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THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK
OF CRITICAL THEORY
Edited by Michael J. Thompson
Political Philosophy and Public Purpose
Series Editor
Michael J. Thompson
William Paterson University
USA
This series offers books that seek to explore new perspectives in social and
political criticism. Seeing contemporary academic political theory and philos-
ophy as largely dominated by hyper-academic and overly-technical debates,
the books in this series seek to connect the politically engaged traditions of
philosophical thought with contemporary social and political life. The idea of
philosophy emphasized here is not as an aloof enterprise, but rather a publicly-
oriented activity that emphasizes rational reflection as well as informed praxis.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14542
Michael J. Thompson
Editor
The Palgrave
Handbook of Critical
Theory
Editor
Michael J. Thompson
Political Science
William Paterson University
Wayne, New Jersey, USA
Political Philosophy and Public Purpose

ISBN 978-1-137-55800-8 ISBN 978-1-137-55801-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962099
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
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Contents
1 Introduction: What Is Critical Theory? 1

Michael J. Thompson
Part I The Hegelian-Marxist Roots of Critical Theory 15
2 Critical Theory and Resistance: On Antiphilosophy

and the Philosophy of Praxis 17
Stephen Eric Bronner
3 Marx’s Influence on the Early Frankfurt School 43

Chad Kautzer
4 Lukács’ Theory of Reification and the Tradition

of Critical Theory 67
Konstantinos Kavoulakos
5 Totality, Reason, Dialectics: The Importance of Hegel

for Critical Theory from Lukács to Honneth 87
Omar Dahbour
6 Why Students of the Frankfurt School Will Have

to Read Lukács 109
Andrew Feenberg
v
vi Contents
Part II Critical Epistemology and the Aims of Social Research 135
7 Critical Theory and the Historical Transformations

of Capitalist Modernity 137
Moishe Postone
8 Critical Theory as Radical Comparative–Historical Research 165

Harry F. Dahms
9 The Frankfurt School and the Critique of Instrumental

Reason 185
Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker
10 Materialism in Critical Theory: Marx and the Early

Horkheimer 207
David A. Borman
11 Critique as the Epistemic Framework of the Critical

Social Sciences 231
Michael J. Thompson
Part III The Sociology of Culture and Critical Aesthetics 253
12 Theories of Culture in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory 255

Christoph Henning
13 Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory 279

James Freeman
14 Art and the Concept of Autonomy in Adorno’s

Kant Critique 291
Max Paddison
15 Judging by Refraining from Judgment: The Artwork

and Its Einordnung 309
Gerhard Richter
16 Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution 329

Dirk Michel-Schertges
Contents vii
17 What Does It Mean To Be Critical? On Literary

and Social Critique in Walter Benjamin 349
Nathan Ross
Part IV Critical Social Psychology and the Study

of Authoritarianism 367
18 Theory and Class Consciousness 369

David Norman Smith
19 The Frankfurt School, Authority, and the Psychoanalysis

of Utopia 425
C. Fred Alford
20 The Social Psychology of Critical Theory 443

Lauren Langman
21 The Social Psychology of Authority 463

Mark P. Worrell
22 The Fromm–Marcuse Debate and the Future of Critical

Theory 481
Neil McLaughlin
Part V The Communicative Turn, Discourse Ethics, and

Recognition 503
23 The Metaethics of Critical Theories 505

Titus Stahl
24 Collective Agency and Intentionality: A Critical Theory

Perspective 523
Barbara Fultner
25 Recognition, Social Systems and Critical Theory 547

Spyros Gangas
26 Recognition, Identity and Subjectivity 567

Heikki Ikäheimo
viii Contents
27 The Sociological Roots and Deficits of

Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition 587
Mariana Teixeira
Part VI Future Directions in Critical Theory 611
28 Experience and Temporality: Toward a New Paradigm

of Critical Theory 613
Espen Hammer
29 Critical Theory of Human Rights 631

Lars Rensmann
30 Immanent Critique and the Exhaustion Thesis:

Neoliberalism and History’s Vicissitudes 655
Robert J. Antonio
31 Critical Theory and Global Development 677

David Ingram
32 The New Sensibility, Intersectionality, and Democratic

Attunement: The Future of Critical Theory and Humanity 697
Arnold Farr
Index717
List of Contributors
Robert J. Antonio teaches social theory and globalization in the Sociology Department
at the University of Kansas. He has long been interested in critical theory, the classics of
modern theory, and core interdisciplinary debates over modernity from the eighteenth
century to the present. In recent years, he has focused on the big discourses about glo-
balization, especially those concerning the global neoliberal regime and inequality, dis-
possession, financial instability, and ecological degradation.
David A. Borman is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Nipissing
University, Ontario, Canada. His research concerns both critical social theory and con-
tractualist metaethics. He is the author of The Idolatry of the Actual: Habermas,
Socialization, and the Possibility of Autonomy (SUNY Press, 2011) and has published
papers in such journals as Dialogue, Philosophical Forum, Social Philosophy Today,
Philosophy and Social Criticism, and Continental Philosophy Review.
Stephen Eric Bronner was born in 1949. He received his BA from the City College of
New York and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to being
Senior Editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, an interdisciplinary
online journal, and a member of more than a dozen other editorial boards, he is also
Chair of the Executive Committee of US Academics for Peace and an advisor to
Conscience International. He has taken part in missions of civic diplomacy in Darfur,
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and elsewhere. Blood in the Sand: Imperial Fantasies, Rightwing
Ambitions, and the Erosion of American Democracy and Peace Out of Reach: Middle
Eastern Travels and the Search for Reconciliation (University Press of Kentucky) reflect
this interest. Professor Bronner’s works have been translated into more than a dozen
languages. They include: Socialism Unbound: Principles, Practices, Prospects (Columbia
University Press), Camus: Portrait of a Moralist (University of Chicago Press), Critical
Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press), and Of Critical Theory and
Its Theorists (Routledge). Particularly concerned with issues of bigotry and tolerance, his
Reclaiming the Enlightenment (Columbia University Press) and A Rumor About the Jews
(Oxford University Press) have become standard works, and his most recent work, The
Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists (Yale University Press), has been widely reviewed. Stephen
Eric Bronner is the Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers University. He is also
Director of Global Relations and on the Executive Committee of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair for Genocide
ix
x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Prevention at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. Professor
Bronner is the recipient of many awards, including the 2011 MEPeace Prize from the
Middle East Political Network based in Jerusalem.
Omar Dahbour is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and Graduate School,
City University of New York (CUNY), and has also taught at Ohio University and
Colorado College, among other institutions. He is a recipient of PhDs in Philosophy
and History from CUNY and the University of Chicago. His publications include Self-
Determination Without Nationalism: A Theory of Postnational Sovereignty (2013),
Illusion of the Peoples: A Critique of National Self-Determination (2003), and other
edited volumes, as well as articles and reviews on Hegel, Marx, Habermas, liberalism,
imperialism, historical narrative, global justice, national identity, minority rights, and
military ethics.
Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of
Social Justice, and Co-Chair of the Committee on Social Theory at the University of
Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the editor of Current Perspectives in Social Theory and
Director of the International Social Theory Consortium. He is the author of The Vitality
of Critical Theory, has edited and co-edited other books, and has published in Sociological
Theory, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Comparative Sociology, Critical Sociology,
Basic Income Studies, The Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, and other journals,
along with chapters in encyclopedias and handbooks. Currently, he is finishing a book
manuscript, Modern Society as Artifice: Critical Theory and the Logic of Capital.
Arnold L. Farr specializes in German idealism, Marxism, critical theory, and philoso-
phy of race. He is a co-editor and co-author of Marginal Groups and Mainstream
American Culture (2000), and author of Critical Theory and Democratic Vision:
Herbert Marcuse and Recent Liberation Philosophies (2009). He is the author of over
three dozen articles and book chapters on German idealism, critical theory (mainly
Marcuse and Honneth), and philosophy of race. He is the founder and President of the
International Herbert Marcuse Society. Farr is presently working on three books,
Misrecognition, Mimetic Rivalry, and One-dimensionality: Toward a Critical Theory of
Human Conflict and Social Pathology; Liberation, Dialectic, and the Struggle for Social
Transformation: The Life and Work of Herbert Marcuse; and Multidimensional Marcuse:
Radical Thought/Radical Action Today.
Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School
of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied
Communication and Technology Lab. He also serves as Directeur de Progamme at the
Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. His publications include Questioning
Technology (Routledge, 1999) and Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology
and Modernity (MIT Press, 2010), and several co-authored and co-edited books,
including When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The May Events of 1968 (2001) and The Essential
Marcuse (2007). A book on Feenberg's philosophy of technology, entitled Democratizing
Technology, appeared in 2006 with the State University of New York Press. His most
recent book is The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukács and the Frankfurt School, pub-
lished by Verso Press in 2014.
C. Fred Alford is Professor of Government and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the
University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of over 15 books on moral psy-
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xi
chology. His most recent is Trauma and Forgiveness: Consequences and Communities
(Cambridge University Press, 2013). Soon to be published is Trauma, Culture, PTSD
(Palgrave, 2016). He is Executive Director of the Association for Psychoanalysis,
Culture and Society, and co-editor of the Psychoanalysis and Society Book Series with
Cornell University Press. He curates the blog www.traumatheory.com.
James Freeman is Professor of Political Science at CUNY, Bronx Community College.
He earned his PhD in Political Theory from SUNY Albany, studying under Morton
Schoolman. His research interests include the sociological theories of C. Wright Mills,
Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno. Additionally, he has written on urban, inter-
national, and American politics.
Barbara Fultner is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at
Denison University. She is the editor of Jürgen Habermas: Key Concepts and has trans-
lated, among other volumes, Jürgen Habermas’s Truth and Justification. She works on
topics in philosophy of language and mind, and social theory, with a special interest in
intersubjectivity. Her articles have appeared in various journals, including Philosophical
Studies, The International Journal of Philosophical Studies, and Continental Philosophy
Review. In 2008–2009, she was a fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities
Institute, and in 2015–2016, a visiting fellow at the Excellence Cluster for Normative
Orders at Goethe Universität in Frankfurt.
Spiros Gangas is Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Deree—the American College of
Greece. His research focuses on classical and contemporary sociological theory, value
theory, and film criticism. His work has appeared in Current Sociology, History of the
Human Sciences, Human Studies, Journal of Classical Sociology, Social Science
Information, Hegel-Jahrbuch, and Journal of the Faculty of Letters of Tokyo University
and in Greek journals. He is the author of the only comprehensive study of Durkheim
in Greek. He has taught at the University of Wales-College of Cardiff (UK), Panteion
University (Athens, Greece), and Kobe College (Japan).
Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is
the author of Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary (Polity Press,
2002), Adorno and the Political (Routledge, 2006), Philosophy and Temporality from
Kant to Critical Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Adorno’s Modernism:
Art, Experience, and Catastrophe (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is also the
editor of German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2006), Theodor
W. Adorno II: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers (Routledge, 2015), and
Kafka’s The Trial: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is a
co-editor of Stanley Cavell: Die Unheimlichkeit des Ungewöhnlichen (Fischer Verlag,
2002) and Pragmatik und Kulturpolitik: Studien zur Kulturpolitik Richard Rortys
(Felix Meiner Verlag, 2011).
Christoph Henning is Junior Fellow for Philosophy at the Max Weber Center for
Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. His latest
monographs include Philosophy After Marx (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and
two books on perfectionism and alienation in German: Freiheit, Gleichheit, Entfaltung:
Die politische Philosophie des Perfektionismus (Frankfurt am Main, 2015) and Theorie der
Entfremdung zur Einführung (Hamburg 2015). He is currently editing a volume, Good
Life Beyond Growth, with Hartmut Rosa.
xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Heikki Ikäheimo is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of New South

