Honneth on Social Pathologies: A Critique

Over the last two decades, Axel Honneth has written extensively on the notion of social pathology. He has presented it as a distinctive critical resource of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, in which tradition he places his own work; and as an alternative to the mainstream liberal approaches in political philosophy. In this paper, I review the developments in Honneth's writing about this notion and offer an immanent critique, with a particular focus on his recent major work Freedom's Right. Both his early context-transcendent approach and his more recent immanent approach are found wanting, and his increasing reformism is exposed and criticized. The central distinction in Freedom's Right between social pathologies and misdevelopments is also shown to be unworkable. In addition, I demonstrate that Zurn's influential proposal to characterize the phenomena Honneth identified as social pathologies in terms of a cognitive disconnect does not fit (with Zurn's own description of) these phenomena. While some such phenomena, like what Honneth describes as “Organized Self-Realization,” call out for conceptualization in terms of the notion of social pathology, an alternative characterization of this notion is necessary

Misdevelopments, Pathologies, and Normative Revolutions: Normative Reconstruction as Method of Critical Theory

In this article I argue that the method of normative reconstruction underlying Freedom's Right undermines Critical Theory's aspiration to be a force that is unreservedly critical and progressive. I start out by giving a brief account of the four premises of the method of normative reconstruction and unpack their implications for how Honneth conceptualizes social pathologies and misdevelopments, specifically that these notions are no longer linked to radical critique and normative revolution. In the second part, I demonstrate that abandoning forms of radical critique and normative revolution is internally linked to adopting this method, before arguing that Freedom's Right contains no resources to account for why abandoning them does not amount to a deficiency. In the final part, I point out two problematic implications of turning away from radical critique and normative revolution for the very project Honneth pursues in Freedom's Right. I show that Honneth's own view about the limited scope of application of the method of normative reconstruction and his account of the dangers associated with social misdevelopments give us (additional) reasons to consider this method to be incomplete. Finally, I contend that the explanatory power of Freedom's Right is dubious because methodological premises that form part of normative reconstruction lead Honneth to ignore relevant alternative explanations of processes of deviation and disassociation from norms of social freedom, which he characterizes as social misdevelopments

Comunitats posttradicionals : una proposta conceptual

L'autor sosté que el que caracteritza les societats liberals democràtiques és un cert grau d'intersubjectivitat i cohesió. Segons ells, els liberals coincideixen amb els comunitaristes a considerar que aquestes característiques només poden aparèixer en la forma de «comunitat». Partint d'aquesta coincidència, argumenta, primer, presentant un concepte mínim de comunitat en el qual tots els comunitaristes estarien d'acord i que conté, com a nucli, el supòsit que l'autorealització humana va unida a una praxi vital comunitària. Aquesta autorealització rau en l'estimació mútua entre els qui viuen en societat. La qüestió és establir relacions de solidaritat de manera que les capacitats de l'altre puguin fer possible l'enriquiment de la pròpia vida. El concepte mínim de comunitat postradicional es definirà finalment com aquesta forma de solidaritat que implica estimació mútua i que, alhora, uneix amb el supòsit de valors compartits.The author states that what charactizes liberal democratic societies is a certain degree of intersubjective and jointly shared cohesion. According to him, liberals coincide with communitarists in consider that these characteristics can only appear in the form of the social «community» itself. First, he proposes a minimum concept of «community» with which all communitarists would agree, and which contains, as a nucleus, the supposition that human self-fulfilment binds together with a vital communitary «praxis». This self-fulfilment lies in the mutual appreciation between the members who are living together. The point is to establish solidarity relations, so the other's capacity can make possible or can enrich life itself. The minimal, posttraditional concept of «community» will be finally defined as this form of solidarity, which means a mutual esteem, and, at the same time, binds together with the supposition of shared values

Chapter 5 The Recognition Paradigm Between Universalism and Historicism

This chapter will, first, reconstructs Axel Honneth’s account of the significance of recognition in his book The Struggle for Recognition and track some of the unresolved tensions in it and their role in Honneth’s subsequent work. The final part of the chapter focusses on Honneth’s more recent monograph The Freedom’s Right, in which an oscillation of his position between universalism and historicism or relativism pauses in the latter end. This limits the applicability of the theory outside the confines of Europe or the West. It turns out that the reconstruction and immanent critique of Honneth’s work, however, supports recognition-theoretical universalism

Entre Aristóteles y Kant Esbozo de una moral del reconocimiento.

Sin resume

Jenseits der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit: Anerkennung und sozialer Fortschritt

Eine gerechte Verteilung von Gütern reicht nicht aus, um eine Gesellschaft gerecht zu machen. Gerechtigkeitstheorien müssen auch die sozialen Beziehungen in den Blick nehmen: Wirkliche soziale Gerechtigkeit herrscht erst, wenn es Institutionen gibt, die uns die Chance einräumen, soziale Anerkennung zu erfahren

Is the Market a Sphere of Social Freedom?

In this paper I examine Axel Honneth's normative reconstruction of the market as a sphere of social freedom in his 2014 book, Freedom's Right. Honneth's position is complex: on the one hand, he acknowledges that modern capitalist societies do not realize social freedom; on the other hand, he insists that the promise of social freedom is implicit in the market sphere. In fact, the latter explains why modern subjects have seen capitalism as legitimate. I will reconstruct Honneth's conception of social freedom and investigate how it is realized in the sphere in which Honneth sees it most successfully at work, the sphere of interpersonal relations. I then move on to the sphere of the market economy and discuss two related problems of this view that stem from his interpretation of Hegel. Next, I consider Honneth's method of “normative reconstruction” and his reconstructions of the sphere of consumption and, finally, the labor market. My conclusion will be that market institutions cannot realize social freedom, and that this insight should orient the philosophical direction of critical social theory