How is criticism possible? What are its conditions, its procedures, and its limits? Stefan Deines answers these questions by designing a theory of critical practice and explicating the aspects of analysis, evaluation, and transformation of societal reality by means of hermeneutic, post-structuralist, and pragmatic approaches. He shows that in the face of the social constitution of subjectivity, rationality, and normativity, the concept of criticism cannot be measured on transcendental, trans-temporal scales - criticism must always be understood as immanent criticism that finds its own points of origin and orientation in the prevailing circumstances.