DOCSLIB.ORG

Ethics of Recognition: Axel Honneth's Normative Critique of Modern Society

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Ethics of Recognition: Axel Honneth's Normative Critique of Modern Society Journal of Critical Reviews ISSN- 2394-5125 Vol 7, Issue 11, 2020 ETHICS OF RECOGNITION: AXEL HONNETH’S NORMATIVE CRITIQUE OF MODERN SOCIETY John Paul J. Petrola University of San Agustin, Iloilo City, Philippines [email protected] Received: 11.03.2020 Revised: 18.04.2020 Accepted: 12.05.2020 Abstract This paper is an expose of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. Using document analysis and hermeneutics of Axel Honneth’s seminal works and other resources on social pathology and struggle for recognition, this paper attempts to provide a deeper interpretation of Honneth 's theory of recognition as it tries to address the context of Honneth's critical theory, its three spheres of recognition, namely affection, rights and unity, which are required in order to gain concrete self-relationship, and its principle of disrespect as the spiritual grammar of the disenfranchised in the struggle for recognition. Furthermore, it offers a new alternative in doing critical analysis of the society. Keywords: Axel Honneth, Critical theory, Love, Rights, Solidarity, Modern Society © 2020 by Advance Scientific Research. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.11.30 INTRODUCTION These are requisites in synthesizing a background on Honneths ethical life and recognition are two key concepts of Hegel critical social theory and his concepts of the spheres of borrowed by Honneth in developing the theory of the struggle for recognition. recognition. As elucidated by Hegel, according to Deranty, the term ‘absolute ethical life’ entails the full development of the Lastly, I will present Honneths concept of disrespect or denial of individual’s theoretical and practical capacities, as well as the full recognition, and how it becomes the moral grammar of the development of social interactions [3]. Obviously, for Deranty, the oppressed who struggle for recognition. term recognition features social interactions that make individuals engage with each other [3]. For Deranty and Renault, Honneth argued in his book The Struggle for Recognition: The Honneth’s reconstruction of Hegel’s original theory of recognition Moral Grammar of Social Disputes that the likelihood of self- was purposive in order for Honneth to present the concept in the realization as a free and independent person depends on 20th century as a fundamental alternative to the rational-choice increasing self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem. and utilitarian social theories which rejuvenate the original project of critical theory [4]. It also offers a theoretical framework According to Honneth, the denial of the individual’s demands for for social criticism defining current social pathologies and recognition causes social sufferings and the experiences of pointing in the direction of emancipation. Because of this, injustice. These occurrences are empirical evidences which reveal Deranty and Renault were persuaded that Honneth 's recognition that modern society is doing something unjust to people [1]. In theory provides the most reliable paradigm for a revived critical Honneth’s lenses, it is reasonable to claim that giving full theory of society in today's modern society [4]. recognition of the individuals’ deep-seated claims and expectations is the best alternative to attain emancipation [2]. He pointed out Hegel 's attempt to include a metaphysical reconstruction of the organization of human ethical societies as a The aim of this paper is to provide thorough discussion of Axel series of stages involving a struggle for acknowledgement in Honnethskey concepts in his theory of the struggle for Honneth 's readings of Hegel's Jena scriptures [5]. For Hegel, recognition highlighting his three spheres of recognition namely, according to Pelcynzski, the ethical community refers to the state spheres of love, right and solidarity. which is politically organized, sovereign and governed by public authorities [6]. Moreover, Hegel argued that in the ethical RESEARCH METHODS community, it is easy to say what man ought to do in order to be In this paper, I employed document analysis of Axel Honneth’s virtuous [7]. original work entitled The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Also, hermeneutics was utilized to In the same manner, according to Honneth, the future ethical carefully analyze how society’s indifferences negatively impact on community, as Hegel envisioned, is grounded on the idea of the lives of marginalized individuals and how their feelings of reciprocal relations between subjects or the so-called disappointments become the moral grammar for subjects to intersubjectivity that goes beyond mere cognitive recognition. It struggle for recognition. involves patterns of recognition that provide communicative basis among individuals uniting within the context of an ethical RESULTS AND DISCUSSION community [5]. However, Honneth finds Hegel’s work incomplete Hegel and Mead because it failed to develop the concrete interactions between the The theory of the struggle for acceptance by Axel Honneth draws individual in the society. Honneth noted that Hegel did not fully heavily from Jena writings by Hegel and the social psychology by develop his spheres of recognition, namely, love, rights, and Mead. In his book entitled The System of Ethical Life published in solidarity. For Honneth, these three spheres of recognition are 1802, Hegel developed his concepts of the absolute ethical life necessary in the formative process of achieving the ethical and recognition. For Deranty, a known scholar on Honneth, communities, but they were abandoned by Hegel. Furthermore, Journal of critical reviews 188 ETHICS OF RECOGNITION: AXEL HONNETH’S NORMATIVE CRITIQUE OF MODERN SOCIETY Honneth argued that Hegel