The Sociological Deficit of Contemporary Critical Theory - Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition, Part 1 (Piet Strydom)

Strydom, ‘Sociological Deficit of Contemporary Critical Theory – Honneth’, The New Polis, online, 2019 (originally written
2010)
The Sociological Deficit of

Contemporary Critical Theory – Axel
Honneth’s Theory of Recognition, Part 1
(Piet Strydom)
October 15, 2019Critical Theory
http://thenewpolis.com/2019/10/15/the-sociological-deficit-of-contemporary-critical-
theory-axel-honneths-theory-of-recognition-part-1/
The following is the first installment of a four-part series.
From his doctoral work published in extended form in 1985 under the title of Kritik der Macht to
interviews as late as 2003 and 2009, Axel Honneth repeats the claim that the tradition of
Frankfurt School Critical Theory as a whole suffers from what he calls a “sociological deficit”.
According to his analysis, this theoretical lacuna is manifest in the tradition as a tendency to
either ignore or exclude the very core of the social, yet it takes a different form in the first and
second generations. By the core of the social Honneth understands the fact that social integration
or social order in the sense of a normative recognition order is achieved through an incessant
process of contestation and struggle. While the early and later critical theorists all failed to deal
adequately with this dimension, they did so in complementary ways.
On the one hand, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno grossly underestimated the inherent
nature and character of the social lifeworld. While they remained more or less aware of social
conflict, their Marxist functionalism, reinforced by their Nietzschean-Weberian normative
skepticism, made it impossible for them to ascribe a meaningful role in the process of the
reproduction of society either to the interpretative achievements of the members or to moral
norms. Jürgen Habermas, on the other hand, stressed precisely the communicative rationality of
the social lifeworld and the role of normative structures, including moral norms, in social
integration neglected by his predecessors. However, this characteristic emphasis had the effect of
distracting him to such a degree that he tended to underplay, if not to loose sight of, contestation
and conflict in social life.
This diagnosis of a sociological deficit in the work of the different generations of critical theorists
reveals the central motivation driving Honneth’s project to revitalize Critical Theory and to renew
critique which, since his habilitation thesis of 1992 titled Kampf um Anerkennung, has become
internationally identifiable by the concept of‘recognition’. The avowed aim of this project of his
is precisely to overcome this debilitating sociological deficit by continuing the tradition in the
form of a new, more adequate theoretical version of Critical Theory. Instead of the key theoretical
concept of labor or language, as in previous cases, he is convinced that recognition is the most
promising theoretical means for developing this new version.
1
2010)
Having dealt with Honneth’s project from methodological and epistemological angles elsewhere,
I am devoting this article to a parallel analysis of his attempt thus far to correct the sociological
deficit of Critical Theory. I propose to do so by reconstructing and critically assessing his
recognition-theoretical version of Critical Theory through focusing on the theoretical core of a
series of his relevant writings. It goes without saying that, by proceeding in this way, it will be
possible neither to cover the development of his theoretical position in detail nor to do full justice
to all the intricacies and nuances of his argumentation.
The aim is rather to locate his proposal in comparative opposition to the faulty position he wishes
to correct and, against that background, to suggest the possibility of drawing from a
contemporary point of view on elements available in both in order to go beyond them toward a
potentially more adequate theoretical option than the one Honneth is advocating.
The principal argument of the article is developed in three steps. The first task is to clarify what
Honneth’s understands by the sociological deficit of Critical Theory and, correspondingly, what
he has in mind as a theoretical solution to this problem (I). Against this background, it then
becomes possible to reconstruct Honneth’s position in more detail by focusing on a selection of
core statements from a series of theoretically relevant publications (II).
Finally, I develop the critical observations offered along the way in their own right in order to
arrive at an assessment of Honneth’s position which simultaneously points toward a potentially
more adequate and justifiable theoretical articulation of Critical Theory (III). To anticipate, I
argue that there is a sociological deficit not only in first and second generation Critical Theory,
but also in Honneth’s contemporary version. It centres on the lack of sociological theorization
and substantiation of the mechanisms of mutual recognition and their interrelation which are
responsible for social integration and development.
Such theoretical substantiation, I argue, is promised by the development of sociology in relation

to one of the most important – if not the most important – intellectual developments of our time,
namely the cognitive revolution. It should be pointed out, to be fair to Honneth, that he does not
make excessive claims about the position he has developed so far; on the contrary, he stresses that
the success of his attempt to correct the long-standing sociological deficit of critical theory will
require time to be confirmed.
The Sociological Deficit of Critical Theory
Throughout his writings, early as well as late, Axel Honneth consistently makes the claim that the
work of the representatives of critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition is marred by
what he calls a “sociological deficit“. Between 1985 and 1994, he undertook a number of
analyses to demonstrate the tenability of this claim in respect of Horkheimer, Adorno and
Habermas, and in subsequent years he either fell back on these analyses or reinforced them.
In Honneth’s doctoral thesis, the expression “sociological deficit” is at the very outset applied to
Max Horkheimer’s theory of society which, as tradition-founding contribution to critical theory,
2
2010)
conditioned also the theoretical positions which Adorno and Habermas subsequently developed.
