This book presents a ground-breaking interpretation of Critical Theory, which links different positions in Critical Theory by accentuating their connections to phenomenological inquiry and analyses of temporal experience. Its objective is to explain the implications of Critical Theory for the sociology of law, and it identifies legal elements both in the political-sociological and in the aesthetic aspects of Critical Theory. It reconstructs Critical Theory by integrating ideas borrowed from the phenomenology of violence into its methods, placing the effects of mass violence at the centre of critical-sociological analysis.