failed to provide clarity and empirical the satisfaction of their needs. Thus, they could never be verification to his concept of the development of the individual’s separated from each other. On one hand, the infant, in his/her self-consciousness, desire and recognition [8]. Instead, Hegel first months, is so much dependent on his/her mother not only abandoned the project of reconstruction of ethical communities for physiological, but also for his/her psychological needs. On the through social conflicts, specifically through struggle for other hand, the mother towards the end of pregnancy is recognition, in favor of the philosophy of consciousness or the preoccupied with the care for her baby, which seems like a part of philosophy of mind. herself [11]. The mother is very much emotionally attached to her baby and knows what the baby needs and feels. Thus, the mother Because of this deficit that Honneth found in Hegel’s theory of expresses her love to her child through maternal care, which recognition, he proceeded to appropriate Mead’s social Winnicott calls the holding phase. For Winnicott the term holding, psychology. It was Mead’s social psychology that provided the which denotes the physical holding of the baby, is a form of loving concrete details to Honneth’s theory of the struggle for and perhaps the only way wherein the mother can show her love recognition. In reality, as Honneth said, Mead's social psychology for her infant. As a result, the infant feels a basic sense of has provided an account of the tripartite interrelationship protection, safety and security of his/her mother [12]. Moreover, between individual identity-formation and social patterns of Winnicott argues that in this phase of maternal care, the infant interaction[5]. In Honneth's readings of Mead, he interpreted the starts to recognize and explore his/her environment. Likewise, in 'I' not only as a person capable of thought, speaking and acting this phase, the establishment of the infant’s first objects’ but also as a source of creativity from which new claims of relationship and experiences of instinctual gratification take place identity are asserted [5]. Here, Mead’s notion of the ‘I’ has been [13]. essential for Honneth in the development of his notion of autonomy and morally responsible agent, which are the core For Winnicott, according to Abram, relative dependence occurs ideas in the spheres of rights and solidarity. when the mother starts to fail to adapt to every need of her child. It is in this stage that the child begins to develop his/ her Hegel and Mead agreed that mutual recognition among intellectual capacities. This takes place when the mother already individuals is necessary in order for these individuals to develop returned to her daily routine, leaving the child for a long period of a practical relation-to-self. However, for Honneth, both Hegel and time. Because of this, the mother fails to attend to her child’s Mead settled only with the purely theoretical aspects of their need. Winnicott argues that the child’s separation from the thought and did not provide empirical data or the actual analysis mother creates a feeling of anxiety where the child could now of the interactions or patterns of recognition among these distinguish him/herself from his/her mother and his/her individuals. However, unlike Hegel, Mead offered the specifics of environment [14]. According to Cook, for Winnicott, the failures this developmental cycle as well as the motivational foundations that the mother is committing and the child’s feelings of anxiety on which the subject or the “I” should anchor its recognition allow the child to identify him/herself with his/her mother and movement, but both were unable to recognize social factors that see his/her mother as an independent subject separate from cause individuals to search for recognition. [5]. Because of these him/herself [15]. insufficiencies found in both Hegel and Mead, Honneth developed a new model of social theory, the struggle for recognition, with a Apparently, for Winnicott, the absence of the mother poses a more detailed content based on the individuals’ actual difficult challenge in the child’s development and it produces the experiences of being victims of social injustice.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism.Pp
    CHAPTER 3 Understanding Right and Left Populism 1 Samir Gandesha We appear to be living in an age of populism. Over the past two decades, we have witnessed the rise of right-wing populist parties throughout Europe such as Haider’s Freedom Party in Austria, Victor Orban’s Fidesz Party in Hungary, and the Polish Law and Justice Party. Such an emergence hasn’t been confined to Europe but is a global phenomenon as evinced, for example, by the elec- toral triumphs of Narendra Modi in India in 2014 and that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey as early as 2003. But no phenomena more clearly supports- this thesis than the stunning victory of Donald J. Trump in the 2016 American presidential election and the triumph of the Leave Campaign led by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). But there has also been a populism of the Left. The Arab Spring was widely regarded as a broad-based, if short-lived, popular revolt and therefore as a kind of populism in the streets in 2011. The events of Tahrir Square profoundly in- spired the Occupy Movement – sparked by the editor of the Vancouver-based magazine Ad Busters’ exhortation – to ‘Occupy Wall Street!’ Radiating out be- yond Zuccotti Park, the movement spread through much of the Western world. Arguably, the Occupy Movement’s most significant and enduring effect was to be felt five years later in the dramatic grassroots support for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ bid for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination, which was – as recent juridical proceedings have revealed – undermined by the actions of the DNC.