He traces the root cause of the problem to Horkheimer’s philosophy of history and the theoretical
framework he established on that basis. In keeping with his model of the philosophy of history
which was conceived strictly in terms of the domination of nature, Horkheimer prioritized the
concept of labour, with the result that he foreshortened societal development into a one-
dimensional process of the expansion and upgrading of labour competences alone.
This process he then related to the plastic human biological drives and their shaping by
socialization in accordance with the historically specific requirements and demands of the
economic organization of society. In his mature theory, following the idea of culture as
superstructure, he regarded the process of socialization in terms of the concept of an
institutionalized cultural apparatus – including parental childrearing techniques, educational
curricula and religious rituals – as the medium for the transfer and inculcation, however indirect
and incomplete, of the behavioural compulsions required by the economic imperative.
Necessitated by the dualistic categorical scheme of true knowledge of reality and irrational
drives, this concept of culture was shorn of the elements of action theory which had still been
present in Horkheimer’s inaugural address of 1931 and, as a consequence, it occluded every
possibility of accommodating certain vital dimensions of critical theory. Being vital, these
dimensions of necessity periodically intruded into Horkheimer’s work in a forced unofficial and
unaccounted way.
Among them are not only reflexive and critical competences and cultural action in the sense of
the cooperative interpretative generation of orienting normative frameworks, but even social
struggle as the conflictual counterpart of cultural action which, as he perfectly well knew, was
indispensable to the process of societal development.
At the center of the incoherence of this conceptual framework Honneth discovers the sociological
deficit he ascribes to Horkheimer’s version of critical theory. The resulting “Marxist
functionalism” based on the key concept of labor and its relation to the human drives found
institutional embodiment in the Institute for Social Research’s interdisciplinary social scientific
program. It was based on the two pillars of political economy and psychoanalysis, with a
conceptually neglected and underdeveloped sociology serving at best as an auxiliary discipline.
As a consequence of this lopsided development, not only the whole spectrum of normal, ordinary
everyday social action was excluded from the interdisciplinary program, but by the same token
also the central sociological task of investigating social reality against the background of the
experience of different social groups and the both conflictual and cooperative process of the
generation of cultural orientation complexes and their social actualization.
It is due to his single-minded focus on labour and, hence, his inability to unlock and
unwillingness to analyze the normal case of social action that Horkheimer was compelled to leave
the concept of social conflict theoretically undeveloped and unsubstantiated. What is thus above
all theoretically lacking in critical theory from the very outset, in Honneth’s view, is “the analysis
3
2010)
of social mediation” among the different dimensions of society – a judgement that should be kept
in mind since it is the idea which guides his own proposal for the overcoming of the sociological
deficit and also makes possible a critical assessment and transcendence of his proposal.
Dialectic of Enlightenment
While the principal ideas of the Dialectic of Enlightenment derive from the essays Horkheimer
wrote in the early 1940s in a pessimistic mood induced by his disillusionment with the failure of
revolutionary forces, it is Adorno who drove the central argument under the impression of the
more general historical phenomenon of the establishment of totalitarian state systems which he
thought were suggested by the emergence of Fascism, Stalinism and American monopoly
capitalism. Honneth sees this particular framing as having strengthened their tendency to totalize
Horkheimer’s idea of the domination of nature into the idea of a collective compulsion toward
societal self- assertion and self-maintenance which took on the bloated proportions of full-scale
instrumental rationality.
The social theoretical implications of this position are evident from Adorno and Horkheimer’s
view that the domination of nature extends right into the heart of society itself and, therefore, that
internal social states of affairs and relations could be analyzed only in terms of the instrumental
rationality pervading the relation of human beings to nature. The pound of flesh exacted by this
particular perspective was rather demanding. It allowed Adorno and Horkheimer to regard as
admissible and viable under the prevailing historical conditions only two very specific, closely
related forms of social domination or organization.
The first form is of a physical nature and is characterized by the subjection of the population to
unequally distributed social labour through threats of violence and the actual employment of
certain forms and means of violence. The second is of a psychic nature and involves the use of a
variety of means of persuasion and manipulation with the aim of influencing and shaping needs
and attitudes in a way favorable to those in power. Excluded here, as in the case of Horkheimer’s
earlier design of the interdisciplinary program of critical theory which provided the precedent
followed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, is the normal, more or less consensual form of social
domination or organization which is achieved and maintained through the competitive and even
conflictual yet nevertheless cooperative process of the collective generation of norms within a
normative horizon which to some degree accommodates also the orientations of subordinate
social groups.
Accordingly, Honneth perceives the sociological deficit of the Dialectic of Enlightenment in

Adorno and Horkheimer’s inability and unwillingness to take account of the reflexive and
creative competences, interpretative achievements and cultural activities of the interacting social
groups in society. The re-employment in the new version of critical theory of Horkheimer’s
narrow theory of action reduced to the sole concept of labour compelled them to ignore “the
existence of an intermediary sphere of social action“.
4
2010)
Theodor Adorno
To Adorno Honneth ascribes ‘the complete displacement of the social’ – the worst form of the
sociological deficit in critical theory. Not only did Adorno retain the philosophy of history
assumed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment in his extensive post-war contribution to the theory of
society, but he also transferred the associated concept of domination to the analysis of the society
of his time.
