Honneth Admits The Theoretical Research

This dissertion mainly explores the origins,forming process,main contents,inner basic characteristics of Axel Honneth's recognition theory,its diagnosis of contemparory times,and its siginificance for the development and enrichment of western Marxism,esp.the Frankfurt School thinking;At the same time this dissertion also illuminates some weaknesses and difficulties embedded in this recognition theory.The birth of Honneth's recognition theory is closely connected with the tradition of German philosophical anthropology and German classic philosophy.They gives this recognition theory the anthropological insight of human "needs" and "sensitivity",concepts like "human autonomy","self-realization","intersubjectivity",and "recognition".Marxism gives this theory concepts like "struggle" and "liberation";The Critical Theory gives the basic methods of inner criticism, esp.Habermas gives Honneth an analysing framework of communicational intersubjectivity,and an impetus to innovation to conque the latter's inadquateness and failure to meet the demands of the times;Mead's social psychology and the psychological theories of object relations gives this theory empirical envidences for justification.Axel Honneth's recogntion theory has witnessed three development stages:preparation,bringing-forth,and extension.These three stages can delineate the deveopment course from birth to mature,from original intuition to paradigm,and to systematization.We can observe the contents from Honneth's recognition theory from two levels:One is the level of basic concepts.On this level this theoy is focused on the reconstruction of recognitional types,illuminating the essence of "recogniton",formulating such basic relationships between "recognition" and "the other",between "recogntion" and "cognition".Honneth illuminates the essence of "recognition" from two aspects:human autonomy & individual identity integrity,and social reproduction &social integration.Recognition can not go without "the other" in the sense of intersubjectivity,or precognitional interest such as symbolic contact and emotional expression,so that recogniton precedes cognition,and objective cogniton is the restraint from recogniton.Reification in modem soceity is the forgetfulness of recogntion.Honneth's recognition theory from the very beginning is a theory providing "moral grammar "for social conflicts,and a "formal ethics "as future social ideal,in which self-realization becomes the norm of criticism and judgements about a soceity.The normative meaning of recognition makes it possible to extend recognitional norm to social philosophy,moral theory and justice theoy,and this is the second level of Honneth recognition theory's contents.In this extension Honneth regards recognitional social diagnosis as the main task of social philosophy;based on moral injury in misrecognition,Honneth leads recognition norm to be a moral principle;in the discussion about the priciple of justice Honneth endeavors to criticise Fraser's "dual model of justice", and establish recogniton norm as the singular normative priciple of justice.Up till now Honneth's recognition theory has become a comprehensive normative theory covering all social dimentions.In retrospect with the whole course of Honneth's recognition theory,we can conclude that it has three sharp characteristics:as its objective Honneth endeavours to provide a renewed basis of norm for Critical Theory after Habermas' communicative reason;to achieve this goal Honneth resorts to anthropological and psychological fruits to justify his theory;and the theory has shown great consistence and constancy in contents both before and after its extension.Honneth's recognition theory has made great theoretical innovation and renewal in enriching of Western Marxism,and in dealing with challenges of both theory and practice of the times faced by Critical Theory;however,during its systematization it also betrays some difficulties and weaknesses,such as its neglect of the significance of Marx's socal fimctional analysis,neglect of the "material" and "tool" dimention of social production and social relationship,evading from taking further steps to justify self-realization as his ultimate norm,and denying historical constingencies and innovative possibilities based on the tradition of analysis of reason.These problematic settings give us hint to be critical to Honneth's recognition theory,and give us opportunities to proceed on with Honneth's efforts.