Charliepaulcmp's Blog

Session 2 Wed 6 Oct: : The beginning of critical theory: The Frankfurt School, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin

Marxist inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt school. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed. Believing that science, like other forms of knowledge, has been used as an instrument of oppression, they caution against a blind faith in scientific progress, arguing that scientific knowledge must not be pursued as an end in itself without reference to the goal of human emancipation. Since the 1970s, critical theory has been immensely influential in the study of history, law, literature, and the social sciences.

Definitions of modernism on the Web:

• genre of art and literature that makes a self-conscious break with previous genres
• modernity: the quality of being current or of the present; “a shopping mall would instill a spirit of modernity into this village”
• practices typical of contemporary life or thought
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Definitions of postmodernism on the Web:

• genre of art and literature and especially architecture in reaction against principles and practices of established modernism
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn 
• Postmodernism literally means ‘after modernism’. While “modern” itself refers to something “related to the present”, the movements modernism and postmodernism are understood as cultural projects or as a set of perspectives. …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism 
• Any style in art, architecture, literature, philosophy, etc., that reacts against an earlier modernist movement
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/postmodernism