Axel Honneth Research Articles

Editors’ introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene

Editors’ introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene

Self-Respect and the Importance of Basic Liberties

Abstract This article discusses the self-respect argument for basic liberties, which is that self-respect is an important good, best supported by basic liberties, and that this yields a reason for the traditional liberty principle. I concentrate on versions of it that contend that self-respect is best supported by basic liberties for reasons related to the recognition that such liberties convey. I first discuss the two standard approaches loosely associated with John Rawls and Axel Honneth. Here self-respect pertains to traits and conduct (Rawls) or to one’s personhood (Honneth). It is argued that these approaches fail to show why self-respect is better supported by the liberty principle than certain alternatives worth taking seriously – unless (in the case of personhood self-respect) self-respect is construed in such a narrow way that it is not a condition for autonomy or welfare in any plausible sense. I then identify a self-attitude that I call “a sense of competence”, which at least shows that the liberty principle is more important to autonomy than what we might otherwise have reasons to believe.

Social Pathologies as Educational Injustices

For Axel Honneth, not all social problems can be understood as injustices. Therefore, he introduces the additional diagnostic concept of social pathology. In his book Freedom's Right (FR), it is defined as an accumulation of persons' inability to adequately participate in social institutions due to misunderstanding them. In contrast, injustices consist in the denial of access to social institutions for certain groups. According to the aim of presenting an 'extended' theory of justice in FR, Honneth intends to reconstruct all institutions necessary for realizing individual freedom in a liberal-democratic society. Like in the historical model of his project (Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right ), educational institutions, in particular schools, are neglected. I explore how this neglect is related to the supplementation of 'injustice' with 'social pathology'. My claim is that at least regarding some instances of social pathology, the wrong they describe should be reformulated as an educational injustice. Beyond a critique of Honneth, the paper contributes to the debates about the limits of the concept of justice and the role of education for justice. Additionally, I discuss an example of an educational injustice, namely the exclusion of critical race theory from school curricula in Texas.

Taking Care Seriously: Gendering Honneth’s The Working Sovereign – A Normative Theory of work

Axel Honneth’s latest work The Working Sovereign. A Normative Theory of Work states that the democratization of work and employees’ experience of democracy at work are important prerequisites for creating and promoting democracy as well as social and political participation. According to Honneth, various aspects of ‘good work’ are essential for such a democratization of work. Undoubtedly working conditions must be improved and it is an inestimable merit of Axel Honneth’s book to demand this so clearly. Beyond this fundamental agreement, I would, however, take a broader view of some details and draw some conclusions differently. First, it is difficult to derive the improvements needed in the world of work from a theory of democracy alone as its limited scope hides other urgent problems. Second, any approach might prove short-sighted if the democratization of work thesis only refers to wage labour or, at best, to paid care work. Rather, a comprehensive concept of care/work must be the starting point. On a surface level, Honneth’s conception of work is broad and gender-sensitive. However, Honneth does not follow this to its logical conclusion and fails to provide a systematic role to his conception of work when deriving his claims in the final chapters of his book. Rather, this broad conception of work is lost more or less inconspicuously behind a latent androcentrism. This has far-reaching consequences: from a comprehensive, gender-theoretical perspective, it would have been necessary to demand the ‘democratization of care/work’ such that gender and specifically women, who are the main care providers and perform this work largely unpaid and invisibly, finally are also included. What is more, in Honneth’s analysis the same elision applies to other intersectional categories, as race, migration, citizenship and ability are all lost from view in Honneth’s nation-state-based, homogeneous and harmonious concept of democratization. In sum, in my critical engagement with Honneth’s new text I will show that while he very clearly points out the indispensable need for better working conditions, he is blind to gender and care work.

What we may expect from work

In his critique of contemporary working conditions, Axel Honneth rejects Marx’s concept of alienation for three main reasons: (1) The concept is allegedly tied to industrial labor as the standard model of work. (2) The ideal of unalienated labor seems to be too demanding in its aspiration to the full development of all human potential. (3) The level of analysis is so fundamental that the critique loses the “ends in view,” that is, the feasible almerioation of actual working conditions. I argue that these three challenges can be met by a more charitable reading of Marx. Moreover, alienation helps us to identify structural reasons for the failure of approaches to improve working conditions in recent decades and provides analytical tools for the current crises of democracy.

Does contemporary recognition theory rest on a mistake?

