Celebrating Jürgen Habermas and the Institute for Social Research: Reflections on the history of critical theory from a jubilee year

Abstract

2024 was a jubilee year for the Frankfurt School. On July 24, the Institute for Social Research ( Institut für Sozialforschung), the birthplace of critical theory, marked its centennial. A month earlier, Jürgen Habermas, who is often seen as the intellectual leader of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, celebrated his 95th birthday. In Germany, these overlapping anniversaries have been met with the publication of a number of books on Habermas and the critical theory tradition more generally. Despite the globalization of theorizing within the tradition of the Frankfurt School over the past 50 years, much of its intellectual history of it is still produced in Germany by German scholars based on sources and archives held in the Federal Republic. This Spotlight reviews the main findings and conclusions of this literature for an international, English-speaking audience. It concludes by reflecting on whether critical theory has succeeded—and if so, how.