political philosophy

Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse

Critical theory, a broad-based Marxist-oriented approach to the study of society, was first developed in the 1920s by the philosophers Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Ger. They and other members of the Frankfurt School, as this group came to be called, fled Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933. The institute was relocated to Columbia University in the United States and remained there until 1949, when it was reestablished in Frankfurt. The most prominent representatives of the Frankfurt School and of critical theory from the mid-20th century were Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas.

The question initially addressed by critical theorists was why the working classes in advanced capitalist countries were generally unmotivated to press for radical social change in their own interests. They attempted to develop a theory of capitalist social relations and to analyze the various forms of cultural and ideological oppression arising from them. They also undertook major studies of fascism and later of dictatorial communist regimes. After World War II, during the era of the Cold War, critical theorists viewed the world as divided between two ... (200 of 19,141 words)