Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-254) and index.

Preliminary Material / V. Heins -- Introduction: Critical Theory And The Political / V. Heins -- Chapter One. Knowing The Worst: Critical Theory As Trauma Narrative / V. Heins -- Chapter Two. From Factions To Rackets: The Traps Of Conspiracy Thinking / V. Heins -- Chapter Three. Flâneurs Without Borders: Benjamin And The Cultural Politics Of Travel Writing / V. Heins -- Chapter Four. Meanings Of Barbarism: Civil Society And Its Others / V. Heins -- Chapter Five. Orientalizing America: Habermas And The Changing Discourse Of Europe / V. Heins -- Chapter Six. Age Of Access? The Place Of Property In Critical Theory / V. Heins -- Chapter Seven. Realizing Honneth: Redistribution, Recognition, And Global Justice / V. Heins -- Chapter Eight. From Persons To Peoples: The Politics Of Recognition In International Society / V. Heins -- Bibliography / V. Heins -- Index / V. Heins.

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This book provides a thematic account of the changing political philosophy of critical theorists from Adorno to Habermas and Honneth. In addition to teasing out unexplored elements of political thought from the writings of important Frankfurt School intellectuals and their successors, the book seeks to establish the relevance of this tradition for contemporary political theory. Readers are offered an inside perspective, developed out of primary texts including some hitherto unused sources, which is combined with the outside perspective of non-Frankfurt School traditions such as cultural sociology. Heins presents a fresh reading of Critical Theory in ways that remind us both of what this theory is and what it can be.