While the relation of human beings to external nature was conceived in terms of instrumental
domination through the control and exploitation of nature, the very same mode of orientation and
organization was duplicated in the case of the relation among human beings in the form of social
control and manipulation. This conception of social domination was reinforced by the idea of the
emergence of a world-wide totalitarian state system which was first inspired by the rise of
Fascism and already in the pre-war period translated into the concept of state capitalism.
Although quite inappropriate, Adorno incorporated it in his theory in the transposed form of the
image of “late capitalism’ as a ‘totally administered society“. It is in his analyses of late-capitalist
society where Adorno focused single-mindedly on the mode and mechanisms of integration that
Honneth sees overwhelming evidence of his definitive suppression of the social.
Adorno’s analysis covers the three dimensions of political-economic reproduction,

administrative-cultural influence and manipulation and, finally, the psychic integration of the
individual. The key formula for him in this multilevel analysis is “the end of mediation“. At the
political-economic level, the totally administered society involved the destruction of the market
which provided a medium for the formation of autonomous identities, such as entrepreneurs and
father figures, as well as for the articulation and integration of social action. The result was the
de-socialization of society.
At the administrative- cultural level, Adorno pursued his famous analyses of the “cultural
industry” on the assumption that the convergence of state organs and mass media made possible
the diffusion of ideological stereotypes and conformist messages. In turn, this allowed a willing if
passive following to be created through manipulation and thus the securing of the necessary level
of social consensus and integration. At the social-psychological level, a psychoanalytically-
inspired theory of ego-weakness complemented the theory of the culture industry.
The de-socialization of society entailed a decomposition of the social infrastructure which left the
conditions for appropriate ego-identity formation in tatters. The result was “the end of
personality” which delivered the individual, caught up in narcissistic regression, as a helpless
victim to the rhetorical and manipulative techniques of the culture industry.
Considering Adorno’s reductive conceptual scheme, his diagnosis of the desocialization of

society has less to do with the actual state of social reality than with the inadequacy of his theory
of society. The market does not completely exhaust the intermediate social sphere, nor do the
results of the culture industry nearly approximate what is needed for the integration of society,
5
2010)
and even less does the combined effect of the economy and the mass media simply checkmate
human motivation and snuff out the surplus of energy harbored by the drives.
What got displaced and suppressed, what Adorno was unable and unwilling to acknowledge, in
Honneth’s view, was the intermediate social sphere with its diverse manifestations – from the
creative, reflexive and critical competences the members of society, through the group-specific
and sub-cultural modes of socialization, orientation, reception, decoding, interpretation and
action, to the normative expectations entertained by the members of society and their ability to
agree or not with normatively relevant arrangements. By the same token, Adorno also undercut
his own ability to identify and deal in a credible way with the obverse side of these normal social
phenomena, namely with protest potentials, social struggle and conflict. There is some
justification, then, for Honneth to speak of Adorno’s complete displacement or suppression of the
social.
Jürgen Habermas
Already in his habilitation thesis and early work aimed at re-founding critical theory, Habermas
gave attention to precisely the dimension which Horkheimer and Adorno ignored and displaced
with such impoverishing consequences for the sociological component of critical theory. Whereas
the habilitation thesis focused on the public sphere, the inaugural address of 1965 differentiated
the theory of action beyond labour so that the development of society appeared in a very different
light compared to his predecessors.
far from being dominant, the material reproduction of society is dependent on social interaction
or communication in which societal goals and meaning are collectively constructed, while
identity formation resulting in mature individuals in possession of interpretative, reflexive and
critical competences is a prerequisite for resolving disturbances or blockages in the process. At
this early stage, Habermas also made reference to language as the medium of understanding and
thus as having a normatively relevant internal structure. It is on this basis that he was able to
develop the idea of “communicative understanding and agreement as the paradigm of the social”
– an idea diametrically opposed to Horkheimer and Adorno’s positions.
This conception implies that the social lifeworld, rather than being completely dominated by
instrumental rationality, has its own internal structure, logic and meaning –
namely “communicative rationality“. Accordingly, the primary mechanism of social integration is
communicative action. In these terms, social integration is a normative phenomenon which
cannot be attained and maintained otherwise than by the participation and interpretative, reflexive
and critical achievements of the members and by the concomitant mediation of their orientations
by moral norms.
It is in working out this communication paradigm in terms of the theory of society, particularly
concerning the dynamics of societal development, the place and role of conflict, the establishment
of social order and the legitimation of power, that Honneth sees Habermas as having exercised
the fateful option which determined the direction his work would henceforth take. Faced with the
6
2010)
alternatives of interpreting the relation between the process of the communicative generation of
society and its material conditions either as the dynamics of different social groups conflicting
and cooperating over the prevailing form of organization or as a supra-individual developmental
mechanism, Habermas chose the latter.
Although ideology-critically exposing the conservative thesis of the independence and dominance
of technology, he came to share his opponents’ viewpoint sufficiently to generalize his innovative
distinction between labour and interaction into the distinction between system and lifeworld
which effectively emasculated conflict as a relation between social groups or classes by
displacing it to the macro-level relation of a contradiction between the material and symbolic
dimensions of society.
