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In the [[humanities]] and [[social sciences]], '''critical [[theory]]''' has two quite different [[meanings ]] with different origins and histories, one originating in [[social theory]] and the [[other ]] in [[literary criticism]]. Though until recently these two meanings had little to do with each other, since the 1970s there has been some overlap between these disciplines. This has led to "critical theory" becoming an umbrella term for an array of theories within the academic [[world ]] of the United Kingdom and the [[United States]]. This article focuses primarily on the differences and similarities between [[them]].

The first [[meaning ]] of the term ''critical theory'' was that defined by [[Max Horkheimer]] of the [[Frankfurt School]] of [[social ]] [[science ]] in his 1937 essay ''Traditional and Critical Theory'' : critical theory is social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing [[society ]] as a [[whole]], in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to [[understanding ]] or explaining it. [[Horkheimer ]] wanted to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory [[form ]] of [[Marxian]] theory both from the [[model ]] of science put forward by [[logical positivism]] and from what he and his colleagues perceived as the covert [[positivism ]] and [[authoritarianism ]] of orthodox [[Marxism ]] and [[Communism]]. It is also central to this [[notion ]] that critical social theory be directed at the [[totality ]] of society in its historical specificity, i.e. in the way it had come to be configured at a specific point in [[time]], and that it integrates all of the major social science theories that will [[help ]] grasp the major dimensions of society, including especially [[economics]], [[sociology]], [[history]], [[political ]] science, [[anthropology]], and [[psychology]]. Although this conception of critical theory originated with the Frankfurt [[School]], it also prevails among some other [[recent ]] social scientists, such as [[Pierre Bourdieu]], [[Louis Althusser]] and arguably [[Michel Foucault]] and certain [[feminist]] theorists and social scientists.

This version of "critical" theory derives from [[Kant]]'s (18th-century) and [[Marx]]'s (19th century) use of the term "[[critique]]", as in Kant's ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]'' and Marx's notion of his [[work ]] ''[[Das Kapital]]'' (''[[Capital]]'') as "the critique of political [[economy]]". For Kant's [[transcendental idealism]], "critique" means examining and establishing the limits of the validity of a faculty, type, or [[body ]] of [[knowledge]], especially through taking stock of the limitations imposed by the fundamental, irreducible [[concepts ]] in use in that knowledge. His notion also already associated critique with the disestablishment of [[false]], unprovable, or dogmatic [[philosophical]], social, and political beliefs since for him the critique of [[reason ]] involved the critique of dogmatic theological and metaphysical [[ideas ]] and was intertwined with the enhancement of [[ethical ]] [[autonomy ]] and the [[Enlightenment ]] critique of [[superstition ]] and [[irrational ]] [[authority]]. Marx explicitly developed this notion into the critique of [[ideology ]] and linked it with the [[practice ]] of social [[revolution]], as in his famous 11th [[Thesis ]] on Feuerbach, "[[Philosophers ]] have only [[interpreted ]] the world in certain ways; the point is to [[change ]] it". [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm]

The second meaning of ''critical theory'' is that of theory used in literary criticism – hence "critical theory" -- and in the analysis and understanding of literature and is discussed in greater detail under [[literary theory]]. It is not necessarily oriented toward radical social change or even toward the [[analysis ]] of society but is focused primarily on the analysis of [[texts ]] and textlike phenomena. It originated among [[literary ]] scholars and in the [[discipline ]] of [[literature ]] in the 1960s and 1970s and really came into broad use only since the 1980s, especially as theory used in literary studies became increasingly influenced by Continental [[philosophy ]] and social theory and thereby became more "[[theoretical]]".

This version of "critical" theory derives from the notion of literary criticism as establishing and enhancing the proper [[aesthetic]] understanding and evaluation of literature, as articulated, for example, in [[Joseph Addison]]'s notion of a critic as one who helps [[understand ]] and [[interpret ]] literary works: "A [[true ]] critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and [[communicate ]] to the world such things as are worth their observation." [http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/fowlerjh/chap20.htm] This notion of criticism ultimately goes back to Aristotle's ''Poetics'' as a theory of literature.

To use an [[epistemological]] [[distinction ]] introduced by [[Jürgen Habermas]] in [[1968 ]] in his ''Erkenntnis und Interesse'' (''Knowledge and [[Human ]] Interests''), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of [[hermeneutics]], i.e. knowledge via [[interpretation ]] in [[order ]] to understand the meaning of human texts and [[symbolic ]] expressions, obeying the [[practical ]] interest in mutual understanding, while critical social theory is ultimately a form of [[self]]-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation in order to reduce entrapment in systems of [[domination]] or [[dependence]], obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination. From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on intepretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian [[sense]]. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a [[normative]] [[dimension]], whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of [[values]], norms, or oughts, or through criticizing it in [[terms ]] of its own espoused values.