Wales (UNSW), Sydney. He works on critical social philosophy, social ontology, philo-
sophical anthropology, recognition, and personhood. His publications include the
monographies Anerkennung (2014) and Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity (2000);
the co-edited collections The Ambivalence of Recognition (forthcoming), Recognition
and Social Ontology (2011), and Dimensions of Personhood (2007); and a number of
articles on Hegel, recognition, personhood, and related themes. Many of his texts can
be downloaded from https://unsw.academia.edu/HeikkiIkaheimo.
David Ingram is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago. He is the
author of Law: Key Concepts (Bloomsbury, 2006) and several books on rights: Group
Rights: Reconciling Equality and Difference (University Press of Kansas, 2000) and
Rights, Democracy, and Fulfillment in the Era of Identity Politics (Rowman & Littlefield,
2004). He has also published several books on critical theory, including Habermas
(Cornell University Press, 2010), Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason (Yale University
Press, 1987), Critical Theory and Philosophy (Paragon House, 1990), and Reason,
History and Politics (SUNY Press, 1995). He is the editor of three anthologies: Critical
Theory: The Essential Readings (Paragon House, 1991), The Political (Blackwell, 2002),
and From Critical Theory to Structuralism: Volume Five. The History of Continental
Thought (Acumen/Routledge, 2010). He is currently writing a book on human agency
and global justice.
Chad Kautzer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Lehigh University. He is the
author of Radical Philosophy: An Introduction (Routledge, 2015) and co-editor, with
Eduardo Mendieta, of Pragmatism, Nation, and Race: Community in the Age of Empire
(Indiana University Press, 2009).
Konstantinos Kavoulakos (born in Athens, Greece, in 1967) is Associate Professor of
Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Crete (Greece). He is the author/
editor of 12 books. His research focuses on an investigation of the twentieth-century
tradition of critical social thought. His most recent books include Ästhetizistische
Kulturkritik und ethische Utopie. Georg Lukács’ neukantianisches Frühwerk, (Berlin/
Boston: de Gruyter, 2014) and Tragedy and History. The Critique of Modern Culture in
the Early Work of Georg Lukács 1902–1918 (Athens: Alexandria, 2012, in Greek).
Lauren Langman is Professor of Sociology at Loyola University of Chicago. He
received his PhD from the University of Chicago. He has long worked in the tradition
of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, especially nationalism and reactionary move-
ments, and relationships between culture, identity, and politics/political movements.
He is the past president of Alienation Research and Theory, Research Committee 36, of
the International Sociological Association as well as past president of the Marxist section
of the American Sociological Association. Recent publications deal with globalization,
alienation, global justice movements, the Tea Party, the body, nationalism, and national
character. His most recent publications include Trauma Promise and Millennium: The
Evolution of Alienation, with Devorah Kalekin; Alienation and Carnivalization, with
Jerome Braun; and a special issue of Current Sociology on Arab Spring, the Indignados
Movement, and the Occupy Movement. His latest book is on American character, God,
Guns, Gold and Glory (Leiden: Brill).
Neil McLaughlin teaches sociology theory at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario. He has written extensively on the “rise and fall” of Erich Fromm as a forgotten
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xiii
intellectual and has most recently edited (with Rainer Funk) Towards a Human Science:
The Relevance of Erich Fromm for Today (Psychosozial-Verlag Walltorstr, 2015). He
writes, more broadly, on the sociology of public intellectuals, ideas, and knowledge, and
is currently working on separate studies on Noam Chomsky and on the reputation of
George Soros. He loves to do book reviews, and one of his favorites is a recent review
essay on three important new books on Fromm, published in the Canadian Journal of
Sociology: https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/CJS/article/
viewFile/24964/18530
Dirk Michel-Schertges is Associate Professor in the Department of Education, Faculty
of Arts, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark. He holds an MA in Social Sciences
and a doctorate in Educational and Social Sciences from the University of Wuppertal,
Germany, and his primarily interests include the (re-)construction of identity forma-
tions in light of contemporary processes of a lienation within the cultural contexts of
aesthetic education/Bildung, art, educational policy, educational/pedagogical and
social theory, political socialization, political education, social inequality, and biographi-
cal and historical approaches to the concept of Bildung. His recent publications are—
(2016): “Poverty, Social Inclusion and Egalitarianism.” In F. Kessl, W. Lorenz,
O. Hans-Uwe, & S. White (eds.), European Social Work – A Compendium, Opladen &
Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers (forthcoming); (2015): “Free Choice of
Education? Free Choice of Education? Capabilities, Possibility Spaces, and
Incapacitations of Education, Labor, and the Way of Living One Values.” In O. Hans-
Uwe (ed.), Facing Trajectories from School to Work – Towards a Capability-Friendly
Youth Policy in Europe (pp. 73–86), Springer; (2014): (together with H. Sünker)
“Tiefenhermeneutische Kulturanalyse als Methode einer kritischen Bildungstheorie.”
In W. Baros & W. Kempf (eds.), Erkenntnisinteressen, Methodologie und Methoden inter-
kultureller Bildungsforschung (pp. 121–131), Berlin: Verlag Irena Regener; and
(together with C. Schertges) “Higher Education in Germany.” In K.M. Joshi &
S. Paivandi (eds.), Higher Education Across Nations (Vol. 2, pp. 285–338). Delhi:
B.R. Publishing Corporation, New Delhi.
Max Paddison is Emeritus Professor of Music Aesthetics at Durham University,
UK. He is the author of Adorno's Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993) and Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and
Music (London: Kahn & Averill, revised ed. 2004).
Moishe Postone teaches social theory and modern history at the University of Chicago,
where he is also Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory and co-
editor of the journal Critical Historical Studies. He is the author of Time, Labor and
Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory and co-editor (with
Eric Santner) of Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century as
well (with Craig Calhoun and Edward LiPuma) of Bourdieu: Critical Reflections. He
has written extensively on critical theory, Marx’s critique of political economy, theories
of recent global transformations, and theoretical approaches to the issue of modern
antisemitism.
Lars Rensmann is Professor of European Politics and Society at the University of
Groningen. His publications include The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and
Antisemitism (SUNY Press, forthcoming) and Arendt and Adorno: Political and
xiv LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Philosophical Investigations (Stanford University Press, 2012, edited with Samir

Gandesha).
Gerhard Richter is Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature and Chair
of German Studies at Brown University. He has published widely in the areas of critical
theory, aesthetics, the Frankfurt School, and modern European critical thought.
Richter’s books include Inheriting Walter Benjamin (“Walter Benjamin Studies” Series,
London: Bloomsbury, 2016), Verwaiste Hinterlassenschaften: Formen gespentischen
Erbens [Orphaned Remains: Forms of Ghostly Inheriting] (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz,
2016), Afterness: Figures of Following in Modern Thought and Aesthetics (Columbia
University Press, 2011), Thought-Images: Frankfurt School Writers' Reflections from
Damaged Life (Stanford University Press, 2007), Ästhetik des Ereignisses. Sprache-
Geschichte-Medium (Fink, 2005), and Walter Benjamin and the Corpus of Autobiography
(Wayne State University Press, 2000; 2nd edition, 2002). He is also the editor of seven
additional books on critical theory.
Nathan Ross is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma City University. His
publications include On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy (Routledge,
2008), The Aesthetic Ground of Critical Theory (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), and
articles on German romanticism, Hegel, and critical theory.
David Norman Smith is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at the
University of Kansas. He publishes on classical and critical theory, class, charisma, capi-
talism, authoritarianism, prejudice, and genocide. His most recent book is Marx’s
Capital Illustrated (2014), and he is currently editing Marx’s late manuscripts on global
society for Yale University Press.
Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker is Managing Editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society
and Culture. He is also a graduate student in the Department of Political Science,
Rutgers University. His most recent book is Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of
Progressive Politics (Palgrave, 2015), which he co-edited with Michael J. Thompson.
Titus Stahl is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen.
Previously, he held positions at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research and the
University of Frankfurt. His areas of specialization are critical theory, social ontology,
and political philosophy. He has published a book-length treatment of the method of
immanent critique (Immanente Kritik, 2013, English translation forthcoming) as well
as numerous articles on critical theory and its history, social ontology, German idealism,
and Marxism.
Mariana Teixeira received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Campinas,
Brazil, in 2016, and was a visiting researcher at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, in
2012–2013. Her doctoral thesis addresses the link between philosophy and social sci-
ences in the work of Axel Honneth and in contemporary critical theory. She has received
her bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy, Sociology, and Political Science, and her master’s
dissertation in Philosophy dealt with Georg Lukács’s theory of reification and its con-
nections to German sociology. Currently, she is a researcher at the Brazilian Center for
Analysis and Planning, in Sao Paulo, and a member of the Editorial Board of the aca-
demic journals Revista Ideias (humanities) and Dissonancia (critical theory).
Michael J. Thompson is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of
Political Science, William Paterson University. Some of his recent books include The
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xv
Republican Reinvention of Radicalism (Columbia University Press), The Politics of

Inequality (Columbia University Press), The Domestication of Critical Theory (Rowman
& Littlefield), and The Perversion of Subjectivity: Power and Consciousness in Modern
Society (Polity).
Mark Worrell is Associate Professor of Sociology at SUNY Cortland and Associate
Editor of the journal Critical Sociology, and has published widely on the problems of
authoritarianism, antisemitism, terror, war, and global empire.
List of Tables
Table 11.1 Basic comparison of analytic and dialectical forms

of reasoning and their features 245
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: What Is Critical Theory?
Michael J. Thompson
1.1 The Concept of Critique

Whether viewed as a tradition, as a set of questions, or as a series of distinct
thinkers, critical theory has continued to attract attention in academic circles
throughout the post–World War II era. The reasons for this should come as lit-
tle surprise. The members of the Institute of Social Research at the University
of Frankfurt in the years leading up to the victory of Nazism in Germany—
what we generally know as the Frankfurt School—had in view some of the
most compelling problems and questions of modern society. Critical theory is
not, however, simply a subfield within social theory, philosophy, or the social
sciences. It is a distinctive form of theory in that it posits a more comprehen-
sive means to grasp social reality and diagnose social pathologies. It is marked
not by a priori ethical or political values that it seeks to assert in the world, but
by its capacity to grasp the totality of individual and social life as well as the
social processes that constitute them. It is a form of social criticism that con-
tains within it the seeds of judgment, evaluation, and practical, transformative
activity. Critical theory is, then, a radically different form of knowledge from
mainstream theory and social science, one that the chapters contained in this
book will explore and chart.
If we think of what is distinctive about critical theory, we must begin with
the concept of “critique” (Kritik) itself. Critique is a distinctive form of knowl-
edge derived from the insights of German idealism and developed in Marx’s
writings that is opposed to the merely empirical and positivist models of
knowledge. The concept of critique is an essential feature of this tradition as a
whole and of its distinctiveness. For one thing, it means not simply an act of
M.J. Thompson (*)