Here lies the root of the sociological deficit in Habermas, in Honneth’s estimation. Whereas
previously he kept contestation and conflict – albeit somewhat tenuously – in view, he now lost
sight of it. Rather than simply underestimating the contested nature of normative reference points
and the conflictual character of social order generally, he went so far as to portray the capitalist
economic organizational form of society in a way that made it impossible to appreciate that it
actually involves incessant power-drenched and even conflictual exchange. Accordingly, the
sociological deficit in Habermas consists of his splitting of the social into purposive-rational
actions systems, on the one hand, and a communicatively reproduced action sphere, on the other
– the former devoid of all normative orientation and regulation, and the latter a purely
communicative sphere free from any power.
In a later assessment, Honneth saw this deficit as manifested in Habermas’ work in the form of
the concept of the process of communicative rationalization depending on linguistic rules and the
conditions of their use which transpires at a level above the heads and behind the backs of the
participants so that their moral experiences are completely bypassed. Habermas thus turned out to
be the rightful heir of the critical theory tradition. Due to his strategic theoretical choice, he lost
hold of the theoretical potential of the very communication-theoretical approach which he so
innovatively introduced at the outset of his intellectual career.
Axel Honneth’s response
As regards his own position, Honneth closed the published version of his doctoral work with an
indication of how he envisages overcoming in his future work the sociological deficit plaguing
the critical theory tradition from Horkheimer to Habermas. It is imperative to give sociological
substance to “the understanding of social order as an institutionally mediated communicative
relation of culturally integrated groups which, as long as social power abilities are asymmetrically
distributed, unfolds in the medium of social struggle“. Only then would it be possible to
appreciate that social order and organization, which Adorno misconceived as totalitarian
functional power complexes, are fragile constructions which are dependent for their existence on
the moral assessment and consent of all the participants.
7
2010)
Very recently, Honneth confirmed that his project all along was to integrate the two perspectives
which historically dominated in critical theory – both Horkheimer and Adorno’s willingness to
acknowledge social conflict, notwithstanding their inability to clarify it adequately, and
Habermas’ insistence on communicative action as the primary mechanism of social integration.
The central insight he has been pursuing in attempting to correct the sociological deficit of critical
theory, accordingly, is that “the members of society are only integrated in society through
mechanisms of mutual recognition – mechanisms, however, which are always contested and
therefore the object of a struggle for recognition“. As the reference to the struggle for recognition
suggests, this project took on its proper form for Honneth only once he had embarked on the
establishment of his recognition-theoretical position in his habilitation thesis of 1992.
Piet Strydom is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, School of Sociology and
Philosophy, at University College Cork, Ireland. His research interests include areas such as
critical theory, the history and philosophy of the social sciences, and cognitive social science.
Among his books are Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology (Routledge, 2011)
and Discourse and Knowledge: The Making of Enlightenment Sociology (Liverpool University
Press, 2001).
Axel Honneth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Horkheimer, Max Weber, sociology, Theodor Adorno
8
2010)

(Piet Strydom)
October 22, 2019Critical Theory
http://thenewpolis.com/2019/10/22/the-sociological-deficit-of-contemporary-critical-theory-axel-
honneths-theory-of-recognition-part-2-piet-strydom/
The following is the second installment of a four-part series. The first can be found here.
Honneth’s Theoretical Solution to the Deficit
Parameters of the Reconstruction
For the task of reconstructing Honneth’s project of eliminating the sociological deficit of critical
theory and eventually arriving at a critical assessment of it, there is no better perspective than the
retrospective one he himself offered recently. Sociologically, what needs to be focused on in a
concentrated and steadfast way is ‘the true core of the social’. By contrast with Horkheimer and
Adorno who in Marxist functionalist manner excluded or even completely snuffed out the
spectrum of normal, ordinary everyday social action and the varying socially and culturally
significant results, on the one hand, and Habermas who split it into a normatively barren goal-
oriented action system and a power-free sphere of communicative action, on the other, the social
concerns the achievement of societal integration or social order in the sense of a normative
recognition order through an incessant process of contestation and struggle.
The core of the social thus requires ‘the analysis of social mediation’. What such an analysis
would have to deal with is suggested by his view, quoted earlier, that ‘the members of society are
only integrated in society through mechanisms of mutual recognition – mechanisms, however,
which are always contested and therefore the object of a struggle for recognition’
This is a very compact statement of the central dimension of social reality which embraces a host
of analytical aspects. If people engage in a process of struggle for recognition in which the
mechanisms through which they are able to recognize each other mutually and thus become
socially integrated are themselves contested in that they are the very object over which the
participants struggle and conflict and, perhaps, in the end come to some mutual understanding
and agreement about, then a number of sociologically crucial components present themselves.
