Critical theory is associated with what historically became known as the Frankfurt School of social thought. As with many other schools identified after they have already begun, the Frankfurt School was not as unified as its name implies. Nonetheless, the thinkers involved in the Frankfurt School shared a common project: the critique of their contemporary social world. Readers of this book look back on the Frankfurt School's world as history. Yet there is a certain truth in conceiving the common project as only understandable retroactively. With such a frame of reference, it serves to view the social world of the Frankfurt School thinkers, which was Weimar and early Nazi Germany, from a twenty-first century perspective, which is a postmodern perspective. I suggest that the two worlds have much in common.