Department of Political Science, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, 07470, USA
© The Author(s) 2017 1

M.J. Thompson (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_1
2 M.J. THOMPSON
judgment or resistance, but also a specific way of relating to the world, a way
that any subject relates to an object. This is because critique is a means to relate
what is perceived in everyday life with a deeper, more rational knowledge that
world. For Kant, the activity of critique was applied to relating the percep-
tion of objects in the mind (phenomena) and our rational, conceptual grasp of
those objects (noumena). Marx, too, saw critique as the relating of the isolated
phenomena of the material–economic world (commodities) and the various
aspects of the systems of production (those structured by capital) that consti-
tuted them, as well as the community that produced them. And for Freud, a
similar strategy was taken to peer beneath the apparent forms of human behav-
ior and the underlying rational structures of the unconscious that produced
them. All were concerned with the power of reason to unmask what appears to
us and explore the rational structures that grant us rational access to the world.
In this sense, critique is a more comprehensive way of relating subject and
object; it entails the subject’s capacity to grasp an object in its totality, in its
real, actual form. It means, as Hegel had posited in his Phenomenology of Spirit,
the consequent transformation of the subject as a result of this deepened knowl-
edge of the object. The concept of a critical theory of society maintains that
any valid, true form of knowledge about society and its products is one that
is aware not only of the object of consciousness and its various dynamics, but
also of the subjective factors of cognition that determine the knowledge of that
object. A critical theory of society is therefore set with the task of uncovering
the social conditions under which knowledge about itself is articulated, since
the way we comprehend the objective world is related to the ways we conceive
of ourselves. At the same time, it was a form of thinking that is designed not
only to comprehend, but also to transform: its purpose is to change not only
our knowledge of the objective world—of society, of institutions, of culture,
and so on—but simultaneously the nature of the subject in a practical sense.
Today, many different kinds of theory lurk under the banner of critical the-
ory. No longer associated with the theories, the philosophical traditions, and
the political aims of the initial generation of critical theorists, much of what
passes for critical theory today is associated with anything that seems to be
“critical” of culture and society. Hence, strands of thought such as feminism,
deconstruction, and postcolonialism, among others, have been crowded under
the banner of critical theory. But to do this is to commit an error about what
critical theory—indeed, about what critique—actually is. To be sure, much of
this aberrant use of the term stems from the destructive impulse of postmod-
ernism and its project of destroying reason as a privileged position from which
to judge and to understand power, domination, freedom, and human progress
as well as the pseudo-political radicalism of academics alienated from real poli-
tics. Despite what many have surmised, critical theory was always preoccupied
with the normative validity of human progress, by the need to defend the
political and cultural values of the Enlightenment and to expand the sphere
of human emancipation through reasoned, rational consciousness, and activity
(Bronner 2004). For the theorists of the Frankfurt School, reason had been
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS CRITICAL THEORY? 3
corrupted by modernity and degraded by instrumentality toward the ends of

domination.
What was central to critical theory as a form of thought was its ability to see
the inherent relation between thought and action. Truly rational (i.e., critical)
thought would lead to transformation, to new shapes of human activity, since
it “anticipates a release of emancipatory reflection and a transformed social
praxis” (Schroyer 1973: 31). Immanent critique, or the process of understand-
ing the world and its defects and potentialities from within rather than impos-
ing on it from without, therefore constitutes the crucial core of critical theory
(Antonio 1981). This is because defective forms of reasoning lead to the re-
creation and sedimentation of the prevailing, existent reality and to the contin-
ued endorsement by members of that society of its irrational and dominating
relations and forces. The key insight of a critical theory of society is therefore
not meant to impose some set of a priori values and ideals onto the social
world, but to unravel the contradictions that already exist within it; to make
evident an emancipatory insight into the very fabric of what we take as given,
as basic to our social world.
1.2 The Origins of Critical Theory

The political and intellectual origins of critical theory can be found in the after-
math of the Russian Revolution and the movements that occurred through-
out the first decades of the twentieth century. Orthodox Marxism set forth a
rigid scientism that, it believed, could predict an inevitability to the emergence
of revolution and communist social transformation. They viewed Marx’s core
contribution to be that of a scientific understanding of history based on class
struggle, one which conceived of the process of historical change as essentially
mechanistic and systemic. Class society worked according to certain laws—laws
that, once discovered, would predict the inevitable collapse of capitalist society
and the mobilization of the working class toward revolutionary consciousness
and activity. Actual circumstances on the ground, however, showed that this
model of social change was far from accurate. What emerged was a crisis in the-
ory based on the political failures of socialist movements and a need to refor-
mulate the practical–political aspect of working-class movements (Bronner
1994). Lacking was a more nuanced theory of society and human action. In
providing a revised understanding of consciousness, personality, culture, and
civil society, these thinkers would open a pathway toward critical theory by set-
ting the foundations for an alternative view of the subject and society and its
relation to politics and the opposition to capitalism, the administrated society,
and instrumental reason.
Four thinkers can be seen as core figures in a move away from a dogmatic,
orthodox Marxist approach to political consciousness among members of the
working class: Karl Korsch, Georg Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, and Wilhelm
Reich. For each the problem was to revise the theory of the subject as well
as of society in light of the ways both were mediated by one another as well
4 M.J. THOMPSON
as by culture, by psychological forces, and by consciousness itself. Korsch and

Lukács, in particular, saw that there was an essential and irreducibly ethical,
subjective moment, as opposed to the determinism of orthodox Marxist the-
ory, to radical political activity. Korsch, in his groundbreaking book Marxism
and Philosophy (1970), referred to this as the “subjective factor” in Marxism
which he saw as necessary for a truly effective political movement. The subjec-
tive preconditions for revolutionary activity had to be brought about through
a remaking of social–psychological conditions of the working class. What was
needed was the capacity of working-class people to be able to reflect and criti-
cally comprehend the system of which they were a part. To do this, a critique
of ideas, of ideology was needed. Korsch further pointed to the need to under-
stand the concept of critique as that which “includes from the point of view of
the object an empirical investigation … of all its relations and development, and
from the point of view of the subject an account of how the impotent wishes,
intuitions and demands of individual subjects develop into an historically effec-
tive class power leading to ‘revolutionary practice’ (Praxis)” (Korsch 1971: 65,
also cf. Korsch 1967: 32ff.). A return to the “subjective factor” meant that a
truly critical theory of society had to locate the genesis of social change within
the consciousness of the agents of that transformation rather than any kind of
mechanistic or positivist “laws” operating externally to those agents.
For Lukács, the problem was very similar. In his essay “Tactics and Ethics,”
(1972 [1919]), he dealt explicitly with the problem of individual conscience
and ethics. The issue of what constitutes “correct” versus “incorrect” political
action could only be raised once it was grasped that the orthodox determinist
positions were discarded. Rather, for Lukács, “morally correct action is related
fundamentally to the correct perception of the given historico-philosophical
situation” (Lukács 1972 [1919]: 9). This would lead Lukács back to the sub-
ject–object problem of German Idealism in his History and Class Consciousness
(1923), published the same year as Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy. A critical
engagement with the social world was predicated on the capacity of any ratio-
nal agent to be able to grasp dialectically the essential structure of the world
seen as praxiologically and relationally constituted (see Jay 1986; Feenberg
2014). The lack of radical critique and revolutionary activity was due to the
blockage of the rational comprehension by the subject of the object. This was
due to the concept of “reification” (Verdinglichung) a pathology of conscious-
ness which was brought on by the proliferation of the commodity form and
the routinized, rationalized forms of instrumentalized social production which
made capitalist social relations a “second nature.” Human products were now
seen as mere “things,” as manipulable and inert aspects of a dehumanized
reality. As a result of this problem of reification, Lukács reasoned that working-
class consciousness was stunted and the ability for a new form of emancipatory
practice was stalled.
A similar set of questions to that of Korsch and Lukács was taken up by
Gramsci and his analyses of civil society and culture. For Gramsci, the primary
problem to be addressed was the same as that of Korsch and Lukács: given
the exploitive, dominating features of modern capitalism, why was there not
more reaction against the system? Gramsci’s (1971) analysis of this question
led him to confront the problem of how dominant ideas were woven into the
cultural fabric of civil society, the family, the education system, and so on.
This led to the theory of hegemony where the ideas of the bourgeoisie were
ingrained within the fabric of everyday institutions. For Gramsci, the culture
and practices of the dominant powers of any class-based society would neces-
sitate the deployment of particular cultural norms and mindsets that would dull
and inhibit critical consciousness, thereby short-circuiting the radical activity
of the working class. Culture was therefore made into a particularly important
domain of critique (see Aronowitz 2015: 93ff.) since it was there that power
and domination could become woven into the consciousness and everyday
life of subjects. Gramsci therefore adds to the ideas of Korsch and Lukács by
showing how cultural ideas, practices and norms could work against the class
consciousness and political interest and lead individuals to endorse the very
kind of social world they ought to oppose.
Wilhelm Reich also posed the crucial question of why the working class
did not follow what were supposedly their object interests in a socialist society
and instead became reactionary. What had to be explained “is not the fact that
the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes,
but why the majority of those who are hungry don’t steal and why the major-
ity of those who are exploited don’t strike” (Reich 1970: 19). The problem,
according to Reich, was to be found in the theoretical structure of Marxism
itself which was overly materialistic and “failed to take into account the char-
acter structure of the masses and the social effect of mysticism” (Reich 1970:
5). More importantly, Reich pointed to the ways that attitudes and emotions
embedded within the personality structure of the individual play a pivotal role
in how ideology is processed and how their relation to the world was struc-
tured. The crucial problem was that the economic factors of social life were
not the root cause spurring the appeal of fascism. Rather, it was the repressed
nature of the personality that, once combined with the crises in capitalist politi
cal economy, gave rise to the expression of authoritarian impulses. Reich’s the-
oretical effort was to unify the theories of Marx and Freud, and he was the first
to undertake this project. According to this move, to understand the nature of
domination in modern society we had to look to the ways that the repression of
primitive drives and needs (specifically the moral inhibition of the natural sexu-
ality of the child) through the institutions of society—from the family through
the schools and the workplace—posits an authoritarian structure that inhibits
the will to freedom and instead instills a “fear of freedom” and the embrace
of reactionary politics. The working class’ embrace of fascism in Europe was
therefore, for Reich, no surprise.
These four thinkers constitute a decisive break in the direction of Marxist
theory in the early twentieth century, and they set the basic framework for what
would come to be known as critical theory. Their emphasis on the subjective,
psychological dimensions of the individual, the attention paid to the cultural
6 M.J. THOMPSON
and institutional lifeworld that shaped consciousness, and the insistence that a
new form of consciousness able to break the shackles of ideology acquired dur-
ing the pulses of everyday life, were all crucial building blocks for what would
become known and self-described as critical theory. A critique of culture, a cri-
tique of the legitimating institutions, the logics of modern technological forms
of life, communication and production, no less than the new forms of state
and legal institutions and the structure and dynamics of the family and mod-
ern personality—all were now to become the domain of research for the criti-
cal theorists. These thinkers would combine the theoretical insights of Marx,
Weber, Freud, Nietzsche, and Lukács in order to reveal the highly nuanced
and complex ways that modern society was creating and recreating a system of
domination, of unfreedom, and compliant subjects to the existent reality. What
they saw happening was the disappearance of the great motivating political
and cultural forces that had served to bolster the radical political movements
of their time, but also to presage their failures. The next generation of thinkers
would integrate these various insights into a coherent framework and research
paradigm, and bring its insights to bear on the greatest transformations and
crises of the twentieth century.
1.3 The Theories of the Frankfurt School

