INTRODUCTION: AXEL HONNETH’S PROJECT OF CRITICAL THEORY Danielle Petherbridge Over several decades Axel Honneth has made a profound contribution to Critical eory, most notably in terms of defending its normative, emancipatory project and developing a comprehensive theory of soci- ety and social action that can provide a framework for analysing social relations of domination. For Honneth, the task of critical social theory requires more than simply mounting a critique of existing social con- ditions, notably it must also carry the potential for immanently moti- vating social change. In the tradition of Le-Hegelian critique in which Honneth situates his own project, Critical eory must therefore con- sist of two fundamental elements: both a pre-theoretical resource or empirical foothold in social reality which reveals an emancipatory instance or need, but also a quasi-transcendental dimension or mode of context-transcending validity in order to provide a normative hori- zon from which to critically assess forms of social organisation.1 In other words, critical social theory requires a dialectical interplay between immanence and transcendence which can enable critical diagnoses of exiting social conditions to be made.2 Honneth considers this dialectical method or form of ‘transcendence within immanence’ to be the dening characteristic of critical social theory in the Frankfurt School or Le-Hegelian tradition.3 In Honneth’s 1 See Honneth’s reconstruction of social philosophy in “Pathologies of the Social: e Past and Present of Social Philosophy”, in Disrespect: e Normative Foundations of Critical eory, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, where he constructs the methodo- logical concerns of critical social theory in these terms. See also Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, London & New York, Verso, 2003, p. 240. 2 Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 238–9. 3 Honneth identies the Critical eory of the Frankfurt School with that of Le- Hegelian critique, dening them in the same terms. See for example, the essays “A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical eory” and “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso: On the Idea of ‘Critique’ in the Frankfurt School”, both in Pathologies of the Social: On the Legacy of Critical eory, trans. James Ingram, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009. 2 danielle petherbridge view, one of the main problems confronting contemporary critical social theorists today, is determining which instances or experiences can be pre-theoretically located within social reality that also contain ‘system-bursting’ potential to compel change within a given social order.4 For the critical theorist to avoid claiming a privileged or pater- nalistic position, the emancipatory instance or experience that com- pels social change must be identified within the existing social order and must be of the same normativity or rationality that becomes mani- fest in new forms of social organisation.5 A pre-theoretical interest must “be regarded as a moment of socially embodied reason insofar as it possesses a surplus of rational norms or organizational principles that press for their own realization”.6 For Honneth this pre-theoretical condition is identified in a recognition-theoretical stance that provides the normative ground from which critical assessments of social life can be made. It is in the context of developing this recognition-theoretical approach that Honneth’s work became widely known with the publica- tion of his 1992 book, The Struggle for Recognition.7 However despite the prominence of the 1992 book, Honneth’s work cannot be fully understood without locating the theory of recognition within the con- text of a broader project which has been pursued systematically from his early essays on Marx and Critical Theory, through to his studies on philosophical anthropology in Social Action and Human Nature, and his reappraisal of models of critical social theory in The Critique of Power. It also extends to his most recent work on Hegel, the later essays on object-relations theory, his debate with Nancy Fraser, and the Tanner Lectures published as Reification. The essays in this volume seek to demonstrate the breadth and systematicity that characterises Honneth’s project across these writings and to engage critically not only with the theory of recognition but with the shifts and currents that have shaped Honneth’s model of Critical Theory throughout his work. 4 Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 239; 242. 5 See Honneth’s discussion in Axel Honneth, “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso: On the Idea of ‘Critique’ in the Frankfurt School”, pp. 43–53, where he outlines the risk of a ‘strong’ context-transcending form of critique as repre- senting either an elitist or paternalistic viewpoint, or worse being a form of despotism (p. 44). 6 Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 240. 7 Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995 (1992)..