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Critical Theory
Brittany Knutson and Tray Weaver
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
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Born in Germany
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German philosopher of the late Enlightenment
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Idealist
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Philosophies of Marx existentialism and psychoanalysis had their
beginnings in Hegal
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Published work on dialectical thinking and theories of totality
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel continued
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Suggest a form of absolute idealism by including both subjective life
and the objective cultural practices on which subjective life
depended within the dynamics of the development of the selfconsciousness and self-actualization of God, the Absolute Spirit
Georg (Gyorgy) Lukacs (1885-1971)
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Born in Austria-Hungary
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Jewish Marxist philosopher
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Co-founder of Western Marxism
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Developed the theory of reification
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Making something real, bringing something into being, or making
something concrete
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Philosopher of leninism
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He ideologically developed and organized Lenin’s pragmatic
revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party
revolution
Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)
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Born in Germany
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German Jewish philosopher
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Focused on the connections between social structures,
networks/subcultures, and individual realities
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Concluded that we are affected and shaped by the proliferation of
products on the market place
Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno (1903-1969)
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Born in Germany
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German philosopher and sociologist
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Critic of fascism and what he called the culture industry
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Strongly influenced the New Left
Known for his critical theory of society
Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
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Born in Berlin
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Family was Jewish
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1916 drafted into the German Army but only worked in horse
stables in Berlin during World War I
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German-American philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist
Herbert Marcuse continued
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Technological Rationality
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An extension of Weber’s idea of rationalization
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The embodiment of rationality within technology
The New Left
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Political movement in the 1960s and 1970s that sought to implement a
broad range of reforms on social political issues
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Gay rights, abortion, gender rights, social class
Herbert Marcuse continued
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Sexual Revolution
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In favor of sexual revolution
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Implied a type of revolution against oppressive social control
apparatuses
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against those who tried to impose sexual codes of conduct on others in
the name of religion or especially those who would invade the realm of
individual privacy
Jurgen Habermas (1929- )
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Born in Germany
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German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory
and pragmatism
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Best known for his theories on communicative rationality and the
public sphere
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Focused on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the
analysis of advanced capitalistic societies and democracy, the rule of
law in a critical social-evolutionary context, and contemporary politics,
particularly German politics
Jurgen Habermas continued
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His theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of
reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in
modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and
pursue rational interests
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Communication Theory
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Distinguishes itself from the rationalist tradition, by locating rationality
in structures of interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in
the structure of the cosmos
Douglas Kellner (1943- )
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“Third generation” critical theory and cultural studies
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University of California, Los Angeles
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Relationship between media and culture
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media had a tremendous effect on our culture
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Example: the way women are portrayed in the media has a huge
effect on our culture
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He has increasingly argued that media culture has become
dominated by the forms of spectacle and mega-spectacle