The twenty-two selections in Critical Theory: The Essential Readings provide students with a lucid overview of the central themes and concerns of critical theory. The main introduction and prefaces to sections discuss the writers and selections, highlighting connections between ideas and their historical contexts. In addition, Critical Theory The Essential Readings contains the first full translation of Habermas’influential essay, “Modernity: An Unfinished Project.”
The introduction preceding each article orients the student to the general theory of the author and relates the particular article to the other materials in the book. The individual introductions also include particular historical events surrounding each article so students can read the pieces in context. The editors have also selected substantial pieces by each contributor and have avoided excerpting wherever possible.
The arrangement of the selections in Critical Theory: The Essential Readings parallels the material in Critical Theory and Philosophy, and when read in conjunction with it presents the leading ideas of the Frankfurt School in the most accessible format possible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL THEORY
Herbert Marcuse, “Philosophy and Critical Theory”
Theodor W. Adorno, “Why Philosophy?”
II. THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Max Horkheimer, Selections from “Means and Ends”
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Selections from “The Concept
of Enlightenment”
III. CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY AS IDEOLOGY
Theodor W Adorno, “Society”
Theodor W Adorno, “How to Look at Television”
Theodor W Adorno, “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda”
Herbert Marcuse, “The Catastrophe of Liberation”
Jürgen Habermas, “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’ ”
IV. ETHICS AND CRITICAL THEORY
Herbert Marcuse, “On Hedonism”
Max Horkheimer, “Materialism and Morality”
Jürgen Habermas, Selections from Legitimation Crisis
V. THE FOUNDATIONS AND METHODS OF CRITICAL THEORY
Herbert Marcuse, “Freedom and Freud’s Theory of Instincts”
Max Horkheimer, Selections from “Traditional and Critical Theory”
Jürgen Habermas, “Knowledge and Human Interests: A General
Perspective”
VI. COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL CRISIS
Jürgen Habermas, Selections from “An Alternative Way Out of the
Philosophy of the Subject: Communicative Versus Subject-Centered Reason”
Jürgen Habermas, “What Does a Legitimation Crisis Mean Today?
Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism”
VII. CRITICAL THEORY AND ITS CRITICS
Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power”
Jean-Franqois Lyotard, Selections from The Postmodern Condition:
A Report on Knowledge
Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity: An Unfinished Project”
Nancy Fraser, “What’s Critical About Critical Theory?”
Seyla Benhabib, “The Utopian Dimension in Communicative Ethics”
Selected Bibliography
DAVID INGRAM is an associate professor of philosophy at the Loyola University of Chicago. He is the author of Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason (Yale University Press, 1987) and Critical Theory and Philosophy (Paragon House, 1990).
JULIA SIMON-INGRAM has published articles on the Frankfurt School and related topics, and is assistant professor of French at Washington University in St. Louis.