From Recognition To Freedom-Study Of Axel Honneth’s Social Critical Theory

As a leading figure of the third generation of the Frankfurt School,Axel Honneth follows the academic tradition of the school and uses an interdisciplinary approach to criticize capitalist society,including political philosophy,moral philosophy,and social philosophy,which makes Honneth’s social critical theory uniquely open and inclusive.Situated in the different situations of capitalist and socialist development since the 1950 s,Honnett confronts the various ills in social life,reflects on the shortcomings of traditional critical theory,and,on the basis of the critical tradition and theoretical innovation,launches a critique of capitalist society from recognition and freedom perspectives.As the key to understanding the development of Honnett’s entire critical theory system,recognition and freedom embody the forward-looking and dialectical nature of the development of Honnett’s critical theory.However,Honnett’s social critical theory has been regarded as the focus of research in recent years,the theoretical value and inherent limitations of his critical theory still need to be deeply explored and analyzed.By studying Honnett’s social critical theory ideas,this paper finds that at the early stage of critical theory development,Honnett set the ultimate state of recognition with love,rights and solidarity as the goal,articulated the formal ethics of the good life,and alluded to the normative guidance of critical theory to promote mutual recognition among subjects and realize the integrity of human beings,thus regulating the development of human beings and society with the logic of recognition.However,in the process of theoretical exploration,he gradually finds that recognition alone cannot adjudicate and regulate the injustice and conflict in social life,so he draws the essence from Hegel’s Principles of Philosophy of Law,reflects on the pathology and boundaries of legal freedom and moral freedom and constructs an in-depth study of social freedom,thus constructing a theoretical system from legal freedom and moral freedom to social freedom.At this point,the theme of his social-critical theory shifts from recognition to freedom.Honneth’s social critical theory inherits the critical soul of Marxism,realizes the political-ethical turn of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory,and broadens the research path of social justice.However,due to the objective defects of this theory,such as the restriction of the critical field to the moral and cultural dimensions and the difficulty in defining the normative goals,it is difficult for social criticism,which tries to find a new way out within the framework of the capitalist system,to bring about actual changes in capitalist society.However what is irrefutable that the recognition paradigm and liberal dimension of Honnett’s social-critical theory have laid an important theoretical foundation for the development of Western Marxism,giving us not a given theoretical outcome but an open-minded experience and a unique research perspective.