Abstract

In the nineteenth century tradition of critical theory there is a branch, not by any means secondary, which in different ways elaborates a critique of the typical life form of capitalistic market society: a coherent evolutionary line starts from the forefather of Western Marxism, the Lukács of "History and Class Consciousness", continues through the first generation of critical theory (mainly Adorno and Marcuse), and, via Habermas and Honneth, arrives to the younger exponents of this tradition, Harmut Rosa and Rahel Jaeggi. This essay briefly reconstructs the main traits of this path of critical theory, assessing its fruitfulness and whether it still represents, today, a research line worthy of being continued.