Axel Honneth

Adorno, Theodor W.

The Authoritarian Personality ist eines der bekanntesten und einflussreichsten Werke der Kritischen Theorie. Die empirische Studie wurde Mitte der 1940er Jahre im kalifornischen Berkeley durchgefuhrt und bildet eine von funf Teiluntersuchungen der 1949/50 publizierten Studies in Prejudice, die vom Institut fur Sozialforschung im US-amerikanischen Exil initiiert und vom American Jewish Committee finanziell unterstutzt wurden.

Organized Self-Realization Some Paradoxes of Individualization

Despite the fact that the sociological notion ‘individualization’ contains the most heterogeneous phenomena, the article develops an interpretation of the fate of individualization in Western capitalism today. After having differentiated three different meanings of that notion with the help of Georg Simmel, the position is defended that the claims to individual self-realization, which have rapidly multiplied in the Western societies of thirty or forty years ago, have become so much a feature of the institutionalized expectations inherent in social reproduction that the particular goals of such claims are lost and they are transmuted into a support of the system’s legitimacy. The result of this paradoxical reversal, where the processes which once promised an increase of qualitative freedom are henceforth altered into an ideology of de-institutionalization, is the emergence in individuals of a number of symptoms of inner emptiness, of feeling oneself to be superfluous, and of absence of purpose.

Recognition and Justice Outline of a Plural Theory of Justice

In this article, Axel Honneth outlines a plural theory of justice. In developing his argument he takes his departure not in the classic elimination of ‘inequality’, but in the avoidance of ‘humiliation’ or ‘disrespect’. He is convinced that an appropriate point of departure for a recognition-theoretical conception of justice must show that the experience of social injustice is always measured in terms of the withholding of some recognition held to be legitimate. Throughout the article, Honneth makes strong reservations about Nancy Fraser’s approach, where ‘recognition’ and ‘redistribution’ are separated into two conceptual totalities with the single goal of ‘participatory equality’. On the contrary, he suggests having a more elaborate concept of identity formation, so that participating in the public realm means participating without shame, capable of unfurling his or her own personality’s potential in an unforced manner and of thus developing a personal identity. From this standpoint Honneth points to three differentiated spheres of recognition that must be obtained if the individual is to obtain a personal identity, namely love, equal treatment in law and social esteem.

Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice

One of liberalism’s core commitments is to safeguarding individuals’ autonomy. And a central aspect of liberal social justice is the commitment to protecting the vulnerable. Taken together, and combined with an understanding of autonomy as an acquired set of capacities to lead one’s own life, these commitments suggest that liberal societies should be especially concerned to address vulnerabilities of individuals regarding the development and maintenance of their autonomy. In this chapter, we develop an account of what it would mean for a society to take seriously the obligation to reduce individuals’ autonomy-related vulnerabilities to an acceptable minimum. In particular, we argue that standard liberal accounts underestimate the scope of this obligation because they fail to appreciate various threats to autonomy. The reason these vulnerabilities have been underestimated, we believe, is because autonomy has generally been understood in an essentially individualistic fashion. The alternative account of autonomy we sketch here highlights the ways in which individuals’ autonomy can be diminished or impaired through damage to the social relations that support autonomy. By articulating a conception of autonomy in terms of, more specifically, a theory of mutual recognition, we aim to pinpoint the individualistic bias in liberal accounts and the concomitant underestimation of our dependence on relationships of respect, care, and esteem. We conclude by anticipating some broader implications of this for how proceduralist accounts of social justice ought to be revised.

Social action and human nature

This work applies itself to a critique of Marxian theory, which is especially sensitive to issues in the new social movements, ecological and feminist. The work of writers such as Gehlen and Plessner, and that of three historical anthropologists is discussed.

