A Study On Honneth’s Theory About Recognition

Axel Honneth is a new generation of main representative figures of social critical theory in Frankfurt school,whom is the philosophy professor in Frankfurt university. He critically inherited predecessors’ theory in critically and proposed the theory of recognition,in order to get the way of combining normative and empirical critical theory and establishing a normative foundation. Honneth absorpted the nutrient from Hegel’s viewpoint of the struggle for recognition in Jena period,and got the support from Mead’s social psychology of the viewpoint of after a metaphysics. Through the reference and the development of the criticism of Max Horkheimer’s theory and Jurgen Haberma’s theory,the critical theory of Honneth will get a big step forward.The essence of Honneth’s theory of recognition is admitting that pay more attention to individual and pay close attention to reality,in order to make the social critical theory to tend to the development of the political ethics level and make the development of the third generation of social critical theory of Frankfurt school to reach a new level. Honneth’s theory of recognition has three demands:individual independent existence of the appeal,equal legal personality and value and dignity of personal social,and the "good life" is the goal of Honneth’s theory of recognition. The expanding of Honneth’s theory of recognition in research’s field of the Frankfurt school is mainly manifested in the critical theory from the political life to the ethical life. Honneth’s theory of recognition changes the traditional critical theory model,but focus on the main body of the desire of the social recognition and justice. Honneth makes up for the trouble of the lack of social,which is caused by the traditional theorists,and continuously expands the space of the Frankfurt school’s critical theory.Honneth’s theory of recognition not only inherits the critical tradition of the Frankfurt school,but also realizes the criticalness of theory of recognition in the Western Marxist. Honneth’s theory of recognition theory has opened up a new direction for the development of critical theory. It also broadened the horizon of the Marxist philosophy’s research. His theory has theoretically reasonable factors,and it also has the positive significance of political. For these shortcomings and the maturation in his theory,we should apply the Marxist’s point of the view on the reasonable evaluation.