This dissertation reconstructs the intellectual and political reception of Critical Theory, as first developed in Germany by the "Frankfurt School" at the Institute of Social Research and subsequently reformulated by Jürgen Habermas, in the Netherlands from the mid to late twentieth century. Although some studies have acknowledged the role played by Critical Theory in reshaping particular academic disciplines in the Netherlands, while others have mentioned the popularity of figures such as Herbert Marcuse during the upheavals of the 1960s, this study shows how Critical Theory was appropriated more widely to challenge the technocratic directions taken by the project of vernieuwing (renewal or modernization) after World War II. During the sweeping transformations of Dutch society in the postwar period, the demands for greater democratization--of the universities, of the political parties under the system of "pillarization," and of society more broadly--were frequently made using the intellectual resources of Critical Theory. In turn, the development of a progressive, "posttraditional" society in the Netherlands, which appeared to reach its apex in the 1970s, suggested to a number of intellectuals that Habermas's more sanguine "theory of communicative action" best conceptualized the democratic achievements of modern society and the continuing prospects for the "rationalization of the lifeworld," through which injustices and social pathologies could be exposed to the scrutiny of critical reason. Critical Theory, then, had an "actuality" that went well beyond academia and had continuing "relevance"--another meaning of the Dutch actualiteit or German Aktualität--for understanding the past and future rationalization of society.There was, moreover, another sense in which Dutch thinkers interpreted the actuality of Critical Theory. In the transnational process of reception, ideas and theories are inevitably shaped by the contexts in which they are taken up. This study begins with the Dutch social democrat Andries ...