Honneth Admits The Theoretical Research

Honneth's theory of recognition represents a new trend of the theory of social justice as well as transforms critical social theories into the paradigm of recognition. This dissertation intends to reveal the possibility and practicability of social justice through the analysis of the problem of recognition and Honneth's theory.Recognition and redistribution are normative double-trends in contemporary social justice and its realization. The concept of justice with the normative principles of recognition as its core can be used to defend social moral progress in the areas of recognition, and it also reveals the reconstruction of the subject in the moral order of a just society.The nature of social justice consists in a successful integrate self-identification of social members. A successful integrate self-identification depends on subjects' mutually recognizing. Recognition is the being of self in another being. In the modern society, the subject can achieve love, respect and esteem, which are necessary for integrate self-identification. Correspondently, it can also achieve self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem.Justice includes three principles of recognition: love, equality and unity. Each principle can be used to evaluate social conflicts from the moral point of view. As the negative equivalents of recognition and forms of disrespect, violence, deprivation of rights and humiliation reflect the destruction of social recognition relations and self-practice relations in the moral experiences. And in turn the latter leads to social conflicts.A legitimate social struggle aims at a just society. Social struggles are the forms of the subject's active practicality, which provide the society with the motivation of making moral progress. Being connected with the subject's capacity of recognition, social struggles can make the destroyed recognition relations to be extended and the interests of social members who suffer from disrespect and their claims to justice to be expressed.