By the time Max Horkheimer took the helm of the Institut für Sozialforschung
(Institute of Social Research) in Frankfurt, the above theoretical problems were
becoming the foundation for a new form of social inquiry into the structures
and dynamics of modern society. Although initially led by Carl Grünberg, a
former teacher of many Austro-Marxists such as Otto Bauer, Karl Renner, and
Rudolf Hilferding, it was Max Horkheimer, the Institute’s most influential
director, who would set the stage for its bold research program after Grünberg’s
stroke in 1929. For Horkheimer, “critical theory” was to be counterposed to
“traditional theory” in that the latter was concerned only with some descrip-
tive analysis of a problem or phenomenon, whereas a critical theory of soci-
ety sought explanation as well as the normative evaluation of what made the
object of investigation problematic (i.e., a synthesis of “facts” and “values”),
not to mention that it would also have to identify the agents responsible for
its transformation (Horkheimer 1972; cf. Held 1980: 175ff; Abromeit 2013).
With this notion of critical theory, Horkheimer was able to establish a new
and compelling framework for social research. Now, social problems examined
with the explanatory methods of the social sciences could be dialectically trans-
formed by the evaluative categories of moral judgment and with an eye toward
the practical–transformative activity needed for its resolution. But in addition,
the different members of the Institute—T.W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Friedrich
Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, among others—would rework many of the basic
concepts of the social sciences and begin asking fundamentally new questions
about the structure of late industrial societies, popular culture, the personality
structure of the members of mass society, as well as aesthetics and the nature
of modern social power (Kellner 1989). For all of the members of the insti-
tute, a synthesis of social theory, critical philosophy, and psychoanalysis was the
standpoint to begin the analysis of the totality of modernity (cf. Wellmer 1971;
Howard 1977; Bronner 1994).
Marx’s critique of political economy—with the basic account of the impera-
tives of capital, exploitation, commodity fetishism, alienation, and so on—was
taken as basic to the structural and material foundations of modernity. Thinkers
such as Adorno and Marcuse, in particular, would see the problem of com-
modity fetishism and the predominance of exchange value over use value as
critical tools to understand the dehumanization of culture. But these Marxian
insights, for the most part, were to be complementary to the theoretical ideas
of Freud and Weber. As Reich had shown, Freud’s theory of the unconscious,
his psychoanalytic model of the ego was essential to understand the irratio-
nal forces that plagued political and critical consciousness. For Weber (1972),
the concern was the expansion of the rationalization of society, particularly
in terms of the rise in bureaucratic and administrative forms of institutional
power. With this came the spread of rational or legitimate forms of author-
ity and domination (Herrschaft) that was beginning to constitute a new form
of mass society, one based on an implicit form of domination and control,
rationalized by new forms of administrative power and commodified forms of
culture. Critical theorists saw this as an essential aspect to the structural impera-
tives of capitalist society (Dahms 2002) since it was now clear that capitalism
was becoming more than a system of production, but also—and in many ways,
more importantly—a normative force, securing forms of legitimacy and accep-
tance among the broader public.
The basic thesis that began to arise from these ideas was that an emancipa-
tory interest was being eroded by these new institutional and cultural forces.
This was a problem of consciousness, of ideology itself (Tar 1985). The basic
philosophical and methodological problem was therefore to be stated as a
problem of Ideologiekritik, or the critique of the cognitive forms of thought
processes that produced a false form of knowledge or conception of reality.
The distinction in German Idealism between “understanding” (Verstand) on
the one hand and “rationality” (Vernunft) on the other was a central starting
point. The former represented the insufficient forms of reasoning that could
only give the subject an empirical, thin conception of the object. It was akin
to a knowledge of the surface of things, but it was deemed by thinkers such
as Hegel as inadequate and defective. Rationality, on the other hand, was a
deeper, comprehensive conceptualization of the object of knowledge. It was
able to grasp the whole, the totality of the object and its dynamics and pro-
cesses. As Hegel had demonstrated in the Phenomenology of Spirit, conscious-
ness and reason itself had to be seen to move through different defective stages
until it was able to achieve “absolute knowledge,” or that knowledge that no
longer required any external foundation for what it could account for ratio-
nally. This form of knowledge granted access to the essence of things rather
than to their appearance. Marx, too, had made much of the need to penetrate
8 M.J. THOMPSON
beyond the appearance (Schein) of things and grasp their essential, inner pro-
cesses. Ideology, in this sense, was a false knowledge about the world rather
than one that captured its true, essential nature.
For critical theorists, this became one of the primary philosophical and
methodological aspirations of a critical theory of society. Shattering ideological
thinking meant overcoming the reificatory aspects of consciousness brought
on by administrative rationality and the penetration of the commodity form
and exchange value into all aspects of mass society. In his One-Dimensional
Man (1964), Herbert Marcuse studied the various ways that a new form of
consciousness and reasoning was colonizing mass society. One-dimensionality,
as Marcuse called it, was the result of the spread of technologized forms of
thinking that emanated from the new forms of capitalist production which was
able “to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social control
and social cohesion” (Marcuse 1964: xv). The critique of consciousness was
to be understood as critical of the social formations that shaped it since the
self-understanding of individuals was being affected and distorted by defective
social relations and structures. The social relations and structures may be effi-
cient in terms of productivity and social stability, but they also caused human
pathologies, stunted a true expression of human development and freedom,
and were therefore in contradiction with any conception of a genuinely ratio-
nal society. The key element of critique was therefore to be found in the ways
that the normative concepts such as freedom were being collapsed into the
very ideological structures of the techno-industrial system. Genuine critique,
an authentic grasp of human freedom, was only possible once the narrow forms
of self-reflection and self-constitution of technically efficient administrative–
capitalist society were overcome.
But these problems were only deepened when looked at in conjunction with
the psychological dimensions of the self in mass society. The rise of Nazism,
Stalinism, and anti-Semitism more generally gave rise to a research program
that sought to uncover the dynamics of authority in the modern personality
(see Abromeit 2014). Early on in his “Authority and the Family,” Horkheimer
(1971) was able to point to the ways that the modern, bourgeois family acted as
a mechanism for routinizing authority into the developing ego. Erich Fromm’s
(1984) important work on the class consciousness of the German working
class during the Weimar period, initially published in 1929, showed the extent
to which the subjective ideas of the working class were divorced from their
objective interests. Workers were more likely to accept and see as legitimate the
norms of their society than to take a critical standpoint toward it. Much later,
in his Escape from Freedom (1941) Fromm, who had psychoanalytically trained
with a Reichian group, demonstrated how forms of authority, conformity, and
acquiescence to the status quo were expressions of an ego weakened by the
proliferation of social relations and processes structured by modern capitalist
society. Social forces shaped the self, formed the ego in specific ways such that
there was an attraction to authority and submission and a decided move away
from the impulse toward freedom.
Adorno and his colleagues were ultimately able to provide a highly nuanced
account of the structure and dynamics of authoritarianism in their study The
Authoritarian Personality (1950). For Adorno and his group, the basic explana-
tion for the emergence of authoritarian and antidemocratic attitudes and values
was the repressive nature of authoritarian parenting which fostered attitudes of
intolerance. Individuals were shaped by power and authority and reproduced
it. The roots of anti-Semitism and other forms of authoritarian attitudes were
rooted in the dialectical interplay between psychological factors and social fac-
tors. Further studies would deepen and confirm this basic hypothesis, thereby
making the study of the personality and authoritarian attitudes and their root-
edness in the social conditions of the personality and its development a central
area of critical theory. Reworking the theories of Freud vis-à-vis Marx remained
a theme for other critical theorists. Fromm would continue to discuss the ways
that capitalist society mutilated human drives and created pathological social
relations and individuals (Fromm 1955). Even further, Marcuse’s Eros and
Civilization (1955) would posit the thesis of “surplus repression” which was a
kind of social repression of nonalienated labor within the capitalist social order
that prevented a society of free, creative labor and, consequently, free individu-
als, from taking shape.
For some members of the Frankfurt School, however, it was not only the
rise of fascism before World War II and the rationalization of capitalist soci-
ety in its aftermath that was the root of the problems of modernity, but the
reality of the Holocaust and the increasingly destructive powers of technol-
ogy and the spread of administrative rationality effected a turn toward the
powers and effects of modern reason. For Adorno and Horkheimer (1972)
this meant that the nature of modern forms of rationality had to be investi-
gated as causes of the pathologies of modernity. The spread of instrumental
reason was itself rooted in material forms of production and administration.
Now the search for critical rationality became ever-more circumscribed by
subjectivity. The collapse of working-class movements, the reconciliation of
ever more groups and individuals to the society and culture of administrative–
capitalist society, and the increasingly social nature of individual pathologies,
all pointed to a dilemma that many of the critical theorists were unable to
solve: how were modern individuals to cultivate a critical mentality in an age of
conformity and reification?
The role of aesthetics was of importance here. In classical German phi-
losophy, art was typically seen as a distinct form of cognition. Critical theo-
rists essentially shared the conviction, despite whatever differences they had
over what kind of aesthetic they championed, that artworks could provide the
subject with a sphere of experience that could explode the context of reified
existence. Marcuse (1978) argued that art was a force to break through the
established reality and to disrupt the stable ideological shape of the existing
world; Lukács (1970) maintained that only realism would be able to provide
a valid, politically relevant aesthetic that could disclose the true mechanisms
of capitalist society for the reader; Ernst Bloch (1988) sought to show how
10 M.J. THOMPSON
utopia gave shape to an “anticipatory illumination” that could prefigure the

experience of a liberated world beyond the present; and Adorno saw the high
modernism of Arnold Schoenberg and Celan as a kind of “force field” against
the reifying tendencies of an instrumentalized, commodified world, express-
ing the suffering, contradictory nature of modernity. The critique of jazz and
popular culture that Adorno unleashed in his writings was therefore meant
not as an attack on what was “popular” but rather on what was commodi-
fied, mass-produced experience that, in turn, dulled the subject’s aesthetic
reception to the liberatory impulses that art otherwise had the capacity to
communicate.
The subject’s collapse into the prevailing reality therefore became an increas-
ingly distinct and important problem in late critical theory. Adorno’s Negative
Dialectics (1973) attempted an answer to this question by arguing that only by
seeing how modernity represents for us not an affirmative reconciliation of the
subject and object, but rather, a negative one where the world is now governed
by a kind of rationality that destroys difference and forces identity onto the
subject. Now, this kind of reason was compelling the subject into conformity
with the kind of one-dimensionality that Marcuse had explored earlier—what
was needed, Adorno maintained, was a negative dialectic that would refuse,
indeed, would negate rather than affirm the subject’s relation with the prevail-
ing social reality. But in this way, as in his Aesthetic Theory (1998), Adorno
makes a move back to the subject and the need for the subject to resist the
reificatory forms of rationalization that have now come to pervade modern
society. Critical theory had morphed by the late 1960s from a critical research
program with practical political intent, to a philosophical defense of the subject
against the reifying experiences of the totally administered society. As a result,
the practical-political capacity of critical theory was left wanting.
1.4 The Communicative–Pragmatic Turn

