Owen, David. Review of Axel Honneth, PATHOLOGIES OF REASON. NDPR (October 2010).

Honneth, Alex.  Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory.  Trans. James Ingram.  New York: Columbia UP, 2009.

In this remarkably subtle volume of essays, Axel Honneth reflects on the tradition of which he is a distinguished contemporary representative, moving between historically guided reflection on systematic issues concerning the form and viability of the project of critical theory and insightful studies of aspects of the work of thinkers who inform this project (Kant and Freud) or directly contribute to it (Adorno, Benjamin, Franz Neumann, Alexander Mitscherlich, Albrecht Wellmer). Given the dialectical character of Honneth's engagement with the tradition of Critical Theory, one should not distinguish sharply between these two activities, and although the essays gathered in this volume can be read as free-standing pieces, they are more valuably engaged as a self-conscious reflection by Honneth on the conditions of his own activity as a Critical Theorist, that is, on the demands of the tradition within which he works and the contemporary requirements of maintaining this tradition. These essays, thus, reflect the working through of the relationship of inheritance and originality within which Honneth's intellectual activity is situated.

I will approach this collection initially in terms of the significance of the forms of self-reflection exhibited here for Honneth's own philosophical project (focusing on chapters 2-3 and the appendix) before turning to two more specific aspects, namely, Honneth's concern with psychoanalysis and its relationship to democratic politics (chapters 7-9) and his sympathetic reconstructions of the contemporary import of aspects of Adorno's work (chapters 5-6 with a side glance at chapter 10). . . .

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Bernstein, J. M. Review of Axel Honneth, THE PATHOLOGIES OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM. NDPR (June 2010).

Honneth, Axel. The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel's Social Theory. Trans. Ladislaus Löb. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. What do we want from political philosophy now? The fundamental enterprise of the discipline over the past half century seems to have been normative reassurance: providing vindication of universally binding ethical first principles as they apply to the basic structures regulating human interaction. One patent cost of philosophically securing reassurance has been the methodological necessity of abstracting the political subject from the concrete institutions in fact constitutive of modern life in general: the nuclear family, the capitalist market, and the liberal state. But what if not just the social identity of the modern subject is constituted through these three forms of social practice, but the ethico-political ambitions and meaning of moral modernity are themselves somehow congealed in the way in which these core institutions are articulated with one another? What if the joining of deontology and methodological individualism simultaneously obscures and deforms both the ethical contours of modernity and the way we as modern subjects live out our commitments? What if the methodological orientations of political philosophy in providing normative reassurance effectively alienate us from political reality? According to Axel Honneth, a fierce version of this thought is a premise of Hegel's social theory. Given its emphatic binding of categorial self-reflection to social reality, Hegel's Philosophy of Right (PR) has had a surprisingly insignificant effect on the politico-philosophical self-understanding of the present. Honneth avers that the most evident reasons for this lack of influence are, first, the belief that PR's apparent subordination of the freedom of the individual to the state has antidemocratic consequences; and second, the belief that the structure of Hegel's argument is bound to the conceptual apparatus of his Logic with its commitment to an ontological concept of spirit. Although running the risk of sacrificing what might be the true substance of PR for the sake of a stripped down reconstruction, Honneth's own commitment to what he terms "our own post-metaphysical standards of rationality" (5) leads him to adopt a method of indirect reactualization. Honneth is concerned with unearthing and validating the deep structures of Hegel's argument through which he is able to reposition the atomistic assumptions of social contract theory as practiced by Locke, Kant, and Fichte by folding them back into the dominant institutions of modern life, "those spheres of reciprocal recognition that must be preserved intact because they constitute the moral identity of modern societies" (5). Terming the dominant institutions "spheres of reciprocal recognition" turns Hegel's project into the forerunner to Honneth's own pioneering study, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (1995). Yet, and here is the hermeneutical rub, the theory of recognition does not transparently play the same formative role in PR as it does in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Honneth's philosophical gamble is thus to see if, by adopting an arm's length approach to Hegel's text its core argument can be reconstructed along recognitive lines. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19887.

"Recognition and Work," Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Maquarie University, October 15-17, 2007.

A central thesis of Axel Honneth’s influential book, The Struggle for Recognition, is that social conflicts have a moral dimension on account of the struggles for recognition they involve. The idea that particular groups or cultures may be owed recognition, and that states act unjustly when they deny the recognition that is due, has been at the heart of recent debates in political philosophy. The role that recognition might have in other contexts of social conflict has been less widely discussed. On the other hand, there is now a considerable body of sociological, economic and psychological literature to suggest that contexts of work have undergone a profound transformation, bringing with it new potentials for conflict, new expressions of discontent and a veritable ‘transvaluation of values’ traditionally associated with work. What can the theory of recognition tell us about these phenomena? And what implications does work - in its full anthropological and moral significance - have for the structure of theories of recognition? This recent conference brought together philosophers, sociologists, psychologists and economists to explore the complex relations between recognition and work. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.crsi.mq.edu.au/news_and_events/RecognitionandWork.htm. Audio recordings are now online here: http://www.crsi.mq.edu.au/Recognition/conf2007/audio.html.

Olson, Kevin. "Review of Bert van den Brink, et al., eds. RECOGNITION AND POWER." NDPR January 19, 2008.

van den Brink, Bert, and David Owen, eds. Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. In its best moments, academic dialogue brings together the right people at the right time to push a fertile research program to new levels. In this volume we have a carefully focused snapshot of such a moment. The research program in question is Axel Honneth's sustained, increasingly influential attempt to develop a social theory of recognition. The right people are a diverse group of philosophers and social scientists who have contributed to the broader understanding of recognition and its socio-political functions. Here, editors Bert van den Brink and David Owen bring the right people together in a carefully assembled volume focusing on a crucial and underdeveloped aspect of Honneth's theory: its relation to power. This book is made up of carefully worked out papers, but retains the energy of their original conference presentation at Utrecht University. It further captures the dialogical character of this event by including two detailed responses from Axel Honneth. The issue under consideration lies at the heart of Honneth's conception of recognition: the problem of power relations within the very practices of recognition. Honneth's theory is particularly vulnerable to such problems. It is realistic and comprehensive enough to consider recognition in many domains in which power is endemic, from intimate relations and domestic spheres to the institutional realms of law, politics, and the market economy. When we think of these domains as making vital contributions to the full development of individual subjects, we must ask whether power can at the same time exercise a hidden influence. In such circumstances, even normatively positive practices of recognition might produce effects that a critique of power -- a focus of Honneth's earlier work -- would find objectionable. This poses a further challenge for the theory: how can it separate out power-laden forms of recognition from those that are not distorted by power? Absent some such normative means, we may have to conclude that there is a problematic complicity between recognition and power. In this case both would be technologies for producing selves, equally dangerous in their capacity to create docile and useful subjects. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12203.