ABSTRACT
Critical theory has been one of the most influential schools of thought for the social sciences and humanities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, its institutional anchoring in Germany's university system has remained considerably less established than is the case with critical rationalism and rational choice theory. Critical theory emerged in the Germany in the 1920s, shaped by an interdisciplinary impetus, and inspired by perplexing anomaly seen in society around the turn of the century. In developing a "theory of totalitarian late capitalism"—as Helmut Dubiel called it—the focus for critical theory was on a sociological and sociopsychological analysis of culture and society, particularly critiquing how modern socialization is negotiated and mediated. The resulting critical theory utilized the trailblazing insights of Marxist social theory, and also challenged its historically deterministic assumptions by recognizing the social theory potential of psychoanalysis, thereby connecting it to the question of the subject/object relationship within the interplay between history and society.