Responding to this crisis in critical theory, Jürgen Habermas proposed in
Knowledge and Human Interests (1971) a different path for critical theory.
For Habermas, the cynical view of rationality and the Enlightenment proj-
ect taken by Adorno and Horkheimer—not to mention postmodernism as
well—was mistaken. Adorno and Horkheimer had merely collapsed reason
with instrumental rationality (Habermas 1987: 106ff.). Reason had to be
reconceptualized from an intersubjective paradigm rather than the paradigm of
subject-centered reason and the philosophy of consciousness (Habermas 1987:
294ff.) if its emancipatory and critical impulses were to be realized. Seeking to
maintain the distinctive view of a critical theory that is immanent within social
practices as well as saving rationality from the grasp of instrumental reason,
Habermas pointed to the ways that intersubjective, communicative practices
within groups were a framework for a renewal of critical theory. The differ-
ence between the two was summarized as follows: “The rigorously empirical
sciences are subject to the transcendental conditions of instrumental action,
while the hermeneutic sciences proceed on the level of communicative action”

(Habermas 1971: 191). Still adhering to the need for an immanent form of
rationality that was able to achieve a normative and practical–critical standpoint
on society, Habermas opened a new pathway in critical theory by positing com-
munication as a new form of social action derived from American pragmatism
(e.g., Peirce, Mead and Dewey) and the work pioneered by Karl-Otto Apel
(1980).
Communicative reason was now turned into a category of social action,
complimenting the categories laid out by Weber, and particularly seen as a
means to oppose the instrumental rationality that the Frankfurt School theo-
rists had seen as a major cause of modern pathologies. With theory of com-
municative action, Habermas would make a turn away from Marx and move
toward a Kantian–pragmatist model of reason and social action that shaped a
democratic conception of reason that retained its critical import. The structure
of language and communication, seen as a series of speech acts, was now seen as
the vehicle for coming to a rational form of solidarity through mutual consen-
sus (Habermas 1984). The capacity to justify, to open assertions, norms, and
institutions to communicative, justificatory criticism was now the theoretical
framework for a new theory of democracy with critical–theoretical intentions
(cf. Dallmayr 1984: 192ff.). What Habermas would come to term “discourse
ethics” was not only to be understood as a critique of existing practices, but
also a capacity to produce a new and more democratically rooted ethical and
political consciousness and norms through the ability of social agents to achieve
mutual agreement through discourse.
In this new turn in critical theory, the emphasis on language and com-
munication has led to the vision of a critical public sphere that can engender
the kind of justificatory and multi-perspectival intersubjective relations that
would provide a more democratic form of action and practice (Bohman 1996,
1999). Habermas’ ideas would transform critical theory moving it away from
its roots in the Marxian problems of the early-twentieth century and move it
back toward Idealist principles and philosophical concepts. In his defense of
reason as a normative, critical, and emancipatory force, Habermas was able
to defend the Enlightenment project against its detractors and to link critical
theory to concrete political questions, in particular to theories of the state and
law (Habermas 1996, 1998). Habermas therefore succeeded in putting the
Enlightenment project back in line with critical theory as well as establish a link
between the German philosophical traditions that framed critical theory and
the pragmatist insights from the American philosophical tradition.
But the influence of pragmatism did not stop with the emergence of
Habermas’ communicative and discursive turn. Axel Honneth’s theory of rec-
ognition has also built off of a return to Idealism mediated through the theo-
ries of Mead and Dewey. For Honneth, critical theory must move on from the
Marxian foundations upon which the first generation of theorists had based
their theories of power and domination and instead embrace the forms of social
action independent of economic logics (Honneth 1995a). Where Habermas
12 M.J. THOMPSON
returns to Kant to establish a rationalist conception of critical reason and ethics

(cf. Bernstein 2010: 168ff.), Honneth reconstructs the theory of recognition
through a reading of Hegel mediated by Mead. For Honneth, the expansion
and accumulation of rights-claims in the context of modernity “had gradu-
ally increased, because, under pressure from struggles for recognition, ever-
new prerequisites for participation in rational will-formation have to be taken
into consideration” (Honneth 1995b: 114–115). For Honneth, this serves as
the basis for a new theory of democratic practice and norms (Honneth 2011)
that can link critical theory with concrete, objective practices and institutions.
These views have not gone without significant critique (Fraser 1995; Zurn
2005; Borman 2009; Jütten 2015; Thompson 2016), but there is little ques-
tion that the concern with recognition succeeds in adding a crucial ethical and
political component to the tradition of critical theory.
1.5 Why Critical Theory Persists and the Purpose