In a preliminary way, the following major components can be distinguished:
9
2010)
 Members of society forming different culturally integrated social groups; the

interpretative, reflexive and critical competences of the actors; the particular mechanisms of
the actors and groups which allow them to recognize one another;
 Mechanisms in the form of moral or normative principles which are the object of
contestation and with reference to which the actors and groups are able to interrelated their
particular competing and conflicting mechanisms of recognition;
 The institutional and structural framework and conditions within and under which such
interrelation is possible and the facilitating means of mediation under modern conditions;
 The process of the interrelation of mechanisms of mutual recognition which itself forms
part of the larger process of the development of society;
 Finally, the mode and degree of social integration achieved at the point of the temporary
practical closure of the process.
Now, it is evident that the correction of the sociological deficit of critical theory demands that
these various components be related to one another in a systematic way and that they are given
sufficient substance for the purposes of meaningful sociological analyses. The question, then, is
whether Honneth achieves this level of sociological theorization and substantiation to be able to
rightfully claim that he has succeeded in plugging the hole in critical theory.
Considering the range and complexity of these analytical components, it is obvious that it is
unrealistic to expect one person who, moreover, has been compelled to spend most of his time
defending the concept of recognition and critical theory, to be able single-handedly to eliminate
the sociological deficit in its full sense. It is undoubtedly a complex collaborative or distributed
task which requires a number of contributors, if not a whole generation, to accomplish.
From this point of view, there are various areas that Honneth does not cover or attend to and in
relation to which he is in a position to more or less assume the relevant contribution of others.
One such area is, for instance, the institutional and situational context in which publicly relevant
struggles of recognition – say, the expansion of rights or the inclusion of an excluded category of
people – take place which Habermas and several of his followers have articulated and
substantiated under the title of the public sphere.
After all, Honneth does share the communication paradigm with Habermas, while only seeking to
compensate for its one-sidedness and the negative consequences following from that. It would be
preposterous, therefore, to hold the lack of coverage of such an area against Honneth’s claim to
have overcome the sociological deficit of critical theory, for it is an instance of trivial non-
observance. But it is no longer a trivial matter when he fails to pursue the theoretical development
and substantive articulation of the sociologically significant implications of his very own core
concept and related methodological specifications.
It is on such a key theoretically significant area that I propose to focus in the following
reconstruction of Honneth’s proposed correction of the sociological deficit. As indicated, the
specific area I have in mind is delineated by such concepts as ‘struggle for recognition’,
10
2010)
‘mechanisms of mutual recognition’, the ‘interrelation’ of such mechanisms, ‘social integration’

through such interrelation, the ‘analysis of mediation’, the ‘process’ of mediation, and so forth.
What adds an extra layer of interest to the approach I am taking here is that it concerns exactly
the same dimension that is, if not completely missing, then at least understated in Habermas. The
theoretical implication of this is that by lifting out and developing this dimension a theoretical
step beyond not only Honneth but at the same time also beyond Habermas becomes possible –
which means to say, the entry of yet a different theoretical version of critical theory.
Recovery of the social
Honneth’s project of recovering the social dimension in order to overcome the sociological deficit
of critical theory in terms of the concept of recognition has its starting point in a submerged
theme in Habermas’ work and received encouragement in the late 1980s and 90s from the wave
of interest in identity and identity politics stimulated, among other developments, by the
multicultural consequences of globalization.
The trajectory he followed in the recovery process took off from his own early concern with the
experiences of injustice suffered by subordinate classes and suppressed groups. It then took the
arduous theoretical route via Hegel’s anti-Machiavellian and anti -Hobbesian concept of ‘the
struggle for recognition’, Mead’s naturalist reconstitution and social-psychological correction of
Hegel’s theory, and Marx, Sorel and Sartre’s varied yet partially Hegelian-inspired conceptions
of the historical development of society as a conflictual process of recognition struggles.
Central to the theory of the social Honneth developed by these various means, is obviously the
core matter of the interrelation or mediation of different mechanisms of mutual recognition,
including the learning processes undergone by those involved and their consequences. Finally,
Honneth arrived at his own recognition-theoretical position. Sociologically, on the one hand, he
sketched his social group- or movement-based theory of struggles of recognition motivated by
‘moral feelings’ – not necessarily to the exclusion of motivation by interests – which take on
the ‘pacemaker role’ in the development and moral progress of society.
And philosophically, on the other, he spelled out his ‘formal concept of concrete ethical life’ or
concrete ethical universal in the sense of intact recognition at the primary (family), institutional
(legal) and societal (solidarity) levels, which is implied by modern or ‘post-traditional recognition
relations’ and serves as the normative standard for their evaluation and critique.
Specifications and refinement of the project to correct the sociological deficit then followed.
While Honneth on several occasions since the late 1970s lauded Habermas for his rediscovery of
the social, he used his inaugural address of 1993 as an opportunity to distinguish his own new
theoretical version of critical theory from Habermas’. In reaction to commentators and critics,
Honneth over time also reworked his initially imprecise concept of recognition or recognition
expectations as the anchor point immanent in social reality and as the motivational reference
11
2010)
point of struggles of recognition and the moral development of society. To assess Honneth’s
project, a more penetrating analysis of these different steps in its unfolding is required.
