This class examines writings by members and associates of Critical theory from the 1920s to the present. Topics include freedom and individuality, monopoly capitalism, the psychology of fascism, the culture industry and art, Marxism and psychoanalysis, antisemitism, technology and liberation, the revolutionary subject, and culture and nature. The course will pay close attention to first generation Critical theorists, including Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse, Benjamin and Fromm but will also consider representatives of the so-called second and third generations of Critical theory, which include Habermas and Honneth.
