In its essence, critical theory is western Marxist thought with the emphasis moved from the liberation of the working class to broader issues of individual agency. Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, which sought to diagnose and cure the ills of society. In the second edition of this Very Short Introduction, Bronner provides sketches of major critical thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and Jurgen Habermas, as well as many of the seminal texts and empirical investigations of critical theory.
