Critical Theory Today: An Old Paradigm for New Challenges?

This issue of Azimuth aims at exploring the possibilities that re­cent theoretical and methodological reflections can offer for the diagnosis of present social pathologies. In particular, the Editors have collected papers which are representative of the way in which Critical Theory is trying nowadays to re-establish a link between social philosophy and empirical research on the background of an interdisciplinary approach which includes psychoanalysis, sociology, epistemology, and the natural sciences. Taken together, these dif­ferent lines of research show the fertility and vitality of a tradition, as well as they point out some contradictions and some worrying signs of regression in our societies.