Immanent Critique in Axel Honneth: From negative to normative reconstruction

• Grant number: 17/19198-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: February 15, 2018
• End date: April 14, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Nathalie de Almeida Bressiani
• Grantee: Nathalie de Almeida Bressiani
• Host Investigator: Rahel Simone Anna Jaeggi
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas (CCNH). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Humboldt University, Germany
• Associated research grant: 14/11611-3 - Public sphere and reconstruction: on the constitution of a reconstructive paradigm within Critical Theory, AP.TEM

Abstract

For those who follow Axel Honneth's work from the outset, The Right of Freedom can be interpreted as the result of an abandonment of his original project. Once central, the concept of recognition gives way to a conception of social freedom, the role of social conflicts is reduced, and the negative strategy of reconstruction, the phenomenology of the experience of disrespect, is replaced by a notion of normative reconstruction which focus on the normative structures of modern institutions. This alters not only what Honneth understands by immanent critique, but also its object and the method he uses to accomplish it. Given the importance and scope of these methodological changes, the main aim of this research is to understand them and to identify their causes and consequences. Continuing previous research on Honneth's theory of recognition and its reformulations during the 2000s, this research also aims to verify in what sense these methodological changes represent a rupture or an attempt to accomplish, in another way, objectives that accompany Honneth since his first texts. Among them, that of realizing an immanent critique of the capitalist economy and of overcoming critical theory's motivational and sociological deficits, by developing a non-functionalist theory of contemporary capitalist societies capable of explaining its normative dynamics. To achieve these aims, we will analyze not only The Right of Freedom and other texts published by Honneth in recent years, but also the work of some of his main critics and interlocutors such as Rahel Jaeggi, Emmanuel Renault and Christopher Zurn.