An Overview Of Honneth's Recognition Theory

Axel Honneth was the the key figure of the third generation of Frankfurt school recognized by the whole world and his"struggle for recognition"theory represented the new development direction and trend of the Socio-Critical Theory" of Frankfort School. Honneth critically inherited the recognition theory of his predecessor and devoted to set up a new normative foundation for the critical theory in method which combined normative and empirism.Honneth absorbed the opinion"self consciousness results from the mutual recognition between objects", which was embedded in Hegel's early theory. Hegel believes that the mutual recognition behaviors existed in interactions between individuals. one object can realize and then reconciliate with his ability and quality only by the recognition of other objects. Meanwhile,an object will act in opposition with othersand even trigger conflict by the particularity which resulted from the recognition. The cause of the conflict was not the persistence of the body, but for the mutual recognition of the respective particularity. In this way, the recognition movement was conducted in the continuous alternating movement of reconciliation and conflict and then achieves a new dimension of self consciousness. However, hegle did not regard the relation ship between objects as a empirical evident in the society, rather, this relationship was finnaly covered by his consciouness philosophy and became the objective pattern of the self examination of the spirit.In order to endow his recognition theory with social and historical property, Honneth borrowed from Mead's"I-me"theory. he took the self image reflected in other's eyes as the"I"and called the subject who conduct all the realistic action as the"I"."I"preexists self consciousness and relates the actions realized by consciousness continuously. Namely, only when an object perceive himself by the reaction of the others for his action, can he acquires self consciousness, which provided the proof for Hegel's early stage theory of recognition from the perspective of naturalism. By the expounds of both Hegel's early stage recognition theory and Mead's social psychology theory, Honneth proposed his own augmentation of the recognition theory. He divided the recognition relationship presented among the objects into three forms: love law and unity. Meanwhile, he proposed three contempts or"the refused form of recognition"as: violence, deprival of rights and insult. Honneth believed that the wholeness of a man was attributed to the completeness of the recognition forms while scorn damages the wholeness. Contempt not only limit an object's the freedom, but also makes an object unable to acquire positive self understanding from other objects. Therefore, Contempt becomes the impetus of social confrontation and confilicts.Honneth's"struggle for recognition"has been well received by the academia, but it also received the doubt from N.Fraser's"the perspective dualism". N.Fraser argued that Honneth shouldn't have located his critique theory on recognition dimension only, rather, it should be perceived from distribution and recognition, which can perceive the cultural background from the outside economical filed and observe the economical background from the outside cultural field. Though Honneth agreed with the influence of the unfair proportional distribution on the society, he regarded distribution as a derivative category of recognition. The foundation of the whole recognition theory, namely the normative foundation which Honnth reconstructed for critique theory is only---"a good life".