How has it come to be that the dominant grammar of critical social philosophy has taken the form of what has come to be taken as “recognition theory”? If popular social struggles are today couched in terms of recognition, ought these theoretical developments be taken as a source of optimism for re-establishing the project of critical theory, if what distinguishes critical theory from traditional theory is its grounding in social movements? It is at this juncture when progress waged at the cultural level has run aground, and theory and practice risk de-tethering, that we are in a position to re-evaluate the trajectory of the critical theory tradition from its origins with the likes of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, through the intersubjective turn of Jürgen Habermas, and the recognitive turn waged above all by Axel Honneth. Can the aims of a critical theory of the current day be said to be the same as those of the early part of the last century? Do the resources of a contemporary critical theory, grounded in the framework of an ethics of recognition, make good on these aims where its early practitioners were unable to? What does a critical theory of recognition still have to learn from its Urgesichte?
Course Schedule
Seminar 1: What is critical theory?
Reading:
- Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory”, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, 188-243.
Further reading:
- M. Bernstein, “The Idea of Instrumental Reason”, The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, pp. 3-18.
- Herbert Marcuse, “Philosophy and Critical Theory”, Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, pp. 58-74.
- Yvonne Sherratt, “Adorno's Concept of the Self: A Marriage of Freud and Hegelian Marxism”, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 58 (227), pp. 101-117.
This first week looks to establish what “critical theory” actually is, and how critical theory differs from “traditional theory”. This requires a genealogical account of the concept in its historical context, and asking why a form of critical social philosophy arose which was critical of capitalist modernity and the Marxist responses which sought to grapple with this reality, with a particular shift to considerations of cultural production and subjective formation with insights from psychoanalysis and sociology, and the effects of exchange and instrumental reason in everyday life.
Seminar 2: What was the intersubjective turn?
Reading:
- Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article”, Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, pp. 136-142.
- Jürgen Habermas, “Introduction” by Maeve Cooke, On the Pragmatics of Communication, pp. 1-19.
Further reading:
- Joel Whitebook, “Intersubjectivity and the Monadic Core of the Psyche: Habermas and Castoriadis on the Unconscious”, Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 86, 225-244.
- Joel Whitebook, “Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory”, The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, pp. 32-47.
- Raymond Geuss, “Introduction”, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School.
From establishing the principal aims of a critical theory, we are thus able to situate the “intersubjective turn” in critical theory. Where the first generation of Frankfurt School theorists found themselves at certain impasses, expressed in the form of pessimism or utopianism, in the post-War period, Habermas offered an alternative vision of theory which borrowed from pragmatic theories of communication in order to renew critical theory.
Seminar 3: What is recognition theory?
Reading:
- Timo Jütten, “The Theory of Recognition in the Frankfurt School”, The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, pp. 82-94.
- Axel Honneth, “Translator’s Introduction” from Joel Anderson, and “Introduction”, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts.
- Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Beyond the linguistication of critical social theory”, Beyond Communication, pp. 109-117.
Further reading:
- Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser, “Introduction: Redistribution or Recognition?”,
Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, pp. 1-5.
- Robert Pippin, “What is the Question for which Hegel’s theory of Recognition is the Answer?”, European Journal of Philosophy, 8 (2), pp. 155-172.
Where Habermasian intersubjective theory found itself at its own impasses, obscuring critical elements of modern life, Honneth sought to offer a renewed basis for critical theory which goes beyond the communicative. Recognition theory likewise must be historically situated in the time of the “new social movements” and concerns for “multiculturalism” amidst the demise of traditional forms of political practice oriented around class and national liberation, and as a descriptive and normative framework for comprehending modernity.
Seminar 4: Deficits of recognition: language, nature, body, the subject, capital
Reading:
- Emmanuel Renault and Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Politicising Honneth’s Ethics of Recognition”, Thesis Eleven, 88, pp. 92-111.
- Judith Butler, “Giving an Account of Oneself” Diacritics, 31 (4), 22-40.
- Vladimir Safatle, “Towards an anti-predicative concept of recognition”, Grant Hotel Abyss: Desire, Recognition and the Restoration of the Subject, pp. 271-299.
Further reading:
- Miriam Bankovsky and Alice Le Goff, “Deepening critical theory: French contributions to theories of recognition”, Recognition theory and contemporary French moral and political philosophy: Reopening the dialogue, pp. 1-22.
- Jean-Philippe Deranty, “The Loss of Nature in Axel Honneth's Social Rereading Mead with Merleau-Ponty”, Critical Horizons, 6, pp. 153-181.
The recognition theoretical framework provides numerous advances in understanding the modern condition of individuals and social collectives. Yet, at the same time, recognition theory comes to introduce its own blindspots. It is here that we can consider whether recognition theory is capable of incorporating insights from other theoretical traditions, and how recognition theory can speak to the most pressing contemporary crises.
Seminar 5: What to make of recognition?
Reading:
- Joel Whitebook, “The Urgeschichte of Subjectivity Reconsidered”, New German Critique, 81, pp. 125-141.
- Foster, Roger, “An Adornian Theory of Recognition? A Critical Response to Axel Honneth’s Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 19 (2), pp. 255-265.
Further reading:
- Axel Honneth, “Reification and Recognition: A New Look at an Old Idea”, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (The Berkeley Tanner Lectures), pp. 17-94.
From this vantage point, we are situated to be able to reflect on the fate of the concept of recognition as it has been received, and ask whether there is room for further scope in expanding the recognition framework to other areas of individual and social life. In particular, we can do so by returning to the original aims of critical theory as first formulated in the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and ask how these aims have been advanced, whether they have shifted, and/or whether they require further shifting.