The book addresses what is political in critical theory and which aspects, arguments or notions of critical theory maintain political significance for the 20th and the 21st centuries. The collection of essays comprises itself of a series of clear and critical perspectives that analyze the extent to which critical theory relates political argument to modern societies and, thereby, exerts a critique of the multiple social and political phenomena of late modernity. The contributors focus on a multiplicity of universal phenomena such as globalization, multiple crises, late capitalism and the social role of the sciences, and posit some novel criticism of the contemporary social sphere, as it is situated within the wider system of global capitalism. They also present a plurivalent critique that links arguments in Marxism and Freud to all three generations of critical theory.
Anastasia Marinopoulou is Resident Lecturer at the European Law and Governance School of the European Public Law Organisation
Preface by Darrow SchecterIntroductionPart I: Essential political notions of critical theoryCritique, negation, politics – Stephen Eric Bronner Between ideals and realism: On the ‘political’ in Max Horkheimer’s early thought – Malte Froslee Ibsen Part II: Democracy 3. Critical theory and democracy: From Kant to Habermas and then back to the Dialectic of Enlightenment – Anastasia MarinopoulouOn the ambivalent effects of politicising justice – Esther Neuhann Part III: Political power, civil society and globalisationFrom the critique of power to critical institutionalism – Hubertus Buchstein Guardians of legitimacy: Habermas on civil disobedience as radical democratic practice – Jeffrey Flynn 7. Can housing be unfair? Towards a critical theory of injustice – Regina KreidePart IV: Epistemology and the political8. Critical theory and the realist critique of normative political theory – Kenneth Baynes9. Power, reasons, and ideology: On the epistemology and metaphysics of noumenal power – Matteo BianchinPart V: Praxis, public sphere and political communication10. The limits of critical democratic theory regarding structural transformations in twenty-first century left politics – David IngramNew challenges for critical theory: Deliberative public sphere and political communication in the new hybrid media system – Luca Corchia Postscript by Joshua Clover
