This is a most remarkable book. The exposition and critical discussion are conducted with exemplary clarity. It may change intellectual lives; it will certainly attract a great deal of attention for many years to come." -- William Outhwaite, University of Sussex "Honneth's book casts a flood of light on what has been an area of darkness, the place where the philosophical tradition and modern politics meet and interweave. Since neither is really comprehensible without the other, this work is essential reading for those who would understand either. It is a pathbreaking study, which ought to be at the center of the debate for many years to come." -- Charles Taylor, McGill University
In this pathbreaking study, Axel Honneth argues that "the struggle for recognition" is, and should be, at the center of social conflicts. Moving smoothly between moral philosophy and social theory, Honneth offers insights into such issues as the social forms of recognition and nonrecognition, the moral basis of interaction in human conflicts, the relation between the recognition model and conceptions of modernity, the normative basis of social theory, and the possibility of mediating between Hegel and Kant.
"Honneth's book casts a flood of light on what has been an area of darkness, the place where the philosophical tradition and modern politics meet and interweave. Since neither is really comprehensible without the other, this work is essential reading for those who would understand either. It is a pathbreaking study, which ought to be at the center of the debate for many years to come."
—Charles Taylor, McGill University
"This is a most remarkable book. The exposition and critical discussion are conducted with exemplary clarity. It may change intellectual lives; it will certainly attract a great deal of attention for many years to come."
—William Outhwaite, University of Sussex
Honneth was born in Essen in 1949, studied in Bonn, Bochum, Berlin and Munich (under Jürgen Habermas), and taught at the Free University of Berlin and the New School before moving to the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt in 1996. In 2001, he became director of the Institute for Social Research, originally home to the so-called Frankfurt School, at the University of Frankfurt.
Research
Honneth's work focuses on social-political and moral philosophy, especially relations of power, recognition, and respect. One of his core arguments is for the priority of intersubjective relationships of recognition in understanding social relations. This includes non- and mis-recognition as a basis of social and interpersonal conflict. For instance, grievances regarding the distribution of goods in society are ultimately struggles for recognition.
His first main work The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory explores the affinities between the Frankfurt School and Michel Foucault. In his second main work The Struggle for Recognition: Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, the recognition concept is derived mainly from G.W.F. Hegel's early social philosophical works, but is supplemented by George Herbert Mead's social psychology, Habermas's communicative ethics, and Winnicott's object relation theory. Honneth's critical adaptation of these is the basis of his critical social theory, which attempts to remedy the deficits of previous approaches. Honneth co-authored Recognition or Redistribution? with feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser in 2003, who criticizes the priority of ethical categories such as recognition over structural social-political categories such as redistribution in Honneth's thought. His recent work Reification reformulates this key "Western Marxist" concept in terms of intersubjective relations of recognition and power. For Honneth, all forms of reification are due to intersubjectively based pathologies rather than the structural character of social systems such as capitalism as argued by Karl Marx and György Lukács.
Works translated into English
Social Action and Human Nature, co-authored with Hans Joas (Cambridge University Press, 1988).
The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory (MIT Press, 1993).
The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (SUNY Press, 1995).
The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Polity Press, 1996).
Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, co-authored with Nancy Fraser (Verso, 2003).
Reification: A Recognition-Theoretical View (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Polity Press, 2007).
Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory (2009).
The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel's Social Theory (2010).
Secondary Sources
Bert van den Brink and David Owen, Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Deranty, Jean-Philippe, Beyond Communication: A Critical Study of Axel Honneth's Social Philosophy (Brill, 2009).
Iser, Matthias, Emporung und Fortschritt. Grundlagen einer Kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft (Campus, 2008).
Schmidt-am-Busch, Hans-Christoph and Zurn, Christopher (eds), The Philosophy of Recognition. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2009)
Thompson, Simon, The Political Theory of Recognition. A Critical Introduction (Polity, 2006).
Huttunen, Rauno, Habermas, Honneth and Education (Lambert Academic Publishing 2009).
