Philosophy › Section L · Contemporary philosophy and social theory › Topic L.4
The Frankfurt School
Why did workers in Europe turn to fascism instead of the revolution Marx predicted? A group of German thinkers set out to answer that question and built critical theory, a philosophy meant not only to explain society but to free people within it. This topic sets out its main ideas, its defenders and its critics.
In this topic
- A Marxist institute without orthodoxy
- Traditional and critical theory
- Dialectic of Enlightenment
- Fromm, Marcuse and Benjamin
- Worked example: two theories of one fact
- Habermas: the public sphere and communicative action
- Worked example: a debate over a new road
- Freire's critical pedagogy
- The case for critical theory
- The strongest objections
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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