Forms of Rationality and Public Sector Reform: Habermas, Education and Social Policy

The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School was renowned for what Kellner (1989, 22) calls ‘supra-disciplinary’ social research, investigating social problems via in particular a combination of philosophy and science. The work of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Karl Mannheim and Walter Benjamin, among others, brought together a range of disciplines – social psychology, literature, music, sociology of knowledge and political economy-in ways that illuminated the connections between seemingly disparate endeavors.