Work and Instrumental Action: On the Normative Basis of Critical Theory

In recent discussions of historical materialism, the relationship of Marx’s critique of political economy to a critical social theory directed toward political action has come into question. The thesis that there is a &dquo;crisis in the theory of revolution&dquo; indicates that the analysis of capital, the centerpiece of Marx’s theoretical project, can no longer retain such a leading role in the determination of a critical social theory capable of offering a praxisoriented interpretation of the contemporary situation of late capitalism. The function of the critique of political economy in a theory of class struggle was always disputed in the history of Marxism, but it has never before been questioned to such a great extent. Although the fundamental methodological notion of the mutual translatability, if not the thematical convergence of the systematic analysis of capital and a pt~~~s-oriented theory of revolution forms the basis of the Marxian tradition, it is precisely this theoretical complementarity which is currently in doubt. The categories of a crisis theory based upon the analysis of capital are apparently no longer adequate to describe the altered crisis areas and conflict potentials of late capitalist society. This icongruity has come to dominate both the theoretical and the political sides of Marxist discussion.

A social pathology of reason

With the turn of the new century, Critical Theory appears to have become an intellectual artifact. This superficial dividing point alone seems to increase the intellectual gap separating us from the theoretical beginnings of the Frankfurt School. Just as the names of authors who were for its founders vividly present suddenly sound from afar, so too the theoretical challenges from which the members of the school had won their insights threaten to fall into oblivion. Today a younger generation carries on the work of social criticism without having much more than a nostalgic memory of the heroic years of western Marxism. Indeed, already over thirty years have passed since the writings of Marcuse and Horkheimer were last read as contemporary works. There is an atmosphere of the outdated and antiquated, of the irretrievably lost, that surrounds the grand historical-philosophical ideas of Critical Theory, ideas for which there no longer seems to be any kind of resonance within the experience of the accelerating present. The deep chasm that separates us from our predecessors must be comparable to that which separated the first generation of the telephone and movie theatre from the last representatives of German idealism. The same vexed astonishment with which a Benjamin or a Kracauer may have observed a photo of the late Schelling must today come over a young student who, on her computer, stumbles across a photo of the young Horkheimer posing in a bourgeois Wilhelmian interior.

Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On the Seeming Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis

Abstract In face of the postmodern ideal of a ‘mutiple’ subject, there has been talk at regular classical psychoanalysiss normative orientation toward intervals since the end of the the egos capacity to cope consistently with reality may Second World War of psy seem obsolete. However, a psychoanalytic theory choanalysis being obsolete. which is revised in the light of object-relations theory, In these fields – where the integrationist social psychology, and an intersubjectivist notion is not just an ideolo account of the formation of the drives can answer the gical weapon – this signifies postmodern challenge. According to this alternative the tendency of a growing psychoanalytic view, the goal of a ‘healthy’ development discrepancy said to have of personality is a state of an inner capacity for dialo opened up between the origue, able to account normatively for altering forms of ginal and the current socio-ego-identity under changing social conditions.

The Work of Negativity: A Psychoanalytical Revision of the Theory of Recognition

Abstract This paper pursues two questions derived from psychoanalysis that are central to the theory of recognition: must the image or force of negativity classically derived from Freud necessarily be thought of as an elementary component of human beings equipped with drives? Or, can this image or force of negativity be conceptualised as an unavoidable result of the unfolding processes of internalised socialisation? The first question is pursued in a consideration of its legacy for the older representatives of the Frankfurt School, whilst the second question is pursued for its contribution to the theory of recognition that places the force of negativity within the domain of the social and not in a theory of the drives.

Trabalho e reconhecimento: tentativa de uma redefinição

The main question in this article is: how the category social work should be included in the framework of a social theory to open an inside perspective of qualitative improvement that is not utopian? To take account of this complex problem, the author suggests in a first more methodological step a distinction between foreign and immanent criticism for a critic of existing labour relations. In a second step, the author argues that social work can only assume his role as an legitim immanent criteria if it fulfills the conditions for recognition through the exchange achievements (Leistungen), typical for modern societies. Two conditions are reconstructed based on Hegel and Durkheim: a fair organisation of social work needs to provide a revenue suficient to provide socially decent conditions of life and has to be structured so that its tasks enable the individual worker to understand them as a contribution to the community and to relate them with the other socially necessary works.