ABSTRACT

The portentous terms and phrases associated with the first decades of the Frankfurt School – exile, the dominance of capitalism, fascism – seem as salient today as they were in the early twentieth century. The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School addresses the many early concerns of critical theory and brings those concerns into direct engagement with our shared world today. In this volume, a distinguished group of international scholars from a variety of disciplines revisits the philosophical and political contributions of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and others. 

Throughout, the Companion’s focus is on the major ideas that have made the Frankfurt School such a consequential and enduring movement. It offers a crucial resource for those who are trying to make sense of the global and cultural crisis that has now seized our contemporary world.

part I|1 pages

Basic Concepts

chapter 1|16 pages

The Idea of Instrumental Reason

ByJ.M. Bernstein

chapter 2|13 pages

The Idea of the Culture Industry

ByJuliane Rebentisch, Felix Trautmann

chapter 3|16 pages

Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory

ByJoel Whitebook

chapter 4|17 pages

The Philosophy of History 1

ByMartin Shuster

chapter 5|17 pages

Discourse Ethics

ByMaeve Cooke

chapter 6|13 pages

The Theory of Recognition in the Frankfurt School

ByTimo Jütten

chapter 7|12 pages

History as Critique

Walter Benjamin
ByEli Friedlander

chapter 8|14 pages

Topographies of Culture

Siegfried Kracauer
ByAndreas Huyssen

chapter 9|14 pages

History and Transcendence in Adorno’s Idea of Truth

ByLambert Zuidervaart

part II|1 pages

Historical Themes

chapter 10|15 pages

Ungrounded

Horkheimer and the Founding of the Frankfurt School 1
ByMartin Jay

chapter 11|11 pages

Revisiting Max Horkheimer’s Early Critical Theory

ByJohn Abromeit

chapter 12|15 pages

The Frankfurt School and the Assessment of Nazism

ByUdi Greenberg

chapter 13|15 pages

The Frankfurt School and Antisemitism

ByJack Jacobs

chapter 14|13 pages

The Frankfurt School and the Experience of Exile

ByThomas Wheatland

chapter 16|14 pages

The Frankfurt School and the West German Student Movement

ByHans Kundnani

part III|1 pages

Affinities and Contestations

chapter 17|14 pages

Lukács and the Frankfurt School

ByTitus Stahl

chapter 18|15 pages

Nietzsche and the Frankfurt School

ByDavid Owen

chapter 19|16 pages

Weber and the Frankfurt School

ByDana Villa

chapter 20|13 pages

Heidegger and the Frankfurt School

ByCristina Lafont

chapter 21|16 pages

Arendt and the Frankfurt School

BySeyla Benhabib, Clara Picker

chapter 22|12 pages

Marcuse and the Problem of Repression

ByBrian O’Connor

chapter 23|13 pages

Critical Theory and Poststructuralism

ByMartin Saar

chapter 24|13 pages

Habermas and Ordinary Language Philosophy

ByEspen Hammer

part IV|1 pages

Specifications

chapter 25|14 pages

The Place of Mimesis in The Dialectic of Enlightenment

ByOwen Hulatt

chapter 26|15 pages

Adorno and Literature

ByIain Macdonald

chapter 27|14 pages

Adorno, Music, and Philosophy

ByMax Paddison

chapter 28|16 pages

Schelling and the Frankfurt School

ByPeter Dews

chapter 29|14 pages

Critical Theory and Social Pathology

ByFabian Freyenhagen

chapter 30|15 pages

The Self and Individual Autonomy in the Frankfurt School

ByKenneth Baynes

chapter 31|15 pages

The Habermas–Rawls Debate

ByJames Gordon Finlayson

part V|1 pages

Prospects

chapter 32|14 pages

Idealism, Realism, and Critical Theory

ByFred Rush

chapter 33|15 pages

Critical Theory and the Environment

ByArne Johan Vetlesen

chapter 34|14 pages

Critical Theory and the Law

ByWilliam E. Scheuerman

chapter 35|14 pages

Critical Theory and Postcolonialism

ByJames D. Ingram

chapter 36|14 pages

Critical Theory and Religion

ByPeter E. Gordon

chapter 37|14 pages

Critical Theory and Feminism

ByAmy Allen

chapter 38|12 pages

Critique, Crisis, and the Elusive Tribunal

ByJudith Butler

chapter 39|9 pages

Critique and Communication: Philosophy’s Missions 1

A conversation with Jürgen Habermas
ByMichaël Foessel