What is criticism and why do we engage in it? The question of the conditions and possibilities of criticism arises wherever situations are analyzed and evaluated, whether they are social conditions and institutions, self-relations, or objects of art. Thus, criticism is a constitutive part of human practice: action is based on normative distinctions and therefore on the possibility of criticism. But what is the nature of this critical endeavor? How does the relationship between analysis and evaluation manifest in the various practices of criticism, and how are the standards identified that allow the critic to label a given situation as wrong, bad, inappropriate, or deficient? From different perspectives, the contributions in this volume provide answers to these questions.