Word.ws English Dictionary

critical theory

critical theory noun: the examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social science and the humanities; (in particular) the original ideas developed by the Frankfurt School.

Noun

critical theory (uncountable)

  1. The examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social science and the humanities; (in particular) the original ideas developed by the Frankfurt School.
    • I define critical theory as something broader than Critical Theory in the Frankfurt School usage but not unrelated to it. I use the term to designate the traditions of dialectical and self-reflective thought initiated during the historical moment of Kant and Hegel.2000, Carl Howard Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction, Wesleyan University Press, →ISBN, page xvi
    • […]; if you do not know, or care to know, much about critical theory, the writings of Butler are academic in the unflattering sense of that term. But in their world, they are, if not royalty, lords of the realm.2018 September 23, Eliot A. Cohen, “The Crisis of the American Elites”, in The Atlantic

Forms of critical theory

alternative formCritical Theory

Origin of critical theory

Calque of German kritische Theorie, first defined by Max Horkheimer in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory”.

Words formed from critical theory

Questions about critical theory

What does critical theory mean?
Critical theory means the examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social science and the humanities; (in particular) the original ideas developed by the Frankfurt School.
What part of speech is critical theory?
Critical theory is a noun.

Words near critical theory in the dictionary

  1. critical support
  2. critical taper
  3. critical tapers
  4. critical temperature
  5. critical temperatures
  6. critical theory
  7. critical thinking
  8. critical tide level
  9. critical tide levels
  10. critical ward
  11. critical wards

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: critical theory (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “critical theory.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/critical_theory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.