of Utopia - C. Fred Alford
• 20 The Social Psychology of Critical Theory - Lauren Langman
• 21 The Social Psychology of Authority - Mark P. Worrell
• 22 The Fromm–Marcuse Debate and the Future of Critical Theory - Neil McLaughlin
• Part V The Communicative Turn, Discourse Ethics, and Recognition
• 23 The Metaethics of Critical Theories - Titus Stahl
• 24 Collective Agency and Intentionality: A Critical Theory Perspective - Barbara Fultner
• 25 Recognition, Social Systems and Critical Theory - Spyros Gangas
• 26 Recognition, Identity and Subjectivity - Heikki Ikäheimo
• 27 The Sociological Roots and Deficits of Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition - Mariana Teixeira
• Part VI Future Directions in Critical Theory
• 28 Experience and Temporality: Toward a New Paradigm of Critical Theory - Espen Hammer
• 29 Critical Theory of Human Rights - Lars Rensmann
• 30 Immanent Critique and the Exhaustion Thesis: Neoliberalism and History's Vicissitudes - Robert J. Antonio
• 31 Critical Theory and Global Development - David Ingram
• 32 The New Sensibility, Intersectionality, and Democratic Attunement: The Future of Critical Theory and Humanity - Arnold Farr