This book presents a new reading of Critical Theory, emphasising its connections to phenomenological inquiry and analyses of temporal experience. It discusses the implications of Critical Theory for the sociology of law, considering how it addresses questions of legal experience and subjectivity that have central importance in legal-sociological research. Through rigorous discussion, the author identifies legal elements both in the political-sociological and in the aesthetic aspects of Critical Theory. The book also adds new methodological and substantive dimensions to Critical Theory, arguing that thinkers in this tradition have underestimated the role of military violence in the construction of modern society and modern democracy. By integrating ideas borrowed from the phenomenology of violence into its methods, it reconstructs Critical Theory, placing the effects of mass conflict at the centre of critical-sociological analysis.