Mechanisms of mutual recognition
Considering that Mead provided Hegel’s concept of struggle for recognition with psychological
and naturalistic underpinnings, the best place to start with a reconstruction of Honneth’s
understanding of mechanisms of mutual recognition, their mediation and the process of
development such interrelation makes possible, is his analysis of Mead. From there one could
then proceeds to his extrapolation, via the Marxist tradition, of his own group – or movement-
based theory of the morally rich conflictual developmental process of society.
The analysis of Mead starts with the formation of the self, in which case Honneth operates with a
basic distinction which is characteristic of his work right up to his recent Tanner Lectures (2008).
Accordingly, the first is the cognitive or epistemic self which originates in the form of self-
consciousness as a reaction to the perception of the existence of a second subject, while the
second is the moral or normative self which arises through the internalization of the normative
behavioral expectations of others encountered in the course of the process of socialization.
Mead’s ‘me’ is the evaluatively combined cognitive and normative self-image of the subject
which represents the internalized, individuated counterpart of the conventional norms in relation
to which the self formed and which regulates the self. Particularly important to Honneth is the
fact that the complex of conventional norms is a frame of reference for the formation of the self
which through the process of socialization, due to the experience of increasingly more complex
social situations in the course of time, becomes progressively abstracted and generalized.
From play where the child identifies with concrete others, via games where the participant has to
take account of the behavioral expectations of all those involved, to the internalization of ‘the
generalized other’, according to Mead, in the sense of the normative expectations of the
community or society as a whole – through these phases runs a process of internalization,
abstraction and generalization which can be regarded as a process of moral development or the
formation of moral consciousness.(154) Since Honneth pays special attention to Mead’s
psychological reference point and to his naturalistic account of the formation of the self and its
moral development in terms of specifiable mechanisms, the analysis cannot rest with the
formation of a self which is exhausted by a ‘me’, by a conventional moral consciousness.
The formation of the ‘me’ indeed indicates the direction of moral development but, rather than
being a process that reaches its end in identification with some existing community or society, it
has a dynamic which is permanently fuelled by an unknowable and uncontrolled, spontaneous,
creative, psychic force which Mead called the ‘I’. By moving against the constraint of
conventional norms, this ‘I’ renders the ‘me’ doubtful and sets off a conflict between the two, the
basic form of all conflict, which drives the moral development not only of the individual but also
of society.
12
2010)
To be able to expand its rights and freedom of self-realization and thus attain a new enlarged
configuration of conventional norms, however, the ‘I’ not only needs to idealize and anticipate a
counterfactual set of recognition relations or future society, but must also appeal to others and get
them to accept the proposed moral ideal. The conflict between the ‘I’ and ‘me’ then becomes
transposed to the level of a conflict between a historical force – say, a social movement – and
certain rigid conventional norms of society which could lead to the expansion of legal recognition
and the inclusion of some category of the excluded who would then enjoy a greater degree of
freedom for self-realization.
This view of Mead’s regarding the development of society is what provides Honneth with a
contact point for reinterpreting the tradition from Marx via Sorel to Sartre and, on that basis, to
introduce his own group- or social movement-based theory of the moral development of society.
Before considering this theory, however, I want to investigate a little more closely what Honneth
calls ‘mechanisms of mutual recognition’. In the analysis of Mead, Honneth does use the term
‘mechanism’ on several occasions, but only to designate those factors at issue in Mead’s
naturalistic rendering of Hegel in terms of which explanations can be offered of particular
processes. He identifies four such mechanisms.
The first is the ‘psychic mechanism’ of the ‘experience of a reacting interaction partner’, which
accounts for the emergence of self-consciousness. The second is the ‘mechanism’ of
‘internalization’ which explains the subject’s acquisition in the course of the process of
socialization of the normative expectations of his or her social environment. In opposition to
‘mere internalization’ leading to the acquisition of a conventional moral consciousness, Honneth
stresses in the third place the mechanism of ‘the raising of demands which are not reconcilable
with the socially acknowledged norms of the social environment’ .
Finally, there is the ‘developmental mechanism underlying the whole process of human
socialization’ by means of which the subject is enabled to orient itself according to ‘a rule derived
from the synthesis of the perspectives of all the participants’, which, as defining of the frame of
reference, is itself subject to further abstraction and generalization. Now, it is remarkable that
among these mechanisms is none that could be considered as a mechanism of mutual recognition
which is contested and is the object of conflict.
In fact, Honneth does not specify anything at all in these terms. Certain things he does mention
could possibly assume such a status and could play such a role, but he neither considers nor
presents them as such. In fact, he does not make any attempt at all to theorize them in a way that
would render them amenable to such a status and role. The first is the ‘practical self-image’ of a
subject or social actor which could conceivably come into conflict with another practical self-
image, but through a struggle for recognition eventually could come to peacefully overlap with
that of the erstwhile opponent or enemy.
A second is the ‘frame of reference’ consisting of synthetic rules which is common to all yet gets
interpreted in competing ways by different actors and, in this sense, could figure as the object of
13
2010)
the conflict between them. However, neither here in his recognition-theoretical main work nor
elsewhere in his writings does Honneth develop his position in a way that makes clear what
precisely the mechanisms of mutual recognition amount to.
