Abstract

When considering social phenomena, we can bring into focus either the way society works or the way society does not work. In the first case, emphasis is put on the functioning of society; in the second, on its dysfunctionality. In the first case, we adopt an operational approach; in the second, a clinical approach. In this article, ‘critical theory’ is described as a theory adopting a clinical approach to social and political history. On the basis of such a definition, one can list several paradigms of critical theory — among them, the Marxian, the Nietzschean, the Freudian. They name three different styles or trends of critical theory, which in turn display three different understandings of truth and history as well as three different stances towards ontology.