- Lived:
- 1895–1973 · Stuttgart, Frankfurt, New York, Los Angeles, Frankfurt again, Switzerland
- Tradition:
- Founder and director of the Frankfurt School — critical theory
- The Big Idea:
- A theory of society should not just describe the world from a safe distance; it should understand itself as part of that world and aim at freeing it — and reason that forgets this shrinks into a mere tool.
- If you remember one thing:
- The man who built critical theory was a millionaire's son trained to run a textile factory — and he ran the twentieth century's most influential workshop of radical thought instead, with a factory manager's precision.