General Patterns of Recognition
The common normative frame of reference mentioned above is of special importance in this
respect since this is where Honneth’s characteristic contribution belongs. The reference here is to
his ‘formal concept of concrete ethical life’ or ‘formal concept of the good life’, which defines his
theory of recognition, provides the philosophical justification for the normative criteria required
by critical theory to engage in critique and, finally, is central to the claim to having dealt with the
problem of the sociological deficit of critical theory.
The philosophical or, more precisely, moral-ethical theory Honneth introduces to underpin this
concept is located between the universalistic emphasis of Kant on Moralität, also represented by
Rawls and Habermas, and the particularistic emphasis of Aristotle and Hegel on Sittlichkeit,
also represented by communitarian neo-Aristotelians and neo-Hegelians like McIntyre and Taylor
respectively.
Articulated in terms of the theory of recognition, the resulting abstract and formal yet material
concept is filled out with reference to the young Hegel and Mead by the three ‘recognition
models’ of ‘love’, ‘legal relations’ and ‘solidarity’ – later called ‘need’, ‘autonomy’ and
‘achievement’. They represent the basic presuppositions or necessary conditions of individual
self- realization or, more substantively, the general structures of the good life in the form of
intersubjective protective devices.
Rather than institutional arrangements, however, Honneth describes them as ‘only general
behavioural patterns’ and as such bare ‘structural elements’ of all particular human forms of life.
He also points out that two of these principles of recognition, law and solidarity or ‘value
community’, harbour the potential for development to a higher normative level. Historical
evidence shows that the expansion of legal rights allowing greater individual freedom of self-
realization is possible, as is the inclusion of larger numbers of people under collective goal-
attainment allowing them to feel ethically and socially valued.
Considered from the point of view of mechanisms of mutual recognition, however, it is

noticeable that Honneth does not attempt to specify the nature of these general behavioural
patterns much beyond stark philosophical statements. How should these models be conceived if
they are to contribute to the elimination of the sociological deficit of critical theory? Closely
related to this is that Honneth consistently presents recognition as an intersubjective phenomenon,
but does not go into the question of the role of these models in mediation.
Recognition is described as an intersubjective relation between an individual and an interaction

partner or an agreeing and encouraging second person. How should these models be approached
if the core demand in overcoming the sociological deficit is ‘the analysis of social mediation’?
14
2010)
Can the mediation at issue be confined to the relation between ego and alter? Is there,
sociologically, not more to mediation than such a double contingency relation? Further, if some
of these models are amenable to development, how is such change to be conceived? What
precisely is it that undergoes development and thus changes?
Honneth indeed speaks of structural elements, but how are they to be conceived in a manner that
makes theoretical sense from a sociological point of view? As it stands, does his account not
confound the normative and the cognitive? To questions such as these no answers are to be found
in Honneth’s main work nor, to my knowledge, in later elaborations of the central ideas of this
work. The closest he comes to touching on such problems is in his group- or social movement-
based theory of social conflict where he refers a few times to ‘collective semantics’ to which I
return in due course.
In his inaugural address of 1993, Honneth does spell out his recognition theory as against
Habermas’ communication theory in a way that begins to reduce the vagueness of his position.
For him, moreover, this step is an essential ingredient in eliminating the sociological deficit of
critical theory. It is a sharpening of criticisms which were already flagged in his earlier writings
according to which Habermas’ universalistically inclined position was unsuited to grasping the
specificity of the social dimension.
Honneth formulates his criticism from a point of view shared with Habermas, namely that critical
theory is a reconstructive theory which must have an immanent anchor point in social life for its
context-transcendent critical perspective, but he differs from Habermas in his conception of what
needs to be reconstructed. Having introduced the communication paradigm, Habermas
emphasized the centrality of linguistic rules in a way that refocused critical theory on whatever
restrictions are imposed on the application of those rules, thus leading to distorted
communication.
Since emancipation consequently becomes dependent on the process of communicative

rationalization, and since this is a high-level process which transpires above the heads and behind
the backs of social actors, according to Honneth, critical theory in its new guise is rendered
incapable not only of linking up with the experience of the members of society, but by the same
token also of diagnosing social pathologies. Honneth’s response is not, as might be expected, to
abandon the communication paradigm, but rather to give it a different interpretation. Instead of
linguistic rules, ‘moral experience’ is emphasized, and instead of impediments in the way of the
use of such rules in communication, instances of ‘disrespect’ in the sense of the ‘violation of
identity claims’ acquired in the process of socialization now call for attention.
The place of language at the centre of the stage is taken by recognition. For Habermas,
reconstruction makes explicit the rational potential of linguistic rules which, in terms of universal
pragmatics, points toward principles such as a common external objective world, second an
interpersonally well-ordered shared social world, third an abstract and flexible practical ego-
15
2010)
identity free from psychopathological manifestations, and finally communicative processes

allowing the unhampered use of linguistic rules.
For Honneth, by contrast, the rational potential of recognition relations becomes normatively
palpable in the form of moral ideals such as love, respect and esteem together making up his
formal model of the good life, which is underpinned by the constant maintenance of the memory
or basic awareness of the intrinsic value of others as human beings. Honneth’s criticism of
Habermas thus indeed makes clear what he thinks critical theory needs to focus on through
reconstruction, yet we are back to where we were before.
