ABSTRACT
The vitality of a school of thought is based more on its capacity for self-criticism, change and continuous development through waves of rediscovery than on devotedly clinging to “the classics.” This dynamic of continuity through rupture explains the power of the Frankfurt School’s (FS) tradition of critical theory. Just as Jürgen Habermas, the most renowned representative of that tradition’s second generation, both continues and breaks with the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse (to name only the most central authors of the founding generation of the FS), Axel Honneth – as both a disciple of Habermas and the most prominent member of a third generation of that tradition – forges his own path in regard to the work of both those founding authors and with respect to Habermas. The FS tradition’s survival is now to a large extent dependent on Honneth’s theoretical effort to achieve continuity through rupture with Habermas’ work. The purpose of this chapter is to provide readers who are interested in the current state of the FS tradition with a guide to the main aspects of Honneth’s work and, based on this description, in the second section, to explore certain key ruptures with his predecessors, particularly Habermas.
Honneth’s social theory (1995a) is based on the thesis of a formal-anthropological order – one that is shared by authors such as Tzvetan Todorov (2001), Avishai Margalit (1996) and Charles Taylor (1992) – namely, that recognition is a fundamental mechanism of our social existence. This concept implies, on the one hand, that the development of subjectivity depends on recognition and that we can only conceive of ourselves as members of society to the extent that we are, and feel we are, recognized in certain essential aspects of our personality. It also means, on the other hand, that the social structures by which the forms of reciprocal recognition are established are fundamental to the very existence (or integration) of society.
