The aim of this theoretical thesis begins with the question of how adult education can be made critical and then emancipatory in order to become more meaningful for a democratic society. Reviewing the literature, it was found that adult education is not a neutral but a political conception controlled by the governing pople to pursue their own interests and not the interests of individuals. Karl Marx, the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich are just some of the representatives of critical theory and critical pedagogy who have emphasized how oppressive social structures control social life and manipulate people. In addition, globalization processes and neoliberal politics create the capitalist nature of relationships and turn adult education into marketable commodities that educational policy makers use to pursue the interests of the economy. For adult education to become an emancipatory tool, teachers in adult education need to take on the role of initiators of change, leading their adult learners through processes of empowerment, critical thinking and transformative learning, all with the aim of achieving critical awareness, detection of their own oppression, achieving social equality and the creation of a democratic society. The necessity of conducting research on the topic of emancipation in adult education has been identified in the paper, as the research to date has mainly covered the area of primary, secondary and higher education.