How should the moral ideals reconstructed from moral experience and the memory structuring
moral experience be conceived in a sociologically relevant manner? If Habermas fails to provide
an idea that would address the sociological deficit of critical theory, as Honneth holds, then the
very same objection applies with equal force to his position. No substantive theoretical
specification is forthcoming.
The only proposal Honneth makes regarding the possible theorization of mechanisms of mutual
recognition is to be found in his group- or social movement-based theory of social conflict and
societal development. To be sure, it is at best only an implicit proposal for he makes an effort
neither to link it to mechanisms nor to acknowledge its theoretical potential. It consists in
conceiving of relations in terms of semantics which articulate an intersubjective interpretative
framework.
So, for instance, the formation of a ‘collective identity’, a ‘social movement’ and ‘collective
resistance’ all depend on a ‘collective semantic’ which allows personal experiences of violation
and disillusionment to be expressed in a common language and thus to connect individual moral
feelings to the impersonal goals of a social movement. From Mead Honneth derives the view that
such a semantic presupposes moral ideas or doctrines which infuse people’s image of society
with a surplus of normative significance and thus not only open the prospect of expanded
recognition relations, but also impart an interpretative perspective which exposes the cause of
individual and collective suffering. For positive change to take place, in addition, such
semantically articulated ideas and interpretative perspectives must gain influence and wide
acceptance in society.
It is evident that here semantics are ascribed the function of establishing and maintaining, or
mediating, relations of different kinds, levels and scope. The question that arises, however, is
whether the concept of a ‘semantic bridge’ is able to carry the theoretical weight implied by
mechanisms of mutual recognition and mediation. Is it sociologically plausible to conceive
whatever is responsible for the relations among individuals, social movements, existing society,
causal factors and a potential future society in semantic terms?
Does the appeal to semantics not drag Honneth back to language which he seeks to leave behind
in favour of recognition? Does his emphasis on semantics conceived in terms of moral ideas and
doctrines not narrow the perspective in a way that vitiates his own requirement for the basic
16
2010)
anthropologically rooted need for recognition and the emotional and motivational structure to be
accommodated? For instance, in what way or in what form does a semantic take root in the mind
and get embodied by a person or collective actor?
Do semantics, in other words, not represent too narrow and flimsy a basis to seek to account for
mechanisms of mutual recognition and the mediating role they are demanded to fulfill? Perhaps
the emphasis should rather be shifted from semantics, without excluding it, to theorizing the more
encompassing intersubjective frameworks in order to get at the nature of the mechanisms in
question and the mediating role they play.
The Process of Mediation
Earlier we have seen that Honneth regards social integration as an achievement that is attained
through mechanism of mutual integration. Since social integration is not achieved once and for
all, but is rather an ongoing task and fragile achievement, it means that the relation of the
mechanisms takes the form of a process. The interrelation or mediation of the mechanisms of
mutual recognition is an incessant process which takes time to pass from a lack of integration to a
socially integrated situation, and because such a situation is either imperfect or again breaks
down, the process always continues.
Far from the process of interrelation or mediation being confined to social interaction or
communication, as Habermas for the most part suggests, Honneth insists with Hegel, Mead,
Marx, Sorel and Sartre that it in a significant sense takes place in the medium of conflict or, more
specifically, struggle for recognition. Drawing on Mead’s psychological and naturalistic position,
Honneth regards this process as a necessary and unavoidable one for the human species which is
most fundamentally rooted in the anthropologically based, psychological conflict between the
spontaneous, creative, psychic force represented by the ‘I’ and the socially conditioned
conventional ‘me’.
It takes on societal significance, however, when it becomes writ large due to the convergence of a
relatively large number of unconventional demands so as to form a historical force in the guise of
a social movement responsible for introducing an audience-oriented and appealing moral-ethical
or normative innovation which critically problematizes or points beyond the generally accepted
framework of conventional norms. In terms of his concept of recognition, Honneth locates what
he calls ‘the moral logic of social conflicts’ lying at the heart of his group – or movement-based
theory of the development of society in the conflictual dynamics of ‘disrespect and resistance’.
He does not deny the relative right of the Hobbesian-utilitarian focus on interests, but he
prioritizes the largely neglected Hegelian-normative emphasis on the role of the moral experience
of disrespect or the violation of identity claims both in the genesis of social conflict and social
movements and in the continuous form of the process. To grasp Honneth’s conception of the
process and to be able to assess it, however, it is necessary to consider the different descriptions
he offers of it. First of all, it represents a process of the development of society, but it is secondly
also a learning process, and as such it is finally a matter of progress.
17
2010)
For Honneth, following Hegel and especially Mead, the process of mediation is in the first
instance a ‘developmental process’. The conflictual dynamics of disrespect and resistance driving
this process are motivated by moral feelings and turn on the identity of a group or social
movement. Rather than just serving the needs directly at stake, however, the collective action or
conflict could have a role in the transformation of recognition patterns. Historical evidence bears
out the fact that in many a case the disillusionment of moral expectations results in the shattering
of existing recognition relations.
In so far as the event assumes such a moral significance, a shift takes place from a mere episode
to the overