The social philosophy of recognition: normative foundations for a critical theory of society

Abstract

The concern with the normative foundations of critique appears for the first time in the history of Critical Theory as considerations of Jürgen Habermas about the social thought of his predecessors, especially Adorno and Horkheimer. Axel Honneth, a disciple of Habermas and his successor in the chair of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, initiates new critical to the grounds proposed by Habermas, which attacks the central points of his theory of communicative action and the habermasian paradigm of intersubjectivity based on understanding and theory of language, in favor of a paradigm that takes more account of the conflict and the recognition identity. Honneth then develops a theory of recognition that, highlighting the conflicting nature of all social context, seeks to clarify the norms inherent in social relations through a formal concept of ethical life, or good life, so that the whole of the intersubjectivity conditions for implementation of the recognition. Still, with his theory it tries to compete with other thinkers who gave some emphasis to the concept of recognition, like Marx, Sorel and Sartre. This article aims to explain how Honneth understands these normative criteria in order to clarify his position about the issues of recognition identity included in the current context of political philosophy and sociology.