of this Book
The evolution of ideas throughout the tradition of critical theory should not be
seen as a linear one. Indeed, the persistence of critical theory and its expansion
within intellectual circles in recent years can be explained by its own explana-
tory efficacy. The mainstreaming of the social sciences and philosophy no less
than the increasing power of capital and the contradictions stemming from its
economic and social dynamics has meant a return to many of the themes that
motivated the first generation of critical theorists. Critical theory always sought
to transcend disciplinary boundaries, to move toward a dialectical form of rea-
soning against purely analytical forms, and to maintain the centrality of the
ways that critical reason would be capable of liberating actual political practice.
Even though the realities of fascism and world war do not occupy the concerns
of a new generation of students, they still gravitate toward critical theory for its
power to, as Marx once wrote, make the petrified relations of capitalist culture
dance.
With this basic outline of the concept and tradition of critical theory, the
reader can perhaps explore with more clarity the chapters that follow. Each is
meant to grant the reader access to the tradition and the core concepts and
approaches of critical theory. There is no way to survey exhaustively every
thinker and every aspect of the tradition of critical theory. What has been
attempted here is not only a survey of critical theory as a concept, but also
to delineate the major impulses of the traditions, irrespective of current aca-
demic fads and fashions. The purpose of this handbook is therefore not only
to guide the reader through the most essential aspects of critical theory and its
major areas of concern. It also seeks to offer new perspectives on a still vibrant,
very much active domain of research and method of thinking about the world.
This handbook is therefore put forward to survey many of the core themes,
ideas, thinkers, and epistemological concerns that concern critical theory as
a structure of thought. It does this in order to keep alive many of the basic
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Kilborne, led to the careful investigation of the life-history of that
creature, and this was undertaken by Curtice.[351]
The female Ticks laid eggs a few days after dropping off the cattle,
egg-laying lasting a week or more. The eggs took from three to five
weeks to hatch, and the larvae attached themselves to cattle, on
which they remained a fortnight, becoming mature and fertilised
before they again sought the ground. The whole cycle occupied a
time varying from six to ten weeks, a period apparently much
exceeded by some members of the family.
Lounsbury[352] has recently made out the life-history of the South
African “Bont” tick, Amblyomma hebraeum.
The eggs are deposited in the soil, ten to twenty thousand eggs in
all being laid by one female. The larvae climb neighbouring plants
and seize passing animals. After the third day of attachment they
begin to distend, and they generally fall off, fully distended, on the
sixth day, immediately seeking a place of concealment, where they
become torpid. Under natural conditions the nymph does not
emerge for at least eleven weeks, and then it behaves in the same way
as the larva, again attaching itself to an animal for six days. A new
time of torpidity and concealment ensues, again of at least eleven
weeks’ duration, when the final moult takes place and the mature
tick emerges. The males at once attach themselves to animals, but
the females hesitate to fix themselves, except close by a male. For
four days after fixation the male appears to exercise no attraction for
the female, but after that period he shows great excitement at her
approach. She, however, does all the courting, the male remaining
fixed in the skin of the host. After pairing, the female distends
greatly, attaining her maximum size (nearly one inch in length) in
about a week, when she lets go and descends to the earth to lay eggs.
If unmated, she detaches herself within a week, and seeks another
host. Oviposition lasts from three to nine weeks, and the
development of the egg from eleven weeks to six months. At least a
year is occupied in the whole cycle. These ticks, and many others,
communicate disease[353] by inoculation, conveying it from one
animal to another.
No poison-glands have been demonstrated in the Acari, the
function of the salivary glands of the Ticks being probably to prevent
the coagulation of the blood of their victims.
It is an important point in the mode of life of the Ticks that they
can live for a long time without food. Mégnin[354] states that he kept
an Argas alive for four years, entirely without nutriment.
In the Tetranychinae (see p. 472), glands apparently homologous
with the salivary glands of the Ticks have taken on the function of
spinning organs. According to Donnadieu,[355] these glands, which
resemble bunches of grapes, and are possessed by both sexes, open
into the buccal cavity at the base of the chelicerae. The gummy fluid
exudes from the mouth, and is combed into threads by the pedipalps.
The legs of these mites are furnished terminally with curious hairs
ending in a round knob, which are supposed to have some relation to
their spinning habits.
The males are the busiest spinners, the time of the females being
largely occupied in laying eggs among the excessively fine threads of
silk with which the Mites cover the under surface of leaves. In the
Eriophyidae (see p. 464) corresponding glands are thought to furnish
an irritant fluid which causes abnormal growths or galls upon
vegetable tissues.
External Structure.—It is often stated, but erroneously, that
there is no distinction between cephalothorax and abdomen in the
Mites. Certainly no such division can be made out in the
Hydrachnidae (see p. 472) or in some other forms, but in the
majority of Acari the cephalothorax is clearly marked off by a
transverse groove or suture. In some cases the anterior portion of the
cephalothorax is movably articulated with the rest, and forms a sort
of false head called a “capitulum.” In most Mites the chitinous
integument is soft and non-resistant, but it is otherwise with the
Oribatidae or “Beetle-mites” (see p. 467), which are nearly all
covered by an extremely hard and coriaceous armature.
Eyes are sometimes absent, sometimes present in varying
numbers. They seem here to be of remarkably little systematic
importance, as otherwise closely allied species may be either eyed or
eyeless.
Normally Mites possess the usual Arachnid appendages,
chelicerae, pedipalpi, and four pairs of ambulatory legs. The anterior
appendages are, however, subject to a very great degree of
modification, while in one Family, the Eriophyidae (Phytoptidae),
the legs are apparently reduced to two pairs.
The chelicerae are sometimes chelate, in which case they are two-
jointed, the distal joint or movable finger being always articulated
below the immovable finger. Sometimes they terminate in a single
claw or blade, the movable joint being obsolete. In the Ticks they
exist as two long styles or piercing weapons, serrate on the outer
edge.
The pedipalpi vary very much in structure, according to the habits
of the particular form to which they belong. In the Sarcoptidae (see
p. 466) they are hardly recognisable owing to the extent to which
they have coalesced with the maxillary plate. In many of the free-
living forms they are leg-like feeling organs, but in others they are
raptorial, being not precisely chelate, but terminating in a “finger-
and-thumb” arrangement which is of use in holding prey. The
extreme development of the raptorial palp is found in Cheyletus (see
p. 473), in which the whole appendage is remarkably thick and
strong, and the “finger” is a powerful chitinous claw, while the
“thumb” is replaced by movable pectinated spines of chitin. The
Water-mites have a palpus adapted for anchoring themselves to
water-weeds, the last joint being articulated terminally with the
penultimate joint, and bending down upon it. Finally, in the
“Snouted mites” (Bdellidae, see p. 471) the palpi are tactile or
antenniform, often strongly recalling the antennae of weevils.
The maxillary plates which arise from the basal joints of the
pedipalps are always more or less fused, in the Mites, to form a single
median transverse plate, constituting the lower lip or “labium” of
some authors. In some of the Oribatidae the fusion of the maxillae is
only complete at the base, and the free points are still of some use as
masticating organs. In those free living Mites which have undergone
no great modification of the mouth-parts two other portions can be
distinguished, the upper lip or “epipharynx,” and the “lingua,” which
forms the floor of the mouth, and is for the most part concealed by
the maxillary plate.
The legs are usually six- or seven-jointed, and are subject to great
variation, especially as regards the tarsus or terminal joint. This may
bear claws (1–3) or sucking disks, or a combination of the two, or
may simply take the form of a long bristle or hair.
The Cheese-mite has a claw surrounded by a sucker—like Captain
Cuttle’s hook within his sleeve. The claws of those species which are
parasitic on the hairs of animals are sometimes most remarkably
modified.
Internal Structure.—The
minute size of most Mites has
rendered research upon their
internal structure a matter of
great difficulty, and there are still
many obscurities to be removed.
Those forms which have been
subjected to examination present
a tolerable uniformity in the
structure of the principal organs,
but the brief description here
given will not, of course, apply to
aberrant groups like the
Vermiformia. A marked
concentration is noticeable
throughout the Order, and is best
exemplified by the nervous Fig. 239.—Diagram of the viscera of an
Oribatid Mite, greatly enlarged. C, C,
system. Lateral caeca of stomach; g, cerebral
The mouth leads into a sucking ganglion; od, od, oviducts; oe,
pharynx, which narrows to form oesophagus; pr.g, pro-ventricular
the oesophagus. This passes gland; ps, pseudo-stigmatic organ; st,
through the nerve-mass in the stomach;Michael.)
tr, tr, tracheae. (Partly after
usual Arachnid fashion, and
widens to form the ventriculus or
stomach. The oesophagus varies considerably in width in the various
groups, being very narrow in those Mites which merely suck blood,
but wider in vegetable-feeders like the Oribatidae.
The stomach is always provided with caeca, but these are not
nearly so numerous as in some other Orders of Arachnida. There are
always two large caeca directed backwards, and there may be others.
They are most numerous in the Gamasidae (see p. 470), which
sometimes possess eight, some being prolonged into the coxae of the
legs, as in Spiders. At the sides of the anterior part of the stomach
there are usually two glandular bodies, the pro-ventricular glands. In
those Mites in which the alimentary canal is most differentiated (e.g.
Oribatidae) three parts are distinguishable behind the stomach, a
small intestine, a colon, and a rectum, but in most groups the small
intestine is practically absent. The Malpighian tubes, very variable in
length, enter at the constriction between colon and rectum.
In some of the Trombidiidae there appears to be a doubt as to the
existence of a hind-gut at all. A body having the appearance of the
hind-gut, and occupying its usual position, is found to contain, not
faecal matter, but a white excretory substance, and all efforts to
discover any passage into it from the stomach have been
unsuccessful. Both Croneberg[356] and Henking[357] came to the
conclusion that the stomach ended blindly, and that the apparent
hind-gut was an excretory organ. Michael,[358] in his research upon a
Water-mite, Thyas petrophilus, met with precisely the same
difficulty, and was led to the belief that what was originally hind-gut
had become principally or entirely an excretory organ.
The nervous system chiefly consists of a central ganglionic mass,
usually transversely oval, and presenting little or no indication of the
parts which have coalesced in its formation. Nerves proceed from it
in a radiate manner, but no double nerve-cord passes towards the
posterior end of the body. As above stated, it is perforated by the
oesophagus.
The vascular system is little understood. In 1876 Kramer[359] wrote
that he was able to perceive an actively pulsating heart in the
posterior third of the abdomen in specimens of Gamasus which had
recently moulted, and were therefore moderately transparent. No
other investigator has been equally fortunate, though many capable
workers have sought diligently for any trace of a dorsal vessel in
various Acarine groups.
It would appear that the blood-flow in most Mites is lacunar and
indefinite, aided incidentally by the movements of the muscles, and
perhaps by a certain rhythmic motion of the alimentary canal, which
has been observed to be most marked during the more quiescent
stages of the life-history.
The internal reproductive organs have the ringed arrangement
generally observed in the Arachnida. The two testes, which are
sometimes bi-lobed, are connected by a median structure which may
serve as a vesicula seminalis, and there are two vasa deferentia which
proceed to the intromittent organ, which is sometimes situated quite
in the anterior part of the ventral surface, but at others towards its
centre. The male Mite is often provided with a pair of suckers
towards the posterior end of the abdomen, and sometimes accessory
clasping organs are present.
In some Mites there is no intromittent organ, and Michael[360] has
described some remarkable cases in which the chelicerae are used in
the fertilisation of the female, a spermatophore, or bag containing
spermatozoa, being removed by them from the male opening and
deposited in that of the female. The most remarkable instance is that
of Gamasus terribilis, the movable joint of whose chelicera is
perforated by a foramen through which the spermatophore is, so to
speak, blown and carried as a bi-lobed bag, united by the narrow
stalk which passes through the foramen, to the female aperture.
The ovaries are fused in the middle line, and connected by
oviducts with the tube (vagina or uterus) which passes to the
exterior. There is often an ovipositor.
Professor Gené of Turin[361] described, in 1844, some remarkable
phenomena in connection with the reproduction of Ticks. The male
Ixodes introduced his rostrum into the female aperture, two small
white fusiform bodies emerging right and left from the labium at the
moment of introduction. On retraction they had disappeared. When
the female laid eggs, a bi-lobed vesicle was protruded from beneath
the anterior border of the scutum and grasped the egg delivered to it
by the ovipositor, appearing to manipulate it for some minutes. Then
the vesicle was withdrawn, and the egg was left on the rostrum, and
deposited by it in front of the animal. When the vesicle was
punctured, and so rendered useless, the unmanipulated eggs quickly
shrivelled and dried up.
Lounsbury[362] has recently confirmed Professor Gené’s
observation as to oviposition in the case of a South African Tick,
Amblyomma hebraeum.
The respiratory organs, if present, are always in the form of
tracheae. These are usually long and convoluted, but not branching.
The spiral structure is difficult to make out in these animals, and in
the Oribatidae at least, instead of the external sheath being fortified
with a spiral filament of chitin, there is a very delicate enveloping
membrane with an apparently unbroken chitinous lining, which can,
however, by suitable treatment, be resolved into a ribbon-like spiral
band.[363] The position of the stigmata is very variable, and is utilised
to indicate the main groups into which the Mites have been divided.
The Oribatidae possess two curious cephalothoracic organs which
were for a long time considered respiratory. These are in the form of
two bodies, like modified hairs, which protrude from sockets on the
dorsal surface of the cephalothoracic shield. Michael[364] has shown
that these have no connection with the tracheae, and he regards
them as sensory organs—possibly olfactory. They are generally
referred to as the “pseudo-stigmatic” organs.
In the Oribatidae, at all events, well-developed coxal glands are
present. In many Mites, especially the Ixodoidea or Ticks, the
salivary glands are large and conspicuous.
Metamorphosis.—All Mites undergo a metamorphosis, varying
in completeness in the different groups. Altogether six stages can be
recognised, though they are seldom or never all exhibited in the
development of a single species. These are ovum, deutovum, larva,
nymph, hypopial stage, and imago.
The Ovum.—All Mites lay eggs. It is frequently stated that the
Oribatidae are viviparous exceptions, but though some of them are
perhaps ovoviviparous, most deposit eggs like the rest of the Order.
A phenomenon which has probably helped to foster this erroneous
view is the occasional emergence from the dead body of the mother
of fully-formed larvae. Towards winter it is not unusual for the
mother to die at a time when her abdomen contains a few ripe eggs,
and these are able to complete their development internally.
The Deutovum.[365]—In a few cases (Atax, Damaeus) a stage has
been observed in which the outer envelope of the egg becomes brown
and hard, and splits longitudinally, so as to allow the thin inner
membrane to become visible through the fissure. More room is thus
obtained for the developing larva, which is, moreover, protected,
over most of its surface, by a hard shell. The deutovum stage may
occur either within the body of the mother, or after the egg has been
laid.
The Larva.—Omitting, for the moment, the very aberrant
Vermiformia (see p. 464), it is the almost universal rule for the egg to
hatch out as a hexapod larva. The larvae of the genus Pteroptus are
said to be eight-legged. Winkler has stated that the early embryo of
Gamasus possesses eight legs, of which the last pair subsequently
atrophy, but this observation requires confirmation.
The Nymph.—The nymph-stage commences on the acquisition of
eight legs, and lasts until the final ecdysis which produces the imago.
This is the most important period of Acarine life, and is divided into
a prolonged active period, during which the animal feeds and grows,
and an inert period, sometimes prolonged, but at others very short,
and differing little from the quiescence observable at an ordinary
moult, during which the imago is elaborated. In many species the
nymph is strikingly different from the imago; in others there is a
close resemblance between them. It would appear, from the cases
which have been most thoroughly investigated, that the imago is not
developed, part for part, from the nymph, but that there is an
“histolysis” and “histogenesis” similar to that which occurs among
certain insects (see vol. v. p. 165). There may be more than one
nymphal stage.
The hypopial stage occurs in the Tyroglyphinae, the “Cheese-
mite” sub-family. Here some of the young nymphs assume an
entirely different form, so different that it was for a long time
considered to constitute a separate genus, and was named Hypopus.
The animal acquires a hard dorsal covering. The mouth-parts are in
the form of a flat blade with two terminal bristles, but with no
discernible orifice. The legs are single-clawed, and all more or less
directed forward, and they are articulated near the middle line of the
ventral surface. Suckers are always present under the hind part of the
abdomen.
It appears that these remarkably modified nymphs are entrusted
with the wider distribution of the species, and that they are
analogous to the winged individuals which occur in the
parthenogenetic generations of the Aphidae. The ordinary
Tyroglyphus is soft-bodied, and requires a moist environment, and
exposure to the sun or prolonged passage through the air would be
fatal to it. The hypopial form is much more independent of external
conditions, and its habit is to attach itself by its suckers to various
insects, and by this means to seek a new locality, when it resumes the
ordinary nymph-form and proceeds with its development.
Classification.—There is no generally accepted classification of
the Acarina, though several eminent Arachnologists have attempted
of late years to reduce the group to order. Widely different views are
held concerning the affinities of certain groups, and there is no
agreement as to the value to be accorded to the characters which all
recognise. Thus Canestrini[366] allows thirty-four families, while
according to Trouessart[367] there are only ten.
Trouessart’s scheme of classification is in the main followed in the
present chapter.
Sub-Order 1. Vermiformia.
This Sub-order includes the lowest and most aberrant forms of the
Mites. They are entirely parasitic, and of very small size. The
abdomen is much elongated, and is transversely striated. There are
two families, Eriophyidae[368] (Phytoptidae) and Demodicidae.
Fam. 1. Eriophyidae (Phytoptidae).—These are the so-called
Gall-mites. The curious excrescences and abnormal growths which
occur on the leaves and buds of plants are familiar to every one.
Various creatures are responsible for these deformities, many being
the work of insects, especially the Cynipidae among the
Hymenoptera, and the Cecidomyiidae among the Diptera. Others,
again, are due to Eriophyid Mites.
Though the galls originated by Mites are often outwardly
extremely similar to those of insect origin, they can be at once
distinguished on close examination. Mite-galls contain a single
chamber, communicating with the exterior by a pore, usually
guarded with hairs, and the Mites live gregariously within it,
apparently feeding upon the hairs which grow abundantly on its
inner surface. In Insect-galls each insect larva lives in a separate
closed chamber.
The Eriophyidae are unique
among Mites in possessing only
two pairs of legs, situated quite at
the anterior part of the body. The
mouth-parts are very simple.
There are three genera,
Eriophyes (Phyptoptus) with
about one hundred and fifty
known species, Monochetus with
a single species, and Phyllocoptes
with about fifty species.
Among the best known
examples are Eriophyes tiliae,
which produces the “nail-galls”
on lime-leaves, and E. ribis, the
“black-currant Gall-mite,” which
feeds between the folded leaves of
the leaf-buds, and gives rise to
swelling and distortion.
Fam. 2. Demodicidae.—The
single genus Demodex which
constitutes this family consists of
a few species of microscopic
Fig. 240.—Vermiform Mites, highly
magnified. A, Demodex folliculorum; Mites which inhabit the hair-
B, Eriophyes (Phyptoptus) ribis. follicles of mammals, and are the
cause of what is known as
“follicular mange,” some other
forms of mange being due to members of the succeeding family.
Demodex possesses eight short, three-jointed legs, each terminated
by two claws. The abdomen is much produced, and is transversely
striated. About ten species have been described, but of these five are
probably varieties of D. folliculorum (Fig. 240, A), which infests
Man.
Sub-Order 2. Astigmata.
The Astigmata are Mites of more or less globular form, with
chelate chelicerae and five-jointed legs. All members of the group are
eyeless. Their habits are very various, some feeding on vegetable
matter and others on carrion, while a large number are parasitic on
animals. Tracheae are absent. There is only one family.
Fam. 1. Sarcoptidae.—No tracheae or stigmata. Apical rostrum.
Oviparous or ovoviviparous. The seventy genera and 530 odd species
of this family are divided into a number of sub-families, of which the
principal are the Sarcoptinae, the Analgesinae, and the
Tyroglyphinae.
(i.) The Sarcoptinae are the so-called “Itch-mites.” They are
minute animals, with bodies transversely wrinkled and legs
terminating in suckers or bristles. The genus Sarcoptes, which
includes about fifteen species, lives in tunnels which it burrows in
the skin of mammals.
(ii.) The Analgesinae are the “Birds’-feather Mites.” The principal
genera are Pterolichus (120 species), Pteronyssus (33 species),
Analges (23 species), Megninia (42 species), and Alloptes (33
species).
(iii.) The Tyroglyphinae[369] have received the popular name of
“Cheese-mites,” from the best known example of the group. They are
smooth-bodied, soft-skinned white Mites, with legs usually
terminating in a single claw, sometimes accompanied by a sucker.
They are for the most part carrion-feeders, living upon decaying
animal or vegetable matter, but a few are parasitic on mammals,
insects, and worms.
There are sixteen genera, including about fifty species.
Tyroglyphus siro and T. longior are common Cheese-mites. Other
species live in decaying vegetables and food-stuffs. Some of the
genus Glycyphagus (G. palmifer, G. plumiger) are very remarkable
for the palmate or plumose hairs which decorate their bodies. The
remarkable hypopial stage in the development of Tyroglyphus has
been mentioned on p. 463. The Tyroglyphinae are the lowest of the
free-living Acarine forms.
Fig. 241.—A, Leg of a fowl infested with
“leg-scab”; B, female of Sarcoptes
mutans, greatly magnified. (After
Neumann.)
Sub-Order 3. Metastigmata.
The four families which constitute this sub-order comprise a large

