Critical theory has its roots in a strand of thought which is often traced
back to the Enlightenment and connected to the writings of Kant, Hegel
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and Marx. While this is an important lineage in the birth of critical
theory it is not the only possible one that can be traced, as there is also
the imprint of classical Greek thought on autonomy and democracy to
be considered, as well as the thinking of Nietzsche and Weber. However,
in the twentieth century critical theory became most closely associated
with a distinct body of thought known as the Frankfurt School (Jay 1973;
Wyn Jones 2001). It is in the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor
Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leo
Lowenthal and, more recently, Jürgen Habermas that critical theory
acquired a renewed potency and in which the term critical theory came
to be used as the emblem of a philosophy which questions modern social
and political life through a method of immanent critique. It was largely
an attempt to recover a critical and emancipatory potential that had
been overrun by recent intellectual, social, cultural, political, economic
and technological trends.