They thus drew on other schools of thought to fill in Marx's perceived omissions, using the insights of psychoanalysis, sociology, existential philosophy and other disciplines.[1] Max Weberexerted a major influence, as did Sigmund Freud. The school's emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits ofpositivism, crude materialism, and phenomenology by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis ondialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of reality. A key influence also came from the publication in the 1930s of Marx's Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology, which showed the continuity with Hegelianism that underlay Marx's thought. Herbert Marcuse became one of the first to articulate the theoretical significance of these texts.
Contents
- 1 History
- 2 Critical theory of society
- 3 Notable theorists
- 4 Critical responses
- 5 See also
- 6 References
- 7 Further reading
- 8 External links
- **********
Critical theory of society
Sociology 
Portal · History General aspects Related fields and subfields Categories and lists Critical theory, in sociology and philosophy, is shorthand for critical theory of society. It is a label used by the Frankfurt School, their intellectual and social network, and those influenced by them intellectually to describe their own work. The work of the School is oriented toward radical social change, in contradistinction to "traditional theory," i.e. theory in the positivistic, scientistic, or purely observational mode. In literature and literary criticism and cultural studies, by contrast, "critical theory" means something quite different, namely theory used in criticism.
The original critical social theorists were Marxists, and there is some evidence that in their choice of the phrase "critical theory of society" they were in part influenced by its sounding less politically controversial than "Marxism". Nevertheless there were other substantive reasons for this choice. First, they were explicitly linking up with the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, where the term critique meant philosophical reflection on the limits of claims made for certain kinds of knowledge and a direct connection between such critique and the emphasis on moral autonomy. In an intellectual context defined by dogmatic positivism and scientism on the one hand and dogmatic "scientific socialism" on the other, critical theory meant to rehabilitate through its philosophically critical approach an orientation toward revolutionary agency, or at least its possibility, at a time when it seemed in decline.
Second, in the context of both Marxist-Leninist and Social-Democratic orthodoxy, which emphasized Marxism as a new kind of positive science, they were linking up with the implicit epistemology of Karl Marx's work, which presented itself as critique, as in Marx's "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy". That is, they emphasized that Marx was attempting to create a new kind of critical analysis oriented toward the unity of theory and revolutionary practice rather than a new kind of positive science. Critique in this Marxian sense meant taking the ideology of a society (e.g. "freedom of the individual" or "equality" under capitalism) and critiquing it by comparing it with the social reality of that very society (e.g. subordination of the individual to the class structure or real social inequality under capitalism).
It also, especially in the Frankfurt School version, meant critiquing the existing social reality in terms of the potential for human freedom and happiness that existed within that same reality (e.g. using technologies for the exploitation of nature that could be used for the conservation of nature).
The Frankfurt School also found additional insights from history. For instance, in Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm the critique of the modern political order led him to seek insight from the freedom to be found in medieval feudalism. In Fromm’s most well known book, he found favor with the lack of individual freedom, rigid structure, and obligations required on the members of medieval society:
“ What characterizes medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom… But altogether a person was not free in the modern sense, neither was he alone and isolated. In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need for doubt… There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition, just as it carried economic obligations to those higher in the social hierarchy.[4] ”
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