number of Mites in which the tracheae open near the articulation of
the legs, and consequently in a somewhat posterior situation. The
families are Oribatidae, Argasidae, Ixodidae, and Gamasidae.
Fam. 1. Oribatidae.—The Oribatidae or “Beetle-mites” are free-
living Acari, with tracheae of which the stigmata are concealed by the
articulation of the legs. The cephalothorax is distinctly marked off
from the abdomen, and bears dorsally two “pseudo-stigmatic”
organs. The rostrum is inserted below the cephalothorax. These
Mites gain their popular name from the beetle-like hardness of their
integuments. They are oviparous or ovoviviparous. Eyes are always
absent.
These are small creatures,
seldom attaining the twentieth of
an inch in length. They are
vegetable-feeders (except,
perhaps, Pelops), and are to be
found in dead wood or vegetable
débris, under bark, or among
moss and lichen. In winter they
often take refuge under stones. It
Fig. 242.—Oribatid Mites. A, Cepheus is impossible at present to
ocellatus, × 24; B, ventral view of estimate the number of existing
Hoploderma magnum, closed, × 20. species, for only a few localities
(After Michael.)
have been systematically worked
for them, and their small size has
prevented their inclusion, in any numbers, in the collections of
scientific expeditions. Our knowledge of the group is likely, however,
to be largely extended, for it has been found that they reach England
alive and in good condition from the most remote regions if moss or
other material in which they live is collected when not too dry, and
hermetically sealed up in tin cases.
About twenty genera and more than 220 species are at present
known. Pelops has much elongated chelicerae, with very small chelae
at the end. There are ten species, found in moss and on bushes.
Oribata numbers about fifty species, found in moss and on trees.
Notaspis, in which the last three legs are inserted at the margin of
the body, has about thirty species, found among moss and dead
leaves. Nothrus is a short-legged genus with flat or concave dorsal
plate, often produced into very remarkable spiny processes. There
are twenty-two species found under bark and among moss and
lichen. Hoploderma (Hoplophora) is remarkable for its power of
shutting down its rostrum and withdrawing its legs in a manner
which leaves it as unassailable as a tortoise or an armadillo.
Though the Oribatidae are all eyeless, they are distinctly sensitive
to light, not wandering aimlessly till they reach a shadow, but
apparently making straight for a dark spot when subjected to strong
illumination. Some species have a curious habit of collecting dirt and
débris on their backs, so as entirely to obscure the often very
remarkable disposition of the spines and processes with which they
are furnished.
The next two families include the animals commonly known as

Ticks, the largest and most familiar of the Mite tribe. Of recent years
they have attracted much attention as the conveyers, to man and
domestic animals, of certain diseases due to blood-parasites (see p.
457, n.), and our knowledge of their structure and habits has greatly
increased in consequence. Hitherto they have generally been
considered to constitute a single family, the Ixodidae, but a section of
them so differ from the rest as to require their removal to another
family, the Argasidae, so that it is necessary to employ a super-family
name—Ixodoidea—to embrace the whole group.
Ticks are parasitic on mammals, birds, and reptiles, some shewing
a marked partiality for a particular host, others being much more
catholic in their tastes. Both sexes in the Argasidae, but the females
only of the Ixodidae, are capable of great distension, but when unfed
they are all somewhat flat animals
with laterally extended legs and
rather crab-like movement.
All Ticks possess a small,
movable “false head” or
capitulum bearing mouth-parts
which are exceedingly
characteristic of the group. The
chelicerae are cutting instruments
with their distal ends serrated
outwardly, and there is always
present a hypostome beset with
recurved teeth which serve to Fig. 243.—Capitulum of Boophilus
maintain a firm hold on the australis; ventral view. p1, p2, p3, p4,
tissues into which it is thrust. On The four articles of the palp; m, the
either side of the chelicerae are mandible or chelicera; d, its digit; n, the
hypostome.
the four-jointed palps, leg-like in
the Argasidae, but more rigid and
rod-like in the Ixodidae, where their inner margin is often hollowed
so as to enclose the chelicerae and hypostome when the palps are
apposed. There is a conspicuous pair of spiracles near the coxae of
the fourth pair of legs.
Fam. 2. Argasidae.—The Argasidae are leathery Ticks without a
shield or scutum, and with free, leg-like palps. The capitulum is
never more than partially visible when the adult animal is viewed
dorsally. Their hosts are always warm-blooded animals. Two genera
are usually recognised, Argas and Ornithodoros, though recent
discoveries of new forms have tended towards their fusion. Argas
reflexus and A. persicus have been proved to convey a Spirochaete
disease to fowls, and the latter, under the name of the “Mianeh Bug”
has long possessed an evil reputation for the “poisonous” effect of its
bite on human beings. In Mexico the “Turicata” (Ornithodoros
turicata) and the “Garapata” (O. megnini) are greatly dreaded, while
human “tick fever” on the Congo has been traced to the
instrumentality of O. moubata.
Fam. 3. Ixodidae.—These are the more familiar Ticks,
possessing a scutum or shield, which covers the whole back of the
male, which is capable, therefore, of little distension, whereas it
forms only a small patch on the
front part of the body of the
distended female. There are ten
genera, Ixodes, Haemaphysalis,
Dermacentor, Rhipicentor,
Rhipicephalus, Boophilus,
Margaropus, Hyalomma,
Amblyomma, and Aponomma.
Ixodes ricinus is the common
English sheep-tick. Species of
Boophilus are parasitic on cattle
the world over, and B. annulatus
is the transmitter of Texas fever.
Rhipicephalus and Amblyomma
are large genera which include
several species of economic
importance. For example, R.
Fig. 244.—Ornithodoros talaje, under sanguineus conveys canine
surface, × 5. (After Canestrini.) piroplasmosis, and A. hebraeum
causes “heart-water” in South