My aim in this paper is to argue, contra Axel Honneth, that ‘the summons’ ( Aufforderung), the central pillar of Fichte’s transcendentalist account of recognition, is best made sense of not as an ‘invitation’, but rather as a second-personal demand, whose illocutionary content draws attention to the demandingness of responsibilities towards vulnerable agents. Because of this, the summons has good explanatory force in terms of disclosing the phenomenological dynamics of psychosocially and politically significant reactive attitudes. Under my reading, then, Fichte’s position, contra Honneth’s ‘negative’ treatment of it, is anything but an empty formalism that ‘fails to refer to subjects of flesh and blood’.

The contributions of the analysis of alienation to the social critique of labour in neoliberal capitalism

From a sociological perspective, this paper attempts to contribute to the discussion on work and democracy led by Axel Honneth. Through Honneth’s analyses, this text focuses particularly on the concept of alienation. The central argument is that the analysis of alienation can provide critical insights into the limitations of democratic practices within contemporary organizations of work. The paper draws on empirical and theoretical debates in sociology to demonstrate the concept of alienation as a lens for analysing the complex relationships between labour and democracy.

Gloria’s Struggle for Recognition

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is one of the American prolific playwrights, who deals with various themes related to landscapes of American society and culture. As known many awards winners, he is an outstanding playwright. His main foci on plays raise diverse questions such as existential consciousness of modern people, slavery as well. In particular, his play, An Octoroon, is regarded as a revised version of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon, which portrays African-Americans’ travail in terms of an octoroon. Appropriate is a sort of appropriated text from traditional American plays including O’Neill’s and Shepard’s. This study puts an emphasis on his work, Gloria, which deals with narratives of Gloria without Gloria. This play reveals a peculiar theme of authorship and obscures Gloria herself. In Gloria, he contrasts two Acts: Gloria’s mass shooting in Act 1 whereas Act 2 shows three authors’ exploiting the incident as their respective writing material. What made her commit that tragedy? In this paper its critical point is to read the reason of the incident, not as a source for writing. It is pivotal to examine the reason why Gloria’s gunshot and suicide happened. Basically this study explores Gloria’s side in terms of social recognition. What is noteworthy is Gloria’s lack of social recognition from others, especially her colleagues. As for Gloria, winning social recognition is of significance to prove herself and how social values and meanings in her community operate to get recognition from others. This analysis employs a view to Axel Honneth’s struggle for recognition relating to Georg Hegel’s desire. As Jacobs-Jenkins presents, Gloria’s struggle for recognition was so desperate to end up with abnormal and weird committing suicide as well as shooting colleagues. This is a stubborn process for seeking her genuine identity, which was supposed to be destroyed and nobody recognized.

Form Habermas’s Communicative Paradigm to Honneth’s Recognition Paradigm

From Huberman’s Communicative Paradigm to Honneth’s Recognition Paradigm Habermas, through the communicative action paradigm, which is relying on a linguistic structure and intersubjective principle, trying to provide a solution for oppression and suffering in the social life. He thinks dialogue ethic and linguistic communications are suitable mechanisms for solving the social oppression and injustice. The main question of this research is; Is recognition an appropriate theory for the treatment of social oppression and can it open our eyes to social oppression more clearly?, Axel Honneth, as a third generation of Frankfurt school, criticizes Habermas’s paradigm and constitute a recognition paradigm. He thinks, if individual experience recognition, through socialization process and in three spheres and three forms of (love, right and solidarity), so he makes a good self-relation and world-relations. But if in three spheres experience three forms of (hate, denial of rights and neglecting), then he experiences a deep oppression and collapse his relation with himself and world, and this collapse it is a social oppression. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to introduce confession as an appropriate theory for the treatment of social oppression and an appropriate social life and present the scope and forms of confession. Finally, the study reached several conclusions, the most important of which are: The deprivation of the individual of the right to self-realization is a profound social oppression, which can be recognized in three important spheres (such as family, state and society). Provide a more favorable environment for self-realization. Therefore, both the experience of recognition and the experience of non-recognition have an impact on one's identity and personality.

