Focusing on the critical postures of Hegel, Marx, and a series of twentieth-century intellectuals, including Sartre, Adorno, and C. L. R. James, this book explores what dialectical thinking entails and how such thinking might speak to the lived realities of the contemporary political moment. What is revealed is not a formal method or a grand philosophical system, but rather a reflective energy or disposition—a dialectical spirit of critique—that draws normative sustenance from an emancipatory moral vision but that remains attuned principally to conflict and tension, and to the tragic uncertainties of political life. In light of the unique challenges of the late-modern age, as theorists and citizens struggle to sustain an active and coherent critical agenda, In the Spirit of Critique invites serious reconsideration of a rich and elusive intellectual tradition.