Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction
Stephen Eric Bronner2011

Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction explores the concepts and themes that distinguished critical theory from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German–Jewish academics who sought to diagnose and cure the ills of society. Sketches of leading representatives of this critical tradition, such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas, as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations, are presented. Concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non–identity and utopia are explained and discussed.