[New Entry by Owen Hulatt on March 25, 2025.]
Critical theory arose as a response to perceived inadequacies in Marxist theory, and perceived changes in modern capitalism. Critical theorists emphasized the ability of capitalism to shape the thought and experience of individuals: it distorts how modern society and its products appear to us, and how we think about them. So, aesthetic experience – like all other experience – is moulded to and compromised by capitalism. For critical theory, if we seek to understand aesthetics we need to acknowledge this distorting…

Read the full article which is published on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (external link)