Synthesis, dynamis, praxis: Critical theory’s ongoing struggle with the concept of society

From its beginning, critical theory aimed at the exploration of the laws governing social life as a formational totality and of the forces shaping and driving its historical evolution. Hence, the requirement to develop a comprehensive conception of ‘society’ encompassing both its structural as well as its cultural components can be considered one of the defining hallmarks of critical theory through all its theoretical and generational variations. But what, then, is critical theory’s conception of society? The authors use a three-tired heuristic model distinguishing synthesis (what is society?), dynamis (what are the driving forces of social change?) and praxis ((how) can social change be motivated or influenced by social actors?). By doing so, they can reconstruct both, the divergences and controversies between the different versions and approaches in critical theory across the four generations of authors writing in this tradition as well as four core points of convergence which can serve to differentiate between critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition and other critical theories.