Dick Bernstein as a public philosopher

ConstellationsVolume 30, Issue 1 p. 12-15 CORRESPONDENCE PIECE Dick Bernstein as a public philosopher Axel Honneth, Corresponding Author Axel Honneth [email protected] Correspondence Axel Honneth Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Axel Honneth, Corresponding Author Axel Honneth [email protected] Correspondence Axel Honneth Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 30 March 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12657Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume30, Issue1March 2023Pages 12-15 RelatedInformation

Social criticism in David by Miguel Ángel Rojas. An approach based on recognition theory

This article corroborates Theodor Adorno’s thesis, according to which art can be an interpreter of repressed suffering. Based on an interpretive analysis of the work David, by the artist Miguel Ángel Rojas, the possibilities of art as social criticism are shown, capable of showing the repressed suffering produced by forms of contempt and non-recognition of victims of the Colombian armed conflict, at the same time than the claims and desire for peace and justice of Colombian society, which turns the work of art into an instance of reflection, analysis and discussion about criteria for satisfactory forms of social life. The notions of social criticism and social art are based on the postulates of the Critical Theory of society, especially, on Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition.

Recognition of Children’s Learning in Educational Research, Policy and Practice: Herbison Invited Lecture, NZARE Annual Conference 2022

For Jean Herbison, learning in her early 20th century childhood world was relatively uncomplicated and predictable. Life was shaped by unambiguous family, faith and settler colonial prescriptions about how children should behave and what they should become. Approaching the centenary of her birth, children today must navigate a very different society of ‘unlimited can’; an achievement society that generates a debilitating compulsion to self-improve (Byung Chul-Han).In this Herbison lecture, I offer a personal reflection on the contemporary ‘triangle’ of education research, policy and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Viewed as a culturally and historically specific ‘form of life’ (Rahel Jaeggi), I ask whether, over the last thirty five years, this triangle may have unwittingly contributed to a collective failure to give adequate recognition to children’s learning. Despite our best intentions, have we simply reified students and in doing so alienated them from learning in all its complexities and dimensions (Knud Illeris)?More than mere acknowledgement of ‘the other’, recognition theory highlights the importance of socially developed qualities such as confidence, respect and esteem (Axel Honneth) to each child’s capacity to develop meaningful relationships to or ‘resonance’ with an ever accelerating and uncontrollable world (Hartmut Rosa) and the people and communities in it. In practical terms, then, what can we draw on that is already immanent in our research, policy and practice triangle to transform children’s institutionalised learning?

Social Reproduction is not a Fairy Tale: A Conversation Between Axel Honneth, Silvia Federici, and Nancy Fraser

ABSTRACT This article establishes a dialogue between the philosopher Axel Honneth and the feminist scholars Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser. The aim is to emphasize the limits of Honneth’s philosophical reflections on the normative dimension of the family developed in Freedom’s Right. First, I present his ideas on how a normative expectation of social freedom permeates familial relations. According to him, after women entered the labour market, a normative notion of symmetrical participation in the family was produced. I aim to defend here that, whether normative or not, this idea of family is not only limited but also false, since it does not consider the dilemmas of social reproduction whose consequences contradict social freedom. Next, I develop Federici’s and Fraser’s analyses of how families have always faced conflicts concerning the requirements of social reproduction and have produced diverse forms of subjugation that go against the very idea of the family as an unquestioned sphere of freedom. It is necessary to analyse how families produce new forms of subjugation to transform familial relations into truly possible ways of being socially free – and this requires making visible some figures who structure the family, such as nannies, friends and grandparents.

承認理論的創造論重構——質疑和反思

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 唐文明教授以〈承認理論的創造論回歸〉為題，批判了近現代以黑格爾(Hegel)和霍耐特(Axe lHonneth)為首的承認理論，指出其核心缺失在於僅僅將人視為關注必死性的欲望主體，從而無法實現人與人，人與世界的根本承認。唐教授代之以創造論的承認理論：通過解讀奧古斯丁(Saint Augustine)的思想，提出了應該將人視為重視降生性的感應主體。唐教授並指出，重視天地創生的儒家思想，其人倫體系恰恰是建基於這樣一種重視降生性的感應主體。通過感應主體對創造源頭(上帝，或者上天)的感恩和體認，人與人，人與世界之間才可能有根本且不可缺失的承認。(撮要取自內文首段)
 In his paper, Tang Wenming notes that a fundamental flaw of modern recognition theories is seeing human beings as being a desire subject. Tang suggests that a recognition theory based on protology, which recognizes God's genesis of human beings and the world, has a much better prospect of realizing fundamental recognition. In this response, discuss two concerns with Tang's proposal: the essentially contested nature of religious faith in modern societies, and the unequal relationship between God and human beings. I also suggest that Confucian ethics can be interpreted to emphasize the equal participation of Heaven and humans, which consequently underpins an alternative understanding of Confucian recognition theory.

A need to be recognised: On the importance of shared semantics for young adults while not in education or employment

Young adults who are not in education or work are often depicted as deviating from the norm of gainful employment that is still widely shared across the Nordic countries. While it has been argued that young adults feel that they are being blamed for their NEET situation, this article seeks to identify the variety of interpretations they have of their situation and what kind of explanations can be proposed for the differences. Theoretically, perspectives from Axel Honneth's recognition theory are combined with Thomas Scheff's sociological work on shame to discuss the variations in the sentiments of young adults. Based on this framework, the article illuminates how young adults use the shared semantics available within their immediate circles to enable them to feel worthy of recognition despite their depicted deviation from the norm of gainful employment. Additionally, the article contributes to sociological debates on Honneth's recognition theory – especially its ambiguous concept of shared semantics – by making sense of the role of communities and institutions as providers of shared semantics. The findings are based on an abductive analysis of 35 in-depth interviews with young Finnish adults aged 18–29 who have been or are currently outside of education or employment.

Glanz und Elend des Sozialen

Abstract This article retraces and discusses the philosophical itinerary of Axel Honneth, from the groundbreaking book Struggle for Recognition up to the recent essays Freedom’s Right and The Idea of Socialism. In the first section, I examine Honneth’s programmatic concept of social pathology in relation to Ernst Cassirer’s idea of the secularisation of theodicy (i. e. the attribution of responsibility for human suffering to society) and to the enlightenment legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the second section, after assessing Honneth’s position in the tradition of critical theory, I analyse his philosophical views. I identify two different theoretical frameworks in Honneth’s work: on the one hand, the theory of the struggle for recognition; on the other hand, the recent theory of social freedom. While the first is grounded in a formal and allegedly universal anthropology, the second draws on the Hegelian doctrine of the ethical life and develops a historicist and internalist model of reconstructive social criticism. Finally, in the third section, I critically address the “divinisation of the social” entailed in Honneth’s project of social pathologies’ critique, and argue that Honneth’s trust in the normative power of intersubjectivity might be excessive.

The Reification of Non-Human Animals.

This paper takes up Axel Honneth's suggestion that we, in the 21st century Western world, should revisit the Marxian idea of reification; unlike Honneth, however, this paper applies reification to the ways in which humans relate to non-human animals, particularly in the context of scientific experiments. Thinking about these practices through the lens of reification, the paper argues, yields a more helpful understanding of what is regarded as problematic in those practices than the standard animal rights approaches. The second part of the paper offers ways of overcoming reification that go beyond Honneth's idea of recognition by introducing Iris Murdoch's idea of attention. This proposed strategy makes the ethical relevance of reification more salient and makes it possible to counter reification through a practice such as attention which, unlike recognition, can be consciously established.

Taking experiences of disrespectful misrecognition in blended workgroups seriously

ABSTRACT This article explores how experienced relational quality in blended workgroups consisting of permanent and temporary members is affected by temporary members’ normative expectations for the relationship. We draw on Axel Honneth’s four primary forms of recognition to illuminate the foundation of normative expectations. This focus on temporary members’ normative expectations contrasts with existing research in blended workgroups, focusing predominantly on the behavior of permanent members towards temporary ones. We draw on illustrative examples from a qualitative study of first – and third-year nursing students’ experiences during their internships at somatic hospitals. First – and third-year students report how they experience a deviation from their normative expectations as a threat to their positive self-image. In conclusion, we propose that the normative expectations characterizing the relationship between nursing students and permanent nurses can be described based on three forms of recognition:’ visibility,’ ‘respect,’ and ‘esteem.’

Roundtable on Axel Honneth’s Recognition: A Chapter in the History of European Ideas

Roundtable on Axel Honneth’s Recognition: A Chapter in the History of European Ideas

The Role of Recognition for Relational Theories of Autonomy

The article discusses the relationship between autonomy and recognition; it argues that recognition is a fundamental component in the development of autonomy-related competencies. Specifically, if autonomy is considered through the lens of relational accounts, recognition indeed affects self-authorization, or the ability that agents have to portray themselves as autonomous agents. Then, I define the concept of recognition by referring to Axel Honneth and Paul Ricoeur’s accounts of recognition. While Honneth’s conception falls into an essentialistic paradigm, Ricoeur’s one portrays recognition as a gift. In addition, I argue that Ricoeur’s theory of recognition allows a shift in the symbolic order of society through the concept of utopia. This shift helps in preventing marginalizing practices that are undermining the autonomy of minorities or economically disadvantaged subjects in a society.