This work is the keystone of the thought of the Frankfurt School. It is a wide-ranging philosophical and psychological critique of the Western categories of reason and nature, from Homer to Nietzsche.

One of the central figures in modern thought, Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) was the director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt. This work shows how Horkheimer's thought was influenced by and engaged with the historical events of the twentieth century, particularly the Holocaust and the Vietnam War.

An influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Various analyses in the book concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioural structure that marks the limits of enlightenment.

Max Horkheimer was a leading figure in hugely influential Frankfurt School who highlighted the tyrannical aspects of our new rational cure.