African cattle. The genus
Aponomma confines its attention
to reptiles, and some of its species
are exceedingly ornate.
Neglecting Margaropus and
Rhipicentor, which include only a
very few aberrant forms, the
following entirely artificial key
will serve to differentiate the
genera of the Ixodidae:—
Fig. 245.—Female Sheep-tick, Ixodes

ricinus.
1. A pair of eyes on the lateral borders of the scutum 2
No eyes 6
2. Capitulum long, much longer than broad 3
Capitulum short 4
3. Unicolorous, ♂ with chitinous plates near anus Hyalomma
Generally ornate, ♂ without anal plates Amblyomma
4. Generally ornate, ♂ without anal plates, but with
enlarged 4th coxae Dermacentor
Unicolorous, ♂ with anal plates and normal coxae 5
5. Palpi very short, spiracle circular Boophilus
Palpi medium, spiracle comma-shaped Rhipicephalus
6. Capitulum short; 2nd article of palp projecting laterally Haemaphysalis
Capitulum long 7
7. Unicolorous, elongate, on birds or mammals Ixodes
Generally ornate, broad-oval, on reptiles Aponomma
Neumann has recently revised the Ixodoidea in a series of papers

published in the Mémoires de la Société zoologique de France,[370]
but the work is not obtainable as a whole. A monograph, by Nuttall,
Warburton, Cooper, and Robinson, is now in course of publication at
the Cambridge University Press.[371]
Fam. 4. Gamasidae.—The Gamasidae are carnivorous Mites,
either free-living or parasitic on animals. The chelicerae are chelate,
and the palps are free. The tarsi have two claws, accompanied by a
“caruncle” or sucking disc. They are mostly pale-coloured Mites, with
a smooth, more or less scutate covering. The three principal sub-
families are Gamasinae, Uropodinae, and Dermanyssinae.
Of the Gamasinae, Gamasus coleoptratorum is the well-known
Beetle-parasite so frequently seen on Geotrupes. It is often
confounded with another species of similar habits, G. crassipes.
The curious Beetle-parasites attached to their victim by a thread
belong to the genus Uropoda of the Uropodinae. The connecting
filament, which the Mite can sever at will, for a long time puzzled
observers. It was variously construed as a silken cord of attachment,
and as a sort of umbilical cord, through which the Mite drew
nourishment from the Beetle. On more careful investigation it
proved to be connected with the anus of the Mite, and to consist of its
consolidated excrement.
The Dermanyssinae are all parasitic on warm-blooded animals,
principally birds and bats. Dermanyssus avium is the common
parasite infesting fowls and cage-birds.
Sub-Order 4. Heterostigmata.
Fam. Tarsonemidae.—This is the sole family of the sub-order.

It comprises a number of minute vegetable-feeding Mites which have
been little studied, though they are probably the cause of
considerable injury to the leaves and buds of plants.
Sub-Order 5. Prostigmata.
In these Mites the stigmata are situated anteriorly, in the rostrum

or the thorax. In the Water-mites the tracheae have atrophied, but
these creatures are clearly Trombidiidae which have taken to an
aquatic life.
Fam. 1. Bdellidae.—The Bdellidae are sometimes known as the
“Snouted Mites” on account of the very prominent forwardly-
directed “capitulum” or false head. They have chelate chelicerae and
tactile palps, which are often “elbowed,” like the antennae of weevils.
Eyes may be present or absent. They are usually of a bright red
colour, and are free-living and predaceous, though in their larval
stages they may often be found attached to the limbs of insects and
spiders.
The minute active scarlet Mites of the genus Eupodes and its allies
perhaps come within this family. Their legs are six-jointed.
The remaining families of the Prostigmata (Halacaridae,
Hydrachnidae, and Trombidiidae) all have raptorial palps, and
clawed or piercing chelicerae.
Fam. 2. Halacaridae.—This is a small group of marine Mites. In
their usually prominent capitulum they resemble the Bdellidae. In
some respects they recall the Oribatidae, having hard integuments,
and their legs being articulated near the margin of the body. They do
not swim, but crawl upon weeds
and zoophytes, or burrow in the
mud.
Fam. 3. Hydrachnidae.—
The Hydrachnidae are the Fresh-
water Mites. Their legs are
provided with long close-set
hairs, and thus adapted for
swimming. They are predaceous,
and in their young stages are
often parasitic on water insects. A
familiar example is Atax bonzi,
which lives within the shell of the
fresh-water mussel.
Fam. 4. Trombidiidae.—The
predaceous palps of the
Trombidiidae are generally of the
“finger-and-thumb” type. The
tarsi are two-clawed, without
caruncle. This group may be
divided into six sub-families.
(i.) The Limnocharinae or
“Mud-mites” connect the
Fig. 246.—Bdella lignicola, x about 50. Hydrachnidae with the typical
(After Canestrini.) Trombidiidae. They are usually
velvety and of a red colour. They
do not swim, but creep. The larva
of Limnocharis aquaticus is parasitic on Gerris lacustris.
(ii.) The Caeculinae bear a strong general resemblance to the
Harvestmen or Phalangidae. Caeculus is so similar to the Phalangid
genus Trogulus that it was considered by Dufour to belong to the
same order.
(iii.) The Tetranychinae or “Spinning mites” are phytophagous,
and do much injury to plants, sucking the sap from the leaves and
giving them a blistered appearance. Tetranychus telarius is the
“Red-spider” of popular nomenclature.
(iv.) The Cheyletinae are
remarkable Mites with fleshy,
semi-transparent body, and
enormously developed raptorial
pedipalpi, which are extremely
formidable weapons of attack.
They do not creep or run like
most Mites but proceed by a
series of short leaps. Cheyletus is
the principal genus.
The curious genus
Syringophilus, which is parasitic
in the interior of birds’ feathers,
appears to be a degenerate
Cheyletine.
Fig. 247.—Atax alticola, x 16. (After
(v.) The Erythraeinae are Canestrini.)
minute, active Mites, usually red
in colour, free-living and
predaceous.
(vi.) The Trombidiinae include
most of the moderate-sized,
velvety red Mites which are
commonly known as “Harvest-
mites,” and their larvae, the so-
called Harvest-bugs, frequently
attack man. Trombidium
holosericeum is a well-known
example.
Fig. 248.—Tetranychus gibbosus, x 50.

(After Canestrini.)
Sub-Order 6. Notostigmata.[372]

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The Palgrave handbook of critical

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1 Introduction: What Is Critical Theory? 1

Part I The Hegelian-Marxist Roots of Critical Theory 15

2 Critical Theory and Resistance: On Antiphilosophy

3 Marx’s Influence on the Early Frankfurt School 43

4 Lukács’ Theory of Reification and the Tradition

5 Totality, Reason, Dialectics: The Importance of Hegel

6 Why Students of the Frankfurt School Will Have

Part II Critical Epistemology and the Aims of Social Research 135

7 Critical Theory and the Historical Transformations

8 Critical Theory as Radical Comparative–Historical Research 165

9 The Frankfurt School and the Critique of Instrumental

10 Materialism in Critical Theory: Marx and the Early

11 Critique as the Epistemic Framework of the Critical

Part III The Sociology of Culture and Critical Aesthetics 253

12 Theories of Culture in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory 255

13 Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory 279

14 Art and the Concept of Autonomy in Adorno’s

15 Judging by Refraining from Judgment: The Artwork

16 Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution 329

17 What Does It Mean To Be Critical? On Literary

Part IV Critical Social Psychology and the Study

18 Theory and Class Consciousness 369

19 The Frankfurt School, Authority, and the Psychoanalysis

20 The Social Psychology of Critical Theory 443

21 The Social Psychology of Authority 463

22 The Fromm–Marcuse Debate and the Future of Critical

Part V The Communicative Turn, Discourse Ethics, and

23 The Metaethics of Critical Theories 505

24 Collective Agency and Intentionality: A Critical Theory

25 Recognition, Social Systems and Critical Theory 547

26 Recognition, Identity and Subjectivity 567

27 The Sociological Roots and Deficits of

Part VI Future Directions in Critical Theory 611

28 Experience and Temporality: Toward a New Paradigm

29 Critical Theory of Human Rights 631

30 Immanent Critique and the Exhaustion Thesis:

31 Critical Theory and Global Development 677

32 The New Sensibility, Intersectionality, and Democratic

Heikki Ikäheimo is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of New South

Philosophical Investigations (Stanford University Press, 2012, edited with Samir

Republican Reinvention of Radicalism (Columbia University Press), The Politics of

Table 11.1 Basic comparison of analytic and dialectical forms

Introduction: What Is Critical Theory?

1.1 The Concept of Critique

M.J. Thompson (*)

© The Author(s) 2017 1

corrupted by modernity and degraded by instrumentality toward the ends of

1 Introduction: What Is Critical Theory? 1

Part I The Hegelian-Marxist Roots of Critical Theory 15

2 Critical Theory and Resistance: On Antiphilosophy

3 Marx’s Influence on the Early Frankfurt School 43

4 Lukács’ Theory of Reification and the Tradition

5 Totality, Reason, Dialectics: The Importance of Hegel

6 Why Students of the Frankfurt School Will Have

Part II Critical Epistemology and the Aims of Social Research 135

7 Critical Theory and the Historical Transformations

8 Critical Theory as Radical Comparative–Historical Research 165

9 The Frankfurt School and the Critique of Instrumental

10 Materialism in Critical Theory: Marx and the Early

11 Critique as the Epistemic Framework of the Critical

Part III The Sociology of Culture and Critical Aesthetics 253

12 Theories of Culture in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory 255

13 Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory 279

14 Art and the Concept of Autonomy in Adorno’s

15 Judging by Refraining from Judgment: The Artwork

16 Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution 329

17 What Does It Mean To Be Critical? On Literary

Part IV Critical Social Psychology and the Study

18 Theory and Class Consciousness 369

19 The Frankfurt School, Authority, and the Psychoanalysis

20 The Social Psychology of Critical Theory 443

21 The Social Psychology of Authority 463

22 The Fromm–Marcuse Debate and the Future of Critical

Part V The Communicative Turn, Discourse Ethics, and

23 The Metaethics of Critical Theories 505

24 Collective Agency and Intentionality: A Critical Theory

25 Recognition, Social Systems and Critical Theory 547

26 Recognition, Identity and Subjectivity 567

27 The Sociological Roots and Deficits of

Part VI Future Directions in Critical Theory 611

28 Experience and Temporality: Toward a New Paradigm

29 Critical Theory of Human Rights 631

30 Immanent Critique and the Exhaustion Thesis:

31 Critical Theory and Global Development 677

32 The New Sensibility, Intersectionality, and Democratic

Table 11.1 Basic comparison of analytic and dialectical forms