Nevertheless, a certain amount of overlap has come [[about]], initiated both from the critical social theory and the literary-critical theory sides. It was distinctive of the Frankfurt School version of critical theory from the beginning, especially in the work of [[Max Horkheimer]], [[Theodor Adorno]], [[Walter Benjamin]], [[Herbert Marcuse]], and [[Leo Lowenthal]], because of their focus on the [[role ]] of false [[consciousness ]] and ideology in the perpetuation of [[capitalism]], to analyze works of [[culture]], including literature, [[music]], art, both "[[high culture]]" and "[[popular culture]]" or "mass culture." Thus it was to some extent a theory of literature and a method of literary criticism (as in Walter [[Benjamin]]'s interpretation of [[Charles Baudelaire|Baudelaire]], Leo Lowenthal's [[interpretations ]] of [[Shakespeare]], [[Ibsen]], etc., [[Adorno]]'s interpretations of [[Kafka]], [[Valery]], [[Balzac]], [[Beckett]], etc.) and (see below) in the 1960s started to influence the literary sort of critical theory.

In the late 1960s [[Juergen Habermas]] of the Frankfurt School, redefined critical theory in a way that freed it from a direct tie to Marxism or the prior work of the Frankfurt School. In Habermas's [[epistemology]], critical knowledge was conceptualized as knowledge that enabled human beings to emancipate themselves from forms of domination through self-[[reflection ]] and took [[psychoanalysis ]] as the paradigm of critical knowledge. This expanded considerably the scope of what counted as critical theory within the social [[sciences]], which would include such approaches as [[World Systems Theory|world systems theory]], [[feminist theory]], [[postcolonial theory]], [[critical race theory]], [[queer theory]], [[social ecology]], the theory of communicative [[action ]] ([[Habermas]]), [[structuration theory]], and [[neo-Marxian theory]].

From the literary side, starting in the 1960s literary scholars, reacting especially against the [[New Criticism]] of the previous decades, which tried to analyze literary texts purely internally, began to incorporate into their [[analyses ]] and interpretations of literary works initially [[semiotic]], [[linguistic]], and interpretive theory, then [[structuralism]], [[Lacanian ]] psychoanalysis, [[post-structuralism]], and [[deconstruction]] as well as Continental philosophy, especially [[phenomenology]] and [[hermeneutics]], and critical social theory and various other forms of neo-Marxian theory. Thus literary criticism became highly theoretical and some of those practicing it began referring to the theoretical dimension of their work as "critical theory", i.e. philosophically inspired theory of literary criticism. And thus incidentally critical theory in the sociological sense also became, especially among literary scholars of [[left]]-wing sympathies, one of a [[number ]] of influences upon and streams within critical theory in the literary sense.

Furthermore, along with the expansion of the mass [[media ]] and mass/popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s and the blending of social and [[cultural ]] criticism and literary criticism, the methods of both kinds of critical theory sometimes intertwined in the analysis of phenomena of popular culture, as in the emerging field of [[cultural studies]], in which concepts deriving from Marxian theory, post-structuralism, [[semiology]], psychoanalysis and feminist theory would be found in the same interpretive work. Both strands were often [[present ]] in the various modalities of [[Postmodern philosophy|postmodern theory]].

The two points at which there is the greatest overlap or mutual impingement of the two versions of critical theory are in their interrelated foci on [[language]], [[symbolism]], and [[communication ]] and in their focus on [[construction]].

From the 1960s and 1970s onward, language, symbolism, [[text]], and meaning became foundational to theory in the humanities and social sciences, through the short-term and long-term influences of [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]], [[Ferdinand de Saussure]], [[George Herbert Mead]], [[Noam Chomsky]], [[Hans-Georg Gadamer]], [[Roland Barthes]], [[Jacques Derrida]] and other thinkers in the traditions of linguistic and [[analytic ]] philosophy, [[structural ]] [[linguistics]], symbolic interactionism, hermeneutics, semiology, [[linguistically ]] oriented psychoanalysis ([[Lacan]], Lorenzer), deconstruction. When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Habermas also redefined critical social theory as a theory of communication, i.e. communicative competence and communicative [[rationality ]] on the one hand, distorted communication on the [[other, the ]] two versions of critical theory began to overlap or intertwine to a much greater degree than before.

Both versions of critical theory have focused on the [[processes ]] of [[synthesis]], production, or construction by which the phenomena and [[objects ]] of human communication, culture, and consciousness come about. Whether it is through the transformational rules by which the [[deep structure]] of language becomes its [[surface structure]] ([[Chomsky]]), the [[universal ]] pragmatic principles through which mutual understanding is generated (Habermas), the semiotic rules by which objects of daily usage or of fashion obtain their meanings ([[Barthes]]), the [[psychological ]] processes by which the phenomena of everyday consciousness are generated ([[psychoanalytic ]] thinkers), the ''[[episteme]]'' that underlies our cognitive [[formations ]] ([[Foucault]]), and so on, there is a common interest in the processes (often of a linguistic or symbolic kind) that give rise to observable phenomena. Here there is significant mutual influence among aspects of the different versions of critical theory. Ultimately this emphasis on production and construction goes back to the revolution wrought by [[Kant]] in philosophy, namely his focus in the ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]'' on synthesis according to rules as the fundamental [[activity ]] of the [[mind ]] that creates the order of our [[experience]].

*Related [[subjects]]:

*A survey of and introduction to the current [[state ]] of critical social theory is Craig Calhoun's ''Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of [[Difference]]'' (Blackwell, 1995) ISBN 1557862885