    [Show full text]
  • Theory by Overcoming the So-Called Pessimism of the Dialecticof Enlightenment
    Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For personal use only. Citation or publication of material prohibited without express written permission of the copyright holder. Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. Veröffentlichungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. From Honneth to Fromm Seiki Okazaki I Introduction As is well known, Jiirgen Habermas opens up the frontiers of "radical democracy" in the history of critical theory by overcoming the so-called pessimism of The Dialecticof Enlightenment. It is Axel Honneth who takes over the political orientation from Habermas, who nevertheless criticizes Habermas's language-theoretic version of communication paradigm and advocates his own recognition-theoretic version of communication paradigm. In The Fragmented World of the Social (1995), Honneth refers to "four thematic domains" of his post-Habermasian critical theory (Honneth 1995, pp. xiii-xxv): (A) "everydaymoral experience" connected with a "struggle for recognition"; (B) relation between "work" and "recognition"; (C) "pathologies of modern society" having nothing to do with the problem of "rationality"; and (D) "psychoanalytic concept of the subject." I find potentialities in Honneth's critical theory in that it will contribute to elucidatemany problems on which Habermas fails to shed light. However, in spite of its attractiveness, there exists a crucial difficulty in Honneth's critical theory. In this article I would like to attempt to overcome the difficulty of Honneth's critical theory through the dialogue with one of the most important critical theorists, Erich Fromm (1900-1980). While he had been "a member of staff who had for a considerable time been the most significant one for its theoretical work" (1), Fromm was excluded from the Institute for Social Research, partly because of the opposition to Adorno.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Consistency of Axel Honneth's Critical Theory
    [The published version of this paper is available in Philosophical Forum, 49 (4), 2018, p. 483-509. Online at: https://doi.org/10.1111/phil.12203] On the consistency of Axel Honneth’s critical theory: Methodology, critique, and current struggles for recognition. Marco Angella. Introduction Drawing upon the tradition of the Frankfurt School critical social theory, over the decades Axel Honneth (2009a) has been developing one of the most fully-structured paradigms of recognition in the field of social philosophy, whose methodology he accurately reconstructs. In the first part of the paper, I will examine Honneth’s recognition paradigm insofar as it enables him to renovate this methodological framework. My examination has the specific objective to support a twofold hypothesis. On the one hand, I aim to outline a defense of Honneth’s consistent methodology against growing criticisms – especially, but not exclusively, related to recent appraisal of Freedom’s Right – which tend to see depletion of critical insights in the recent developments of his theory as compared with the results obtained in his early works1. Unlike these critics, I contend that Honneth’s work is (methodologically) compatible with the Frankfurt school’s tradition and retains (and to a certain extent extends) its critical insights 1 See the recent special issue of Critical Horizons dedicated to Freedom’s Right, especially Freyenhagen (2015) and Schaub (2015). (Deranty 2009, pp. 449-456). On the other hand, I aim to propose a critical appraisal of interpretations of Honneth’s theory that, while more sympathetic towards it (or at least toward a specific period of its development), attempts to indicate the ways in which he could have strengthened his critique of contemporary society.
    [Show full text]
  • PHIL 452/652, EP&E 231 Recognition
    PHIL 452/652, EP&E 231 Recognition: Intersubjectivity in Moral and Political Philosophy Fall 2011 Class Hours: Wednesdays 3:30 PM – 5:20 PM Class Location: Bass Library L73 Course Website: On the ClassesV2 server Instructors: Stephen Darwall ([email protected]) CT Hall 306 Office Hours – Thursday 12:00 Noon – 2:00 pm (and by appt) Matthew Noah Smith ([email protected]) CT Hall 106 Office Hours – Tuesday 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm (and by appt) Mailboxes: Connecticut Hall 101 Course Description: This course explores a central issue in moral philosophy: the normative structure of the relationship between moral equals. Following a practice of post-Kantian German idealists, we call this relationship recognition. Recognition is the relationship manifested when two moral equals see and relate to each other as having the standing to make reciprocal moral claims on one another. While we explore questions about the psychological structure of this stance – is it cognitive or conative, for example – our main focus will be on the moral structure of the relationship between moral equals. This course begins with a study of the emergence of philosophical attention to recognition, which occurred at the headwaters of early modern moral and political theory in sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries. Much of this philosophical work focused on property rights. We will likely read works by Francisco Suarez, Samuel Pufendorf, and Hugo Grotius, to name a few important figures. We will then turn to close examination of the role of recognition in the work of Adam Smith, Kant, and post-Kantian German idealists.
    [Show full text]
  • Is There an Emancipatory Interest? an Attempt to Answer Critical Theory's Most Fundamental Question
    DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12321 2016 MARK SACKS ANNUAL LECTURE Is there an emancipatory interest? An attempt to answer critical theory's most fundamental question Axel Honneth 1 | INTRODUCTION The idea that human beings have a deep‐seated interest in overcoming dependencies and heteronomy has always been a hallmark of the tradition of critical social theory deriving from Marx. Some of the Left Hegelians already held that in the absence of such an emancipatory interest on the part of the entire species, the demand for social progress would remain a merely moral “ought,” lacking any support in historical reality. Marx was convinced that under capitalism, this interest was represented by the proletariat, forced by its particular situation to fight on behalf of all of humanity for fully noncoercive and nondominating social relations.1 When Georg Lukács took up this thought in the early 1920s, even surpassing its original ambitions through a bold appropriation of Fichtean ideas, the revolution- ary ethos of the working class had already been in decline to such an extent that his construction received little acclaim even from those sympathetic to it.2 Max Horkheimer was therefore cautious enough to rely in his develop- ment of a critical social theory only on the claim that such an emancipatory interest was revealed in the ineradicable human tendency to revolt against structures of domination. Without attempting to provide a more detailed argument for this assumption, he thereby reiterated on a more abstract level the Marxian thesis that the epistemological foun- dation of his theory would have to lie in its connection with “critical conduct.”3 It was only with Jürgen Habermas's path‐breaking monograph Knowledge and Human Interests that new life was breathed into this century‐old idea.
    [Show full text]
  • The Critique of Power
    The Critique of Power Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory Axel Honneth translated by Kenneth Baynes The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England First MIT Press paperback edition, 1993 First MIT Press edition, 1991. Translation © 1991 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This work originally appeared in German under the title Kritik der Macht. Reflexions- stufen einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie (© 1985 Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Set in Baskerville by DEKR Corporation. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Honneth, Axel, 1949- [Kritik der Macht. English] The critique of power : reflective stages in a critical social theory / Alex Honneth ; translated by Kenneth Baynes. — 1st MIT Press ed. p. cm. — (Studies in contemporary German social thought) Translation of: Kritik der Macht. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-08202-0 (HB), 0-262-581284) (PB) 1. Critical theory. 2. Horkheimer, Max, 1895-1973. Philosophische Fragmente. 3. Habermas, Jurgen. 4. Foucault, Michel. I. Title. ILSeries. HM24.H582713 <199)^ 301'.01—dc20 -- 91-6950 CIP Contents Translator's Preface vii Author's Preface xi Afterword to the Second German Edition (1988) xiii I The Incapacity for Social Analysis: Aporias of Critical
    [Show full text]
  • Situating Axel Honneth in the Frankfurt School Tradition
    CHAPTER ONE SITUATING AXEL HONNETH IN THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL TRADITION Joel Anderson I have never had the intention of continuing the tradition of a school … e line of thought that gets attributed, in retrospect, to the Frankfurt School was a response to historically specic experiences with fascism and Stalinism, but above all to the incomprehensible Holocaust. A tradition of thought remains vital by proving its essential intuitions in the light of new experiences; that doesn’t happen without giving up those parts of theories that are no longer adequate. Jürgen Habermas1 Historical mantles are rarely worn comfortably. e associated expec- tations can be quite a burden. So it is not surprising that, like Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth refrains from identifying himself as a ‘Frankfurt School’ theorist. In his case, however, there is really no denying the lineage. Not only is he the successor to Habermas’ chair in social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, but as research direc- tor of the Institute for Social Research there, he sits in the oce that was once eodor Adorno’s. At Honneth’s insistence, however, the old furniture has all been replaced. Insofar as the Frankfurt School tradition represents a contempo- rary phenomenon at all, it is a diverse approach that has been con- stantly developing and changing over its eighty-year history. My aim here is not to provide a denitive account of this lineage – nor to sort out which members of subsequent generations have ‘betrayed’ the tradition – but rather to situate Honneth’s own work historically, so as to highlight certain distinctive features of his approach and provide 1 J.
    [Show full text]
  • Recognition and Responsibility
    religions Article Recognition and Responsibility Hille Haker Department of Theology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, USA; [email protected] Abstract: While the concept of responsibility is a cornerstone of Christian ethics, recognition theory still lacks a thorough theological–ethical analysis. This essay seeks to fill the gap and develop normative ethics of recognition and responsibility. The first part provides a systematic analysis of the conceptual elements of recognition, emphasizing the need to focus on misrecognition as a heuristic tool and ethical priority. While recognition coincides with responsivity and attentiveness in the encounter of self and other, responsibility adds to this the moral accountability for acts, practices, structures, and institutions, rendering recognition and responsibility interrelated but also distinct principles of morality. This normative analysis is then correlated to the hermeneutical, narrative ethics of Christian ethics. The founding narrative of biblical ethics, the Cain and Abel narrative in Gen 4, is interpreted as a dialectic of recognition and responsibility. Both exegesis and ethics profit from this interdisciplinary and correlative approach between philosophical and biblical ethics. Finally, the ethics of recognition and responsibility, which emerges from the Frankfurt School critical theory, is confronted with exemplary indigenous approaches focusing on mutual responsibility as the foundation of ecological ethics. Christian ethics of recognition and responsibility resonates with
    [Show full text]
  • Aftereffects of Knowledge in Modernity
    1 Recovering the Individual in Critical Theory The critical theory of Jürgen Habermas is often criticized for its failure to connect adequately with practice. It suffers from this problem, say the critics, despite Habermas’s self-declared aim of linking theory with practical inten- tions. From within the tradition of critical theory, such an evaluation usually proceeds in one of two different ways. On the one hand, it may question ele- ments of Habermas’s philosophy of “discourse ethics.”1 Here, the formal, pro- cedural and abstract features of Habermas’s communicative conception of rea- son are questioned. These features, it is argued, render his theory incapable of providing a practical orientation for individuals or groups. In particular, the separation of the “right” from the “good” is held to pose insurmountable epis- temological and ethical problems. On the other hand, the critique may focus on Habermas’s social theory, and on the application of systems theory in par- ticular.2 The objection, in this respect, concerns Habermas’s willingness to accept that his own idea of communicative rationality is denied access from large domains of social and political life. It suggests that insofar as theory and practice are still related, their combination offers little or no resistance to the “colonization of the lifeworld.” Axel Honneth’s work has followed these lines of critique simultaneously, leading to a substantial reconstruction of Habermas’s work from the inside.3 In brief, first, Honneth replaces Habermas’s focus on “validity claims” with an emphasis on “identity claims” as the key structures underlying social interac- tion.4 This complements and modifies the weight given to rational discourse in Habermas by incorporating systematically into critical theory the dynam- ics of social struggle.
    [Show full text]
  • Recognition in Axel Honneth: Contributions to Research in Health Care
    1 Original Article http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0104-070720170000550017 RECOGNITION IN AXEL HONNETH: CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH IN HEALTH CARE Monika Wernet1, Débora Falleiros de Mello2, José Ricardo de Carvalho Mesquita Ayres3 1 Ph.D in Nursing. Professor of the Department of Nursing, Universidade Federal de São Carlos. São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] 2 Ph.D in Nursing. Professor of the Department of Mother and Child Nursing and Public Health, Escola de Enfermagem de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo. Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] 3 Ph.D in Medicine. Professor of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de São Paulo. São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT Objective: to systematize the strengths and challenges of Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition, and to reflect on these as support for research in health care. Method: this is a reflection article which considers the potential of incorporating the category of recognition in the Honnethian proposition for research, understanding, exercising of practice and management of health care. Results: the process of recognition promotes the exploration and understanding of relations of power and respect, above all in terms of conflict which are ascribed to these. As a result, it indicates support for diagnoses and structuring nuclei for overcoming oppressive and unequal practices, with consequences for dealing with situations of insecurity, weaknesses in self-esteem and vulnerabilities in the interactions between the subjects, which are configured as contemporary challenges. Conclusion: in the scientific exploration of care, management and public policies in health, this theoretical framework can assist in the visibility of the context and in its critical knots, in order to promote autonomy and human dignity, which are relevant for the interpersonal relations in the processes of care, with fruitful contributions to the qualification of the health care.
    [Show full text]
  • Redalyc.Recognition, Justice and Social Pathologies in Axel Honneth
    Revista de Ciencia Política ISSN: 0716-1417 [email protected] Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Chile Haber, Stéphane Recognition, justice and social pathologies in Axel honneth`s recent writings Revista de Ciencia Política, vol. 27, núm. 2, 2007, pp. 159-170 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Santiago, Chile Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=32427209 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative RECOGNITION, JUSTICE RANDEVISTA SOCIAL DE CIENCIA PATHOLOGIES POLÍTICA IN A/ XELVOLUMEN Honneth’s 27 / N Recentº 2 / 2007 W/ R159ITINGS – 170 RECOGNITION , JUSTICE AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGIES IN AXEL HONNETH ’S RECENT WR ITINGS Reconocimiento, justicia y patologías sociales en los trabajos recientes de Axel Honneth STÉPHANE HABER Universidad de Franche-Comté RESUMEN Este ensayo discute el último libro de Axel Honneth sobre la cosificación (Verdinglichung, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2005) y su relación con la teoría del reconocimiento avanzada por el mismo autor. El ensayo examina críticamente la nueva hipótesis de Honneth sobre las raíces existenciales del reconocimiento, y hace una comparación entre dos conceptos clave de la teoría crítica, la cosificación y la alienación, para argumentar la superioridad teórica de este último concepto. Palabras clave: Honneth, reconocimiento, cosificación, alienación, teoría crítica. ABSTRACT The paper discusses Axel Honneth’s recent book on reification and its relation to Honneth’s theory of recognition. It critically examines Honneth’s hypothesis concerning the existential roots of recognition, and compares two classical concepts of social critique, reification and alienation, in order to argue for the superiority of the latter over the former.
    [Show full text]
  • Axel Honneth's Critical Response to Habermas's Critique of Marx
    Axel Honneth’s Critical Response to Habermas’s Critique of Marx Habermas’ın Marx Eleştirisine Axel Honneth’in Eleştirel Yanıtı Anthony Lack Alamo College in San Antonio, US Abstract Jurgen Habermas and Axel Honneth have each criticized Marx’s emphasis on human labor as the most fundamental concept in any critical theory of society whose goal is human emancipation. Habermas’s critique resulted in the development of Discourse Ethics, a Neo-Kantian approach to normative criticism and social justice. Discourse Ethics obtains its universal basis by marginalizing the non-rational, such as reactive emotions and various forms of desire for recognition that often underlie and motivate the social criticisms whose aim is human emancipation. I argue that Honneth’s Neo- Hegelian theory of recognition is a productive response to two problems in Habermas’s overly cognitivist and rationalist approach. These are the problem of the role of emotions in moral motivation, on the one hand, and the problem of locating acceptable boundaries between public issues of moral right or justice and private issues of ethical life or well-being. The strengths of Honneth’s approach are clarified through two brief exegeses of classic works in political theory, Peter Strawson’s Freedom and Resentment and Joel Feinberg’s “The Nature and Value of Rights .” Keywords: Honneth, Habermas, Marx, Hegel, Recognition, Discourse Ethics, Moral Emotions. Öz Jurgen Habermas ve Axel Honneth, Karl Marx’ın insan emeğinin insanı özgür kılmayı hedefleyen toplum kuramlarının temeli olduğu yönündeki görüşünü eleştirmiştir. Habermas’ın eleştirisi ile normatif eleştiri ve toplumsal adaleti Neo-Kantçı bakış açısıyla ele alan Söylem Etiği ortaya çıktı.
    [Show full text]