'Reconstructive Explanatory Critique: On Axel Honneth's Methodology of Critical Theory', written...

Written in 2010 but never submitted for publication

Reconstructive Explanatory Critique: On Axel Honneth’s Methodology of Critical Theory Piet Strydom Introduction Over the past two decades, Frankfurt Critical Theory has undergone a remarkable development which today points toward the methodological form of what may be called reconstructive explanatory critique. While capturing its major features, this title does not allow all the nuances of this new configuration to become visible. The whole becomes intelligible, however, from the combined perspective of the internal development of Critical Theory itself and the contextual conditions of that development. The late 1980s and early 1990s stand out as the time when these two dynamics started to interact in a transformative manner. Internally, the most significant development was the emergence of a new key concept – ‘immanent transcendence’ – which not only demanded a revitalization of Critical Theory’s left-Hegelian heritage, but also brought the relation between Critical Theory and pragmatism into new focus. Externally, one of the most important international debates of the past three decades provided the context in which this development became linked to a variety of antagonistic and competing positions – the debate about social criticism which has been generated, on a higher level above them, by the more familiar debates about the interpretative, pragmatic and cultural turns, liberalism and communitarianism, Foucault, pragmatism, pragmatic sociology and so forth. Through this debate, pressures and challenges were brought to bear on Critical Theory which called for internal investigation, development and responses as well as justifications. While this reflexive task was taken on in a collaborative manner, the work of Axel Honneth, generally regarded as the leading third generation critical theorist, proved to be central to the shaping of Critical Theory’s current methodological self-understanding. His writings exhibit in prismatic fashion a whole range of signs of reaction to and processing of the most pressing issues raised in the course of the debate. In the following, I focus on contemporary Critical Theory’s methodology as refracted in Honneth’s work through his appropriation of both internal developments and contextual stimuli and challenges. This is done by way of a reconstruction and critical assessment of his methodologically relevant publications. In pursuing this line of investigation, needless to say, it will be possible neither to cover the relevant developments in detail nor to do full justice to the intricacies of Honneth’s argumentation. In keeping with the above sketch, the argument is developed in three steps. The first task is to locate Honneth’s work in relation to the internal development of Critical Theory, supplemented with some indications of the contextualizing debate which is too expansive to attempt discussing in any detail (I). Against this background, it then becomes possible to reconstruct the development of Honneth’s position by following his major methodologically significant publications in terms of his understanding of Critical Theory’s overall methodological structure, multidimensional model of critique and tripartite methodology (II). Finally, I develop the critical observations offered along the way in their own right in order to arrive at an assessment of Honneth’s position which simultaneously points toward a still fuller and more justifiable articulation of Critical Theory’s methodology (III). To anticipate, the assessment reveals a twofold deficit: a sociological deficit adversely affecting his

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ability to substantiate the very core of his work, namely the interrelation of ‘mechanisms of recognition’ at the heart of the integration of society, and an epistemological deficit detracting from his ability to adequately clarify Critical Theory’s tripartite methodology. Both deficits are moreover responsible for the continuing uncertainty regarding the status and role of explanation in Critical Theory’s model of critique. I. Internal Development and Contextual Pressures In the post-war period during which Germany turned away from its Sonderweg, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas were faced with establishing relations among three traditions – namely hermeneutics, Critical Theory and positivism – in a way that would critically salvage the defensible elements of the core German tradition which continued unbroken through the Nazi period and place it in a Western-oriented democratic framework. Searching for a common element in these traditions, they found the shared assumption that human beings maintain a practical relation with their world in which ideas play a vital role and which could take a number of different forms. While this assumption has roots in classical German philosophy, it found expression in all three the traditions, especially in the form of the theory-praxis figure of thought. Beyond the limited instrumentalist and interactionist versions of positivism and hermeneutics, which became the topics of the positivist dispute and the Habermas-Gadamer debate respectively, the investigation of Critical Theory’s lineage led Apel and Habermas to the discovery that not just Marx represents the left-Hegelian tradition, but equally also Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, and Kierkegaard, the founder of existentialism. On this basis, Apel and Habermas laid down two basic parameters for the development of Critical Theory. The first, the common assumption of Marx, Peirce and Kierkegaard, was the necessity of a stereoscopic approach to society: since it would be inadequate to focus exclusively on the empirical manifestation of actual society, the rules or reflexive forms generatively regulating it need to be taken into account at the same time. Apel expressed this insight in the principle of the ‘dialectics of the real and the ideal communication community’1 which Habermas restated as ‘immanent transcendence’ in 1988 and 19892. The second parameter was that Critical Theory could no longer exclusively focus on world-constitution or transformation, like Marx, but has to attend to cooperative problem solving, as Peirce recommended, while also taking into account the dimension of subject formation, on which Kierkegaard concentrated. More basically, Apel and Habermas also saw Peirce as having made clear the necessary means implied in the left-Hegelian tradition to think through this whole complex of relations. It took the form of his medium quo or semiotic theory of signs and the associated sign-mediated theory of knowledge production, application and action with its multilevel ontology. Habermas and Apel drew out a variety of implications of this fuller understanding of the left-Hegelian tradition. Among these were, for example, a pluralist philosophy of social science, a communication theory of society, the normative foundations of critique, the threefold theory of signs, the relation between Critical Theory and pragmatism, and the concept of immanent transcendence. Yet partial emphases, incomplete developments and gaps remained. In addition to continuing the major lines, such as the normative foundations of critique and the communication theory of society, the third generation of critical theorists consequently became attentive to

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some of these inadequacies and introduced a series of qualifications, deviations and departures.3 As for Honneth,4 he started to take the lead by shifting from Habermas’ focus on language to the anthropologically rooted Hegelian problem of recognition and, with some assistance from Thomas McCarthy,5 by placing the concept of immanent transcendence on the agenda. As the developments internal to Critical Theory met the international debate, the third generation was compelled to give increasing attention to the question of the nature and character of Critical Theory. Since the intensifying debate in effect involved either the denial of the possibility of critique or the proposal of alternative concepts of critique, the weaknesses in Critical Theory’s self-conception and particularly its methodology were highlighted. Familiar names associated with significant contributions to the debate which the critical theorists could not ignore are, among others, Michel Foucault, John Rawls, Michael Walzer, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, and most recently Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot.6 Honneth’s recognition theory of course also became an object of perusal and criticism within Critical Theory itself, as the well-known exchange with Nancy Fraser attests.7 Awareness of the problems Critical Theory faces became so acute that, besides efforts on the part of James Bohman,8 McCarthy9 and Honneth himself, the emerging younger generation of critical theorists under Honneth’s wing overwhelmingly tends towards addressing the associated challenges.10

On the whole, the debate about social criticism provided a context for Honneth’s development of Critical Theory in terms of its own criteria by highlighting weaknesses and problems and raising challenges which had to be met. The processing of these stimuli added immensely to the articulation of Critical Theory’s methodological contours. Simultaneously, however, Honneth’s responses and innovations also made clear that the usual presentation of the debate as an antinomic field in which internal, context-bound social criticism and external, context-transcendent critique confront each other in an irresolvable contradiction is misguided. Once the multidimensional nature of Critical Theory’s concept of critique is appreciated, it becomes evident that the parameters of the debate are far too complex to be confined to the conventionally accepted internal-external or weak-strong distinction. Critical theory goes beyond it by reconstructively mediating between the immanent and transcendent moments, on the one hand, and by engaging in explanatory critique from the viewpoint of the observer and excluded, on the other – or, at least, this is what it seeks to achieve. II. Critical Theory’s Methodology as Refracted through Honneth Although Honneth has not stated his methodological position in either the same concise and coherent way or relatively fine technical detail as Habermas,11 a range of methodologically significant writings is available which allows a fairly precise idea of his intentions. These writings followed in two waves, as it were, once he had his own distinct recognition-theoretical position established in his habilitation thesis of 1992.12 The first wave, consisting of two essays, followed immediately upon the habilitation thesis, both of which were published in 1994. The first dealing with pathologies of the social was prepared as background to his assumption of a chair in social philosophy, and the second focusing on the social dynamics of disrespect is his inaugural address at the University of Berlin in 1993.13 Then, in a period of quite intense methodological reflection, there followed a second wave of four essays, two

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published in 2000 and two more in 2003 and 2004 respectively, in which he concentrated much more specifically on Critical Theory’s model of critique and its overall methodological structure. They dealt respectively with reconstructive critique with a genealogical proviso, disclosing critique, the methodological structure of Critical Theory and, finally, Critical Theory’s concern with the social pathology of reason.14 These methodologically central essays were supported and elaborated along the way by an occasional essay, an interview and various discussions as well as his 2005 Tanner Lectures on reification.15 Both sets of essays and their supporting materials exhibit the impact of the debate about social criticism, with Honneth taking on the challenges posed by all the major contributors. The first wave Social philosophy on an anthropological basis In the opening essay of 1994, Honneth16 approached the question of the basic methodological form of the diagnosis of social pathologies from the historical perspective of the lineage of social philosophy from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century. Irrespective of the vast differences among Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Arendt, Gehlen and Habermas, he found that for the purposes of diagnosis they all presupposed some version of a formal ethical perspective. Only by normatively referring to ideal social preconditions which would allow human flourishing could they identity and diagnose a state of social disorder. This formal ethical perspective, however, was underpinned by an unquestioned assumption concerning the universality of the favoured social conditions and validity of the diagnosis which became problematized in the late twentieth century. Honneth singles out Foucault as having been especially significant in this respect, but he mentions also Rorty which suggests awareness of the impact not only of the sociological power perspective, but also of critical history’s and the interpretative turn’s combined historicist decimation of universalism. It is the devastating thrust of this onslaught that Honneth saw as the challenge to be met by any contemporary attempt at diagnosing social pathologies. Each in his own particular way, Habermas and Taylor are the two authors who confronted this challenge but, despite their differences, Honneth regarded both as in effect having proposed some version of a sparse formal anthropology as the most plausible means for justifying the standards of evaluation necessary for the diagnosis of social pathologies. As regards the question of methodological form, this meant that social philosophy on an anthropological basis could proceed as a reflexive enterprise with the diagnosis of social pathologies by relating the historically specific values of those involved to the ideals of individual and social life implied by them. Immanent transcendence as methodological structure of Critical Theory In his inaugural address, Honneth17 approached the same question as in the previous essay, but rather from the more specific viewpoint of Critical Theory. This perspective compelled a much more focused consideration of the history leading up to the present, with the result that the question regarding the methodological form of diagnostic analysis was transformed into the question of the characteristic features of the left-Hegelian tradition which set the parameters of Critical Theory. The most remarkable aspect of the inaugural address is the introduction of the concept of ‘immanent transcendence’.18 Not only does it give formal expression to the configuration of anthropologically based, historically specific values and corresponding ideals of the good life pinpointed at the end of the first essay, but it is

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presented also as the key concept which encapsulates the characteristic features of the left-Hegelian tradition and secures Critical Theory’s unique identity. Methodologically, its importance resides in the fact that it lays down the outer parameters of the very form of Critical Theory’s central endeavour of diagnosing, explaining and critiquing unjustifiable social states of affairs.19

The sense of the concept of immanent transcendence which distinguishes Critical Theory’s form of critique from the rest, resides in the basic conceptual and methodological requirement that the adoption and exercise of the critical perspective must have an objective foothold in social reality. The latter can be anything from a need or experience to a movement, social force or ‘pre-theoretical praxis’20 harbouring a critical viewpoint within society which at least potentially presses toward change, realization, fulfilment or emancipation. But what is decisive is that it should be a matter of an instance of ‘socially embodied reason’ which contains ‘a surplus of rational norms or organizational principles’ demanding and motivating actual realization.21

It is this understanding of the concept of immanent transcendence that would later provide Honneth with a basis for the defence of his theory of recognition against Fraser’s22 criticism from the point of view of redistribution or the theory of participation. In Honneth’s judgement, she did not do justice to the moment of transcendence, despite her employment of the formula of a dialectic of immanence and transcendence, due to connecting too immediately or directly to empirical manifestations such as contemporary phenomena of claims making or protest. What is required, instead, is a theoretically informed identification of instances of immanently embodied reason and their implied transcendent socio-practical normative principles. Examples from the history of Critical Theory include Marx’s prioritization of labour, Adorno’s flight into art, Marcuse’s recourse to the biological drives, Habermas’ singling out of language and, of course, Honneth’s own preference for recognition. Each one of these theoretical concepts locates a latent social force with the propensity time and time again to lead to the transgression of the status quo’s limits in terms of its implied situation-transcendent normative reference point. Honneth thus regards the conceptual necessity entailed by immanent transcendence as the basic ‘methodological structure’23 of Critical Theory which it inherited from left-Hegelianism and which, quite differently from Horkheimer and Adorno who could still simply assume it, today has to be recovered if Critical Theory is to meet the demands and challenges of the time. The second wave Reconstructive critique with a genealogical proviso In his inaugural address, Honneth was content with a general exposition of the important concept of immanent transcendence encapsulating Critical Theory’s overall methodological structure rather than pursuing the ideally required detailed analytic presentation. In the following two essays of the year 2000, he then moved on to dwell a little on this structure and, in particular, to fill it out in an interesting yet not fully integrated manner by specifying some features of Critical Theory’s model of critique. Of the two essays, the expansive one focused on reconstructive critique is more important than the other dealing with disclosing critique. Both essays engage directly with the debate about weak context-bound and strong context-transcendent critique,

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but what they reveal is the process of interaction and exchange with other approaches through which alone Critical Theory is able to develop in a meaningful and rounded way without surrendering its own unique identity. Central to the essay on reconstructive critique with a genealogical proviso is the general methodological structure of Critical Theory which serves not only as the platform from which other approaches are dealt with, but also as the framework within which whatever fruitful insights deriving from them are integrated into Critical Theory. Honneth identifies it with ‘the left-Hegelian premise’.24 Although not explicitly calling it ‘immanent transcendence’ as he did earlier, here he offers a somewhat closer though by no means extensive analytical description of it. According to this left-Hegelian principle, the reproduction of society is carried by forms of social practice in which human achievements of reason are embodied. While such achievements are available in the form of context-transcending normative ideals, this does not entail that they are external to society or, even worse, that they are pies in the transcendent sky. On the contrary, they spring from and contain the very reason that is immanent in society in the various social practices through which it is reproduced. To the extent that social practices achieve something and thus give rise to normative ideals which then recursively generate and regulate further practices, left-Hegelianism assumes that a learning process has taken place. Learning in this sense forms part of the process of the historical realization of socially and practically relevant ideas of reason and signals a step in the rationalization of social relations or normative progress. Although not mentioned in this context, it is central to Honneth’s25 understanding, of course, that processes of this kind cannot and do not take place without tension, struggle and conflict. Be that as it may, from the analysis it follows that what is characteristic of the ‘methodological structure of the left-Hegelian model of critique…is its unique combination of immanent procedures and a context-transcending concept of rationality: critique gets support from those ideals in a given social order of which it can simultaneously be demonstrated that they are the outcome of progress in the process of societal rationalization’.26 It is on this left-Hegelian premise of immanent transcendence that ‘the unique identity of Critical Theory’27 depends, quite apart from the specific theoretical forms it is given through the adoption of such different concepts as labour, human drives, communication or recognition. Locating Critical Theory in the left-Hegelian tradition enables Honneth to distinguish its model of critique from two competitors which not only gained a growing following in past decades, but also came to represent more or less serious challenges to it. The first is Michael Walzer’s28 concept of locally operating social criticism and the second John Rawls’29 concept of the criticism of injustice. According to Walzer’s hermeneutic position, on the one hand, social criticism is possible only on the basis of interpretation. The moral principles serving as standard of criticism can only interpretatively be drawn from the values or culture of the community or society at which the criticism is directed. This is necessary, in any case, otherwise the critic would be too distant from the object of criticism, while those criticized would be able neither to grasp the point of the criticism nor to convert it into corrective action. For Honneth, however, critique cannot be merely hermeneutic. Not only do community or societal values typically fail to cover some category of the excluded, but it is also necessary to justify why the ideal appealed to possesses normative validity. In both these respects left-Hegelianism surpasses hermeneutics. According to Rawls’

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position, on the other hand, the criticism of existing institutions requires a reference to normative principles of justice. Inspired by Kant, he regards the establishment of such normative principles as requiring a process in which they are generated through a procedure which is agreed and accepted by all those involved. Rather than being given or readily available, the normative principles making criticism possible must first of all be normatively grounded or constructed. While this constructivist approach has become the predominant model of critique since the late 1980s, Honneth holds against it that its emphasis on procedural norm generation causes it to lose touch with social reality. Instead of linking up with normative ideals embodied in society itself, as Marx in his critique of capitalism insisted, or of reflexively taking into account both its context of genesis and its context of application, as Horkheimer demanded, ideals are constructed which at best allow the critique of injustices but occlude social pathologies. The left-Hegelian approach of Critical Theory differs precisely from Rawls’ Kantian constructivism in so far as the rational normative quality of the context-transcendent ideals to which it appeals is arrived at not by pure construction, but rather by the reconstruction of the reason immanent in society itself. Whereas left-Hegelianism methodologically takes the general form of immanent transcendence, Honneth’s questioning of both weak hermeneutic criticism and strong constructivist criticism suggests that its specific procedural form is that of reconstruction. Reaching beyond and above hermeneutics and constructivism, reconstruction establishes a relation between immanence and transcendence and mediates the two. Incorporating both the interpretative and the projective moments while outstripping them, reconstruction relates the immanent societal dimension to the context-transcendent moral dimension and shows that social reality is generated and regulated by the rational potential of society in the form of normatively valid moral ideals or ideas of reason. Thus the basic contours of Critical Theory’s model of critique, which Honneth seeks to capture by the expression ‘reconstructive critique’, become clearly visible. The immanent and transcendent moments represent the outer parameters, while reconstruction is the mediating moment which actualizes their relationship and indicates the direction in which the development goes. But to these bare bones still further dimensions need to be added – first ‘genealogical’ and second ‘disclosing’ critique. Before attending to Honneth’s enhancement of the model, however, a brief word about the substantiation of reconstruction is necessary. Although Honneth offers only a formal characterization of reconstruction in the essay under discussion, it is evident from both earlier and later publications30 precisely what he has in mind. It is particularly at this level of the theoretical substantiation of the methodological concept of reconstruction that he differs from Habermas. For Habermas, reconstruction makes explicit the rational potential of linguistic rules which, in terms of universal pragmatics, point toward normative principles such as a common external objective world, second an interpersonally well-ordered shared social world, third an abstract and flexible practical ego-identity free from psychopathological manifestations, and finally communicative processes allowing the unhampered use of linguistic rules. Honneth, for whom communicative rationalization structured by linguistic rules is so abstract and distant that it transpires above the heads and behind the backs of those involved, by contrast brings reconstruction directly to bear on actual moral experience, particularly experiences of disrespect.31 Instead of language, recognition is at the centre of attention. Accordingly, the rational

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potential of recognitional relations becomes normatively palpable in the form not only of moral ideals such as love, respect and esteem which together make up Honneth’s formal model of the good life,32 but also in the form of the constant maintenance of the memory or basic awareness of the intrinsic value of others as human beings.33

Irrespective of what theoretical form it is given, reconstruction enables critique by making available normative principles in the light of which social institutions, practices, states of affairs and self-images can then be exposed as unjustifiably deviating from the ideals implied by their very own rationality. It is evident that reconstructive critique in this sense is a form of normative critique. Now, it is precisely as such that it is vulnerable to the kind of genealogical critical history which Foucault34 devised on a Nietzschean basis. In this case, genealogical critique is directed at society in terms of the compulsive relapse, paradoxical reversal or ironic transposition of its moral ideals or normative principles themselves into disciplining and normalizing practices which stabilize existing power structures and relations. It is indeed to Foucault’s challenge that Honneth responds in defence of Critical Theory’s characteristic reconstructive critique. His strategy, however, is not the direct incorporation of Foucaultian genealogy, but rather backtracking to an earlier instance of the reception of Nietzsche in the tradition of Critical Theory itself – namely Horkheimer, Marcuse and Adorno’s.35 These authors appropriated Nietzsche’s genealogical model in the late 1930s, but instead of substituting it for their reconstructive model, they incorporated it into Critical Theory as ‘a metacritical perspective’.36 In the face of the National-Socialists’ instrumentalization of moral principles for their own despicable ends, the three leading critical theorists not just developed a productive doubt about the robustness of moral ideals and principles when subjected to such abusive manipulation, but also realized that inconspicuous semantic drift could erode the meaning of socio-practical cultural forms and hollow out their normative core. Since then, a genealogical moment of critique forms part of Critical Theory’s model of reconstructive critique as a moment of critically reflecting on reconstructed formal structures in the awareness that their normative force could either have been instrumentalized for the purposes of creating precisely the opposite effect or have become corrupted over time. For Honneth, obviously, the re-actualization of this metacritical moment under contemporary conditions requires the relinquishment of the relapse thesis in the generalized form which led Nietzsche, the early critical theorists as well as Foucault to issue negativistic claims about society as a totality. Rather than in this totalizing form, genealogy forms part of Critical Theory as a metacritical moment applying to a state of affairs which is possible only under certain determinate circumstances. It is as such that genealogical critique represents a proviso that always has to be borne in mind in the course of the exercise of reconstructive critique. Since it specifies but a condition to be observed by reconstructive critique, however, Honneth regards genealogy as ‘a parasitic procedure of critique’37 which presupposes a normative justification it cannot supply itself. At this stage, Critical Theory’s model of critique takes on the fuller form of an immanent-transcendence methodological structure that is procedurally activated by reconstruction leading to reconstructive critique which itself is subject to the genealogical conditionality. Yet there is something very remarkable about this presentation of the model. Although Honneth links reconstruction emphatically to social reality through institutions, social practices and moral experience, he gives no consideration to, nor even mentions, explanation in this important methodological

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essay aimed at establishing Critical Theory’s model of critique. This is peculiar since critique is impossible without explanation. The emphasis in the essay is largely normative and not even genealogy, which is bereft of all normative reference, is able to lure him away from it. In his earlier work he did refer to the need for Critical Theory to go beyond ‘a merely normative analysis’ by uncovering the ‘socio-structural causes’38 responsible for social deformation and pathologies, and in his later work39 he would come back to the question of causes and explanation. At this stage, however, he seems caught up in the project of normative justification which has absorbed so much energy in Critical Theory circles since Habermas first raised the problem. As will become evident later, however, explanation remains a largely unresolved problem for Honneth. Disclosing critique Honneth gave attention also to another form of critique as one that could be assumed by Critical Theory – namely, ‘disclosing critique’.40 Indeed, he considers Horkheimer and Adorno’s controvertial book, Dialectic of Enlightenment,41 as paradigmatically exemplifying this type of critique of society. He wrote and published on it in the same period as the essay dealing with reconstructive and genealogical critique, and he was likewise prompted to do so by the debate on social criticism which is analyzed in some detail in the essay. The motive for writing an essay on the topic in fact seems to have been less the need to clarify the nature of disclosing critique from Critical Theory’s perspective than defending the Dialectic of Enlightenment against its disparate range of critics and detractors. As regards disclosing critique, the strongest prompts to take up the idea came from two contributions to the debate. The first is undoubtedly Rorty’s42 linking of the Heideggerian notion of disclosure to the idea of the expansion of the shared vocabulary of a cultural form of life by, for example, a liberal novelist, poet or journalist, which could enhance the community’s understanding of moral issues or contribute to reform. The second more important one is Bohman’s43 careful analysis of the nature of disclosing critique which basically shaped Honneth’s presentation in the essay. It allowed him to understand the Dialectic of Enlightenment as a distinct genre. On the one hand, it cannot simply be equated with literature along Rortian lines, since it is about critiquing a social pathology and thus it allows newly disclosed facts to play a role in an ‘explanation’44 relevant to the production and reproduction of society. On the other, it does possess a certain literary quality in so far as a disclosing critique of society is able to fulfil its function of ‘chang[ing] our value beliefs by evoking a new way of seeing the social world’45 only by employing linguistic means such as narrative, metaphor and rhetorical figures, rather than description, analysis and argumentation, and thus maintaining at best an indirect relation to possible truth. According to Honneth’s reading, the Dialectic of Enlightenment delivers a critique of society by following a model of ‘evaluative world disclosure’46 for the purposes of which rhetorical devices such as narrative, chiasmus and exaggeration are used. The result is the painting of the familiar features of capitalist culture in such a highly stylized manner that our world appears in a completely different light – a social form of life whose institutions, practices and individual self-images are pathological. Its presentation as a message in a bottle cast into the sea by shipwreck sailors suggests that it was addressed to future generations to consider and, if acceptable, to change themselves and their world. According to additional clarification provided by a discussion that took place in 2005, Honneth regards disclosing critique as a type of

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‘intervening critique’47 which breaks directly into the self-understanding of those involved. Rather than being individualistically conceived as in the case of Rorty, however, the object of critique is something collectively generated, something referring to social structures. As a presentation of social relations or mechanisms in a manner that unveils a tendency of social reality, its significance lies in preparing the ground for rational public debate and stimulating democratic value- and will-formation. Honneth sees disclosing critique as a special type of world-disclosing critique not just in the sense of being different from culture criticism, but also as one that demands a certain talent and temperament over which, he believes, he himself does not dispose.48 For this reason, he prefers to read Horkheimer and Adorno rather from a social theoretical angle. This may also be the reason why, despite scattered seemingly more positive remarks to which I come back later, he does not integrate disclosure into Critical Theory’s model of critique, thus giving rise to a question regarding its methodological force. Explanation and Critical Theory’s tripartite methodology Besides reconstruction, genealogy and the uncertain status of disclosing critique, the important last of the four essays49 making up the second wave of Honneth’s methodological publications is characterized by an emphatic insistence on the indispensability of explanation. It is presented in the context of a discussion of Critical Theory’s intellectual legacy which effectively takes the form of an outline of the tripartite methodology whereby its model of critique is put into practice. Against the background of the tradition’s concern with the pathological deformation of reason in the historical process of its actualization and realization, which actually pinpoints the problem of immanent transcendence, the essay lays out the more specific threefold methodological pattern embracing the constitution of the object of critique, second diagnostic analysis involving reconstruction and eventuating in explanatory critique, and finally linking with addressees to convert knowledge into praxis. The first methodological principle or moment50 is Critical Theory’s normative concern with social situations which are characterized by negative features constituting a social pathology and indicating a deficiency in social rationality. Accordingly, Honneth’s own starting point, which as an initiating vague feeling or perception opens the way for the constitution of the object, is ‘the suspicion of a social pathology of capitalist society as a whole’.51 Inspired by Kantian ideas of reason which Hegel ethically transformed, Critical Theory proceeds by approaching the actual situation on the basis of the idea of a concrete rational ethical universal which has become possible historically yet is not realized in the present in social relations. The motivation for this focus is to make a contribution to the alleviation of the situation by imagining and once again identifying a form of common practices according to which those involved could then orient themselves in the process of cooperative self-realization and the creation of a meaningful common world. The second methodological principle or moment52 is Critical Theory’s unique form of explanatory critique which depends on reconstruction and a diagnostic analysis of the actual situation in question. Blurring the widely accepted positivistic distinction between description and prescription, it seeks to provide a critical explanation of whatever causes the deformation or blockage in the historical process of the

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realization of reason leading to the social pathology. Beyond purely normative liberal and communitarian forms of criticism which seek to expose injustices, Critical Theory not only has recourse to the accumulated potential of historically produced values or normative ideas, but for the purposes of critique it also pursues an ‘explanatory analysis’ – a causally oriented, critical ‘historical…sociological explanation’53 of the social structures or mechanisms which generate the state of social negativity. Besides being causal, such structures or mechanisms are assumed simultaneously also to induce silence and apathy by disguising the very state of affairs which would otherwise provide urgent grounds for public disquiet, reaction and criticism. Since Marx, Weber and Lukács, critical theorists – including Honneth himself54 – have always proceeded from the basic premise that capitalism is the root cause in so far as it is a social form of organization driven by a social imaginary giving priority to reifying forms of thinking, practices and institutions. However, Critical Theory assumes further that the very process of the realization of reason which has become blocked also harbours a historical learning process mediated by conflicts over the monopolization of knowledge which could contribute to the future surmounting of the detrimental causal force. It should be noted that although he regards the explanatory critique of social pathologies as Critical Theory’s central concern in advancing this learning process, Honneth actually recognises three different objects of critique: social pathology, injustice and reification.55 Ultimately, however, all these forms of critique depend on the criticizable phenomena in their focus being led back to social developments, conditions or social practices – what, in a word, Honneth calls ‘societal structures’56 – which systematically damage and deform society. The third and final methodological principle or moment Honneth57 singles out concerns the relation of theory and practice. Through its explanatory critique, Critical Theory relates reflexively to a potentially transformative praxis by taking into account the conditions of the conversion of knowledge into praxis – from the suitability of the explanation and the appropriate perspective for the conversion, through the capacities and readiness of the addressees, audience or public, to what Critical Theory shares with members of society which could serve as a bridge between them, especially a common space of reasons. In relation to the audience, the critical theorist adopts different attitudes: the position of the social scientist addressing the scientific community and of the ‘critical intellectual’58 addressing the democratic public as a whole who, however, should be distinguished from the ‘normalized intellectual’59 typical of our time. Rather than taking intellectual positions within the bounds of the political consensus on the issues of the day with an eye on the Zeitgeist in order quickly to deliver persuasive arguments with a direct effect on opinions in the public sphere, the critical intellectual proceeds from a well-founded theory to problematize widely-accepted models of practice, need schemata and attitudinal syndromes with a view to contributing indirectly to a medium-term re-orientation and a learning process with long-term consequences. While admirably clear, however, here as elsewhere the reader does not gain a definite sense of a systematic appreciation of the mutual implication of the three principles or moments – which means, of the imaginative forging and maintaining of relations among the initial feeling engendered by a quality of social reality which imposes itself on us, the actual objective situation confronting the critical theorist, and the conceptual-discursive symbolization recursively linking the critical theorist with the practice of everyday life.

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III. Beyond the Sociological and Epistemological Deficit From the preceding reconstruction of Honneth’s position on contemporary Critical Theory’s methodology it became evident that there are some areas which require further scrutiny. More precisely, problems showed up in three closely related areas – namely, the model of critique, theory and finally the tripartite methodology. Model of critique One of Honneth’s greatest achievements is not only to have made the concept of immanent transcendence recognizable as Critical Theory’s overall methodological structure, but also to have related the methodological procedure of reconstruction to it. To my knowledge, he has nowhere offered a systematic statement of this position, but it is quite clear from a perusal of his work. Reconstruction involves the extrapolation of a context-transcendent set of normative principles in the form of his formal model of the good life embracing love, respect and esteem from the immanent, anthropologically-based expectations of recognition entertained by the members of society. In each concrete case of investigation, where the employment of these normative principles is subject to genealogical control, the focus is on the tension, conflict or struggle for recognition which is motivated by instances of abuse, disrespect or humiliation which indicate the inadequate realization of the normative principles in actual social life. Reconstructive critique is a normative critique made possible by the uncovering of the discrepancy between the normative principles and their actualization or realization. To be more than a merely normative critique, however, Honneth demands that it be backed up by a historical and sociological explanation of the discrepancy with reference to social structures or mechanisms. Since he for a considerable period proved not quite able to extricate himself from the sway of the second generation’s concern with the question of the normative foundations of critique, however, he has neglected this explanatory dimension. This tendency has been exacerbated by a multidimensional theoretical deficit which he is in one respect seeking to correct since 2003, but in another in principle may be unable to resolve due to premises he had established early in his career. I shall return to this theoretical deficit, but not before raising a few more questions, first about the opaque matter of explanation. As regards reconstruction, what precisely is the object of this procedure? According to Habermas’ understanding, reconstruction differs from interpretation in that its object is something ‘essential’.60 This gives rise to the post-empiricist issue of the identification of the precise mechanisms61 in terms of which to account for reality. This consideration sharpens the question of the relation between reconstructive critique and explanation into the question of the relation between the reconstructive model making normative critique possible and historical-sociological explanation. Is the reconstructive model itself not already a theoretical model which allows explanation with reference to certain recognitionally relevant essential features or mechanisms of social reality? If so, how does explanation at this level relate to historical-sociological explanation, and to which mechanisms do they refer respectively? A thought that immediately occurs is that it would seem as though it is not just social pathologies that call for explanation, but also social injustices which, therefore, cannot simply be surrendered to the interpretativists.

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Besides explanation, the sense and place of disclosing critique in Honneth’s model of critique also represents a problem. As we have seen, he appropriated it for Critical Theory by identifying it as the form of critique actually operating in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, but due to its uniqueness in the history of Critical Theory he then reserved it for that text alone. Apparently contradictory positions taken subsequently, however, are liable to create confusion about the status and role of disclosing critique. Whereas recently Honneth62 distanced himself from this form of critique, he is on record on a number of occasions suggesting possible ways in which it could function in an integrated way in Critical Theory. As regards the practical significance of critique, Honneth63 submits that the use of a moral vocabulary can encourage the recovery from repressed public language of the means to express and articulate moral experiences on the part of research subjects. Also general audiences can be addressed in such a way that critique opens new possibilities which could be appropriated as reference points for the creation of new perspectives. In a society characterized by a tendency toward one-sided and false self-descriptions, reinforced by positivistic utilitarianism and technocracy, in his view,64 it is particularly important to provide alternative critical descriptions which could bring out the submerged and unrecognized moral nuances of conflicts. He even stresses that critique involves an insistence on and a ‘visionary’ articulation of the surplus of meaning and untapped normative potential of the principles of recognition which are always incorporated in a deficient form in the institutional order.65

From these examples it is abundantly clear that critique has a disclosing function and that it must be accommodated in the model of critique. If one takes Bohman’s66 criticism of the traditional predominance of the destructive function of critique and its correction by simultaneously observing also its constructive function, and if one further relates this approach to both the immanent and transcendent moments, then a proposal suggests itself. Critique has complementary exposing and disclosing functions, negatively targeting what is indefensible and positively opening up alternatives or possibilities, and this twofold function could be applicable not only to situation-specific orientations, practices and institutions, but also to situation-transcendent moral ideals generatively regulating those situational features. In this way, disclosing critique could be integrated into Critical Theory’s model alongside reconstructive, genealogical and historical-sociological explanatory critique.67

Theory Theoretically, Honneth’s achievement lies in his having introduced, while sharing with the other critical theorists the left-Hegelian immanent-transcendence structure, a new version of Critical Theory. Whereas Habermas replaced earlier versions based on labour or human drives by language, Honneth moved yet a step further by substituting the theory of recognition for that of language. Vitally, for him, this shift allowed him to shake off the predominant late twentieth-century obsession with political philosophy focused on justice in favour of social philosophy concerned with diagnosing social pathologies.68 By so doing, he believes, he was able to correct ‘the sociological deficit’69 plaguing both the early Frankfurt School and Habermas’ thinking, for it enabled him to bring social movements, conflict and struggles for recognition back centre stage. Here, however, a peculiarity gives rise to a question. Considering that Honneth shares with Habermas the communication paradigm; considering further that Honneth proposes to correct the one-sidedness of Habermas’

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language-theoretical version of this paradigm with a no less one-sided recognition-theoretical version; and considering, finally, that since these two versions are but the sides of the same coin – considering all this, then it must be possible to find the connecting link between them and to shift beyond both Habermas and Honneth to the more comprehensive moment embracing both. In my view, there is not just a theoretical – that is, a sociological – deficit in Habermas, as Honneth maintains, but equally also in the latter himself. When one looks closely at Honneth’s70 central concern, what is needed becomes apparent sooner or later. His concern is the recovery of the very core of the social, namely the incessant contestation and conflict over the integration of society in the form of an order of mutual recognition. Accordingly, the task of Critical Theory is the study of ‘the integration of the members of society through mechanisms of mutual recognition, while keeping in mind that such mechanisms are contested and thus represent the very object of struggles for recognition’.71 The deficit in Honneth consists precisely in the lack of the necessary sociological means to fill out the conflictual interrelation of mechanisms of mutual recognition and the resulting temporary practical syntheses thus established. For instance, what precisely are the ‘mechanisms’ in question? One searches in vain for an answer in Honneth, while sociology instructed by cognitive science has been giving attention to them for some time.72 The question of what exactly the process of interrelation of these mechanisms is could also be posed. Honneth indeed assumes the left-Hegelian theory of a collective or ‘generation-transcending learning process’73 which is borne by the conflictual historical process of the deformed yet also correctable actualization and realization of reason. Yet again, however, the sociological means for theorising and analysing such learning processes are not to be found in his writings, again despite the fact that some progress has been recorded in cognitively relevant sociology.74 Then there is the theoretical root of the problem Honneth’s experiences with the provision of historical-sociological explanation in support of Critical Theory’s normative reconstructive critique. Considered properly, in fact, such explanation is ultimately what is most characteristic of Critical Theory since, as explanatory critique, it is what is supposed to communicate an insight into the operation of societal structures or mechanisms with such a rational force that it enlightens and convinces those involved to transform their thinking and action and to engage in cooperative practices. His own position, however, does not cover this dimension of causal factors and mechanisms. After the symposium on ‘recognition and power’ held at the University of Utrecht in 2003, Honneth75 admitted that the lack of a substantive sociological theory able to deal with power is one of the most significant lacunae in his work which needs correction. In the meantime, he has set to work characterizing explanatory critique as the unique feature of Critical Theory,76 but such assertion does not yet solve anything. The root of the problem, however, may well lie still deeper. It could be traced to Honneth’s77 long-established, strict adherence to praxis philosophy and action theory which prevents him from accounting for institutional and systemic phenomena. Tripartite methodology Finally, there is another matter that adversely conditions Honneth’s ability to deal with explanation and, more generally, the methodology of Critical Theory. It is of an epistemological kind. While he is indeed acutely aware of the relation between

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Critical Theory and pragmatism and draws on the latter in various ways for the enrichment of the former, his appropriation of pragmatism in the context of his revitalization of the left-Hegelian tradition is incomplete. It is remarkable that he nowhere attends to or even acknowledges the threefold sign-mediated, medium quo or semiotic theory of knowledge production, application and action presupposed by the young Marx, worked out in fine detail by Peirce, implicitly employed by Lukács, Horkheimer and Adorno, revived by Apel and defended also by Habermas.78 The result is twofold. Generally, he fails to acknowledge the mutual interplay of abduction, induction and deduction in developing knowledge about social reality’s emotionally felt, existentially confronted objective and finally conceptual-discursively captured dimensions through the mediation of icons, indices and symbols. More specifically, he tends to reduce abduction to hypothesis,79 to neglect the objective dimension enabling explanation80 and to slide into a new foundationalism, as he tends to do in his Tanner Lectures.81 That the tendentially static account of Critical Theory’s tripartite methodology with positivist, normativist and foundationalist features does not necessarily accord with Honneth’s deepest intuitions, however, is suggested by his robust response to Fraser’s criticism that he is epistemologically caught in the trap of the myth of the given. Not only does he emphatically reject the ‘unmediated’82 mentalist position, but he also suggests that the three methodologically vital dimensions or moments of diffuse emotional perception, historically specific social conditions and social claims, and established normative principles subject to moral justification stand in a dynamic relation of mutual implication. There can be no doubt about the fact, however, that conscious reflection on the medium quo theory would benefit both the systematic development and the justification of Critical Theory’s methodology. In fact, only then would its model of reconstructive explanatory critique assume its proper contours and fall into its rightful place. Notes This article benefited from a research project on ‘The New Cognitive Social Science’ conducted under the Open Research Achievement Award bestowed on the author by the Faculty of Arts, University College Cork, Ireland. 1 Karl-Otto Apel, Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, tr. Glynn Adey and David Frisby (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980) 280, also 140. 2 Jürgen Habermas, Texte und Kontexte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991) 127; Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, tr. William Mark Hohengarten (Cambridge: Polity, 1992) 103. 3 Among these were: (i) the appeal to praxis philosophy to overcome the dualism of lifeworld and system in order to create room for agency such as social movements – e.g. Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (London: Hutchinson, 1978); Axel Honneth, Kritik der Macht: Reflexionsstufen einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985); (ii) the development of a theory of structure formation allowing for collective learning and institutionalization to fill a conspicuous gap in the theory of the process of constitution of society – e.g. Max Miller, Kollektive Lernprozesse: Studien zur Grundlegung einer soziologischen Lerntheorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986); Klaus Eder, Die Vergesellschaftung der

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Natur: Studien zur sozialen Evolution der praktischen Vernunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988); Klaus Eder, The Social Construction of Nature: A Sociology of Ecological Enlightenment, tr. Mark Ritter (London: Sage, 1996); (iii) the introduction of the feminist perspective and a pluralization of the public sphere – e.g. Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: On the Foundations of Critical Social Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices (Cambridge: Polity, 1989); (iv) and the pragmatization of Critical Theory in order to do justice both to the impurity of the historical realization of reason – e.g. Thomas McCarthy, ‘Philosophy and Critical Theory’, David C. Hoy and Thomas McCarthy, Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) 5-100 – and to the democratic organization of critical social research and knowledge production – e.g. James Bohman, ‘Theories, Practices, and Pluralism: A Pragmatic Interpretation of Critical Social Science’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29, no. 4 (1999) 459-80. 4 Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung: Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992); Axel Honneth, Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, tr. John Farrell, Mitchell Ash and Joseph Ganahl (Cambridge: Polity, 2007) 63-79; Axel Honneth, ‘The Point of Recognition: A Rejoinder to the Rejoinder’, Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003) 237-67. 5 Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993); McCarthy, ‘Philosophy and Critical Theory’. 6 Foucault commands increasing attention from Honneth who has been stimulated in particular by the new wave of Foucault reception. See: Axel Honneth and Martin Saar, eds, Michel Foucault: Zwischenbilanz einer Rezeption, Frankfurter Foucault Konferenz 2001 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003); and Axel Honneth, ‘Stationen auf dem Weg zu einer Kritische Theorie der Anerkennung: Gespräch mit Francesc Hernàndez und Benno Herzog’, ed. Mauro Basaure, Jan Philipp Reemstma and Rasmus Willig, Erneuerung der Kritik: Axel Honneth im Gespräch (Frankfurt: Campus, 2009), 175-83, here 177-78. Honneth’s engagement with French pragmatic sociology started with Boltanski’s Adorno Lectures in Frankfurt in 2008 and the discussion between the two of them. See: Luc Boltanski and Axel Honneth, ‘Soziologie der Kritik oder Kritische Theorie? Ein Gespräch mit Robin Celikates’, ed. Rahel Jaeggi and Tilo Wesche, Was ist Kritik? (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2009) 81-114; and Axel Honneth, ‘Verflüssigung des Sozialen: Zur Gesellschafstheorie von Luc Boltanski und Laurent Thévenot’, WestEnd: Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 5, 84-103. 7 Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? 8 James Bohman, New Philosophy of Social Science: Problems of Indeterminacy (Cambridge: Polity, 1991). 9 McCarthy, ‘Philosophy and Critical Theory’. 10 Among them are: Rahel Jaeggi, Entfremdung: Zur Aktualität eines sozialphilosophischen Problems (Frankfurt: Campus, 2005); Martin Saar, Genealogie als Kritik: Geschichte und Theorie des Subjekts nach Nietzsche und Foucault (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007); Martin Iser, Empörung und Fortschritt: Grundlagen einer kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Campus, 2008); Robin Celikates, Kritik als soziale Praxis: Gesellschaftliche Selbstverständigung und kritische Theorie (Frankfurt: Campus, 2009); Mauro Basaure, ‘Continuity through Rupture with the Frankfurt School: Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition’, ed. Gerard Delanty and Stephen Turner, Handbook of Social and Political Theory (London: Routledge, 2011).

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11 Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, tr. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge: Polity, 1990) 21-42. 12 Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung. 13 The first wave essays are: Axel Honneth, ‘Pathologies of the Social: The Past and Present of Social Philosophy’, Disrespect, 3-48; and Axel Honneth, ‘The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Location of Critical Theory Today’, Disrespect, 63-79. 14 The second wave essays are: Axel Honneth, ‘Rekonstruktive Gesellschafskritik unter genealogischem Vorbehalt’, Pathologien der Vernunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007) 57-69; Axel Honneth, ‘The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The “Dialectic of Enlightenment” in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism’, Constellations 7, no. 1 (2000) 116-27; Honneth, ‘The Point of Recognition’; and Axel Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory’, ed. Fred Rush, The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 336-60. 15 Supporting materials include: Axel Honneth, ‘Idiosynkrasie als Erkenntnismittel: Gesellschafskritik im Zeitalter des normalisierten Intellektuellen’, Honneth, Pathologien der Vernunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007) 219-34; Axel Honneth, ‘An interview with Axel Honneth’, interviewed by Anders Petersen and Rasmus Willig, European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 2 (2002): 265-77; Axel Honneth, ‘Erbe und Erneuerung der Kritischen Theorie: Gespräch mit Internationalen Studiengruppe zur Kritischen Theorie’, ed. Basaure, Reemstma and Willig, Erneuerung der Kritik, 49-81; Honneth, ‘Stationen auf dem Weg’; and Axel Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, The Berkeley Tanner Lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 16 Honneth, ‘Pathologies of the Social’. 17 Honneth, ‘The Social Dynamics of Disrespect’. 18 Ibid., 64. 19 Honneth’s introduction of the concept of immanent transcendence presupposes Apel’s groundbreaking work of the 1960s: Apel, Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, and Karl-Otto Apel, Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism, tr. John Michael Krois (New Jersey, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995); Habermas’ codification of the concept of ‘immanent transcendence’ in Texte und Kontexte and Postmetaphysical Thinking; and finally McCarthy’s encouragement in Ideals and Illusions and ‘Philosophy and Critical Theory’ to conceive it in methodological terms suitable to the critical analysis of the impurity of the historical realization of socio-practical ideas of reason. 20 Honneth, ‘The Social Dynamics of Disrespect’, 64. 21 Honneth, ‘The Point of Recognition’, 240. 22 Nancy Fraser, ‘Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation’ and ‘Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to Axel Honneth’, Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? 7-109 and 198-236. 23 Honneth, ‘The Point of Recognition’, 239. 24 Honneth, ‘Rekonstruktive Gesellschafskritik’, 65. 25 Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung and ‘Stationen auf dem Weg’, 176. 26 Honneth, ‘Rekonstruktive Gesellschafskritik’, 66. 27 Ibid., 67.

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28 Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). 29 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (London: Oxford University Press, 1985). 30 Honneth’s earlier work such as Kampf um Anerkennung and ‘The Social Dynamics of Disrespect’, and later work such as ‘The Point of Recognition’ and Reification. 31 Honneth, ‘The Social Dynamics of Disrespect’. 32 Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung. 33 Honneth, Reification, 57. 34 Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, ed. Paul Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986) 76-100. 35 Here it should be recalled that Nietzsche occupied a position toward the end of a development in the nineteenth century which had started with left-Hegelianism and he was thus able to radicalize. His totalizing genealogical approach can be traced back to the moderate thesis of the relapse of enlightenment into superstition or autonomy into heteronomy central to the analysis of Louis Bonaparte’s election victory in 1851 in Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International, 1963). See Hauke Brunkhorst, ‘Critical Theory and the Analysis of Contemporary Mass Society’, ed. Fred Rush, The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 248-79. 36 Honneth, ‘Rekonstruktive Gesellschafskritik’, 68. 37 Ibid., 63. 38 Honneth, ‘The Social Dynamics of Disrespect’, 74. 39 Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason’ and Axel Honneth, Pathologien der Vernunft: Geschichte und Gegenwart der Kritischen Theorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007). 40 Honneth, ‘The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique’; also Honneth, ‘Idiosynkrasie als Erkenntnismittel’ as well as Honneth, ‘Erbe und Erneuerung’. 41 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1969). 42 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 43 James Bohman, ‘Welterschließung und radikale Kritik’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 41, no. 3 (1993): 563-74. 44 Honneth, ‘The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique’, 58. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 60. 47 Honneth, ‘Erbe und Erneuerung’, 63. 48 Ibid., 70. 49 Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason’. 50 Ibid., 338-45. 51 Axel Honneth, ‘Reply to Andreas Kalyvas, “Critical Theory at the Crossroads”’, European Journal of Social Theory 2, no. 2 (1999) 249-52, here 249. 52 Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason’, 345-52. 53 Ibid., 345-46. 54 Axel Honneth, ‘Das soziologische Defizit der Kritischen Theorie: Gespräch mit Marcos Nobre und Luiz Repa’, ed. Basaure, Reemstma and Willig, Erneuerung der Kritik, 83-9, here 84.

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55 Honneth, ‘Erbe und Erneuerung’, 78-81. These objects correspond to the three major dimensions of Honneth’s recognition theory: the developmental psychological, the justice theoretical, and the anthropological respectively. 56 Ibid., 69. 57 Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason’, 352-57. 58 Honneth, ‘Erbe und Erneuerung’, 64. 59 Honneth, ‘Idiosynkrasie als Erkenntnismittel’. 60 Jürgen Habermas, ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’, Communication and the Evolution of Society, tr. Thomas McCarthy (London: Heinemann, 1979) 1-68, here 16 and 20, where ‘essential’ invokes weak-naturalistic ontological and pragmatic-realist epistemological assumptions – as confirmed in Jürgen Habermas, Truth and Justification (Cambridge: Polity, 2003). See also: William Outhwaite, ‘Rekonstruktion und methodologischer Dualismus’, ed. Stefan Müller-Doohm, Das Interesse der Vernunft: Rückblicke auf das Werk von Jürgen Habermas seit “Erkenntnis und Interesse” (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000) 175-97; James Bohman, ‘”When Water Chokes”: Ideology, Communication, and Practical Rationality’, Constellations 7, no. 3 (2000) 383-84; and Piet Strydom, Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology (London: Routledge, 2011). 61 Bohman, New Philosophy of Social Science. Although mentioning mechanisms, Honneth evidently does not dispose over a theory of mechanisms. Proposals in that direction is contained in Strydom, Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology and Piet Strydom, ‘The Cognitive and Metacognitive Dimension of Social and Political Theory’, ed. Gerard Delanty and Stephen Turner, Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory (London: Routledge, 2011). 62 Honneth, ‘Erbe und Erneuerung’, 70. 63 Honneth, ‘An interview with Axel Honneth’, 269. 64 Boltanski and Honneth, ‘Soziologie der Kritik oder Kritische Theorie?’, 99-100. 65 Ibid. 66 Bohman, ‘Theories, Practices, and Pluralism’. 67 Strydom, Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology offers a comprehensive statement of Critical Theory’s model of critique within the immanent-transcendence structure which includes also disclosing critique. 68 It should be noted that the second generation critical theorist Karl-Otto Apel, ‘A Planetary Macroethics for Mankind’, ed. E. Deutsch, Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophical Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991) 261-78, here 274-75, went beyond this limitation: ‘Coresponsibility, it seems to me, is a principle of ethics that is different from, or goes beyond, the sense of justice’. Along with the concepts of risk and cosmopolitanism, however, Honneth in effect rejects the sociologically rich characterization of the historically specific nature of contemporary society made possible by this position. See Axel Honneth, ‘Schwierigkeiten kapitalismuskritischer Zeitdiagnosen: Gespräch mit Christoph Lieber, ed. Basaure, Reemstma and Willig, Erneuerung der Kritik, 137-47, here 137, and Honneth, ‘Stationen auf dem Weg’, 182-3. 69 Honneth, ‘Das soziologische Defizit der Kritischen Theorie’; also ‘Stationen auf dem Weg’, 179. 70 Honneth, ‘Stationen auf dem Weg’, 179-80. 71 Ibid. 72 For indications of the kind of sociological theory of structure formation lacking in Honneth, see e.g.: Miller, Kollektive Lernprozesse; Eder, Die Vergesellschaftung der

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Natur; Eder, The Social Construction of Nature; Piet Strydom, Discourse and Knowledge: The Making of Enlightenment Sociology (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000); Piet Strydom, Risk, Environment and Society: Ongoing Debates, Current Issues and Future Prospects (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2002); Piet Strydom, ‘Intersubjectivity – Interactionist or Discursive? Reflections on Habermas’ Critique of Brandom’, Philosophy and Social Criticism 32, no. 2 (2006) 155-72; Piet Strydom, ‘Contemporary European Cognitive Social Theory’, ed. G. Delanty, Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory (London: Routledge, 2006) 218-29; Piet Strydom, ‘Introduction: A Cartography of Contemporary Cognitive Social Theory’, European Journal of Social Theory 10, no. 3 (2007): 399-56; Strydom, ‘The Cognitive and Metacognitive Dimension of Social and Political Theory’. Also relevant are social psychological contributions, e.g.: Judith A. Howard, ‘A Social Cognitive Conception of Social Structure’, Social Psychology Quarterly 57, no. 3 (1994), 210-27; and Cecelia L. Ridgeway, ‘Linking Social Structure and Interpersonal Behaviour’, Social Psychology Quarterly 69, no. 1 (2006) 5-16. 73 Honneth, Pathologien der Vernunft, 27; Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason’, 347. 74 On sociological learning theory, see Miller, Kollektive Lernprozesse; Max Miller, ‘Some Theoretical Aspects of Systemic Learning’, Sozialer Sinn 3 (2002) 379-421; Klaus Eder, ‘Societies Learn and yet the World is Hard to Change’, European Journal of Social Theory 2, no. 2 (1999) 195-215; Hans-Jörg Trenz and Klaus Eder, ‘The Democratizing Dynamics of a European Public Sphere: Towards a Theory of Democratic Functionalism’, European Journal of Social Theory 7, no. 1 (2004) 5-25; Piet Strydom, ‘Risk Communication: World Creation through Collective Learning under Complex Contingent Conditions’, Journal of Risk Research 11, no. 1-2 (2008) 5-22; Piet Strydom, New Horizons of Critical Theory: Collective Learning and Triple Contingency (New Delhi: Shipra, 2009). 75 Axel Honneth, ‘Rejoinder’, ed. Bert van den Brink and David Owen, Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 370. 76 Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason’; Honneth, Pathologien der Vernunft. 77 Honneth, Kritik der Macht. 78 Strydom, Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology reconstructs in some detail the place of the medium quo theory in the left-Hegelian tradition, including pragmatism and Critical Theory, and focuses on drawing out its implications for Critical Theory’s methodology. 79 Honneth, ‘An interview with Axel Honneth’, 268, where he talks of ‘hypothesis’ in a rather traditional-sounding manner lacking in resonance with the imaginative, abductive mode of inference not only of Peirce, but also of Critical Theory which made possible C. Wight Mills’ ‘sociological imagination’. See e.g. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Sociology and Empirical Research’, Adorno et al., The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (London: Heinemann, 1976) 68-86, especially 69. 80 Symptomatic of this neglect is the complete lack of reference to explanation in an important methodological essay aimed specifically at clarifying Critical Theory’s model of critique such as ‘Rekonstruktive Gesellschafskritik’. 81 Honneth, Reification, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 57, 90, where he presents recognition, which is in fact but one moment in a process of meaning and knowledge generation, as being the ‘origin’, ‘basis’ and even ‘foundation’.

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82 Honneth, ‘The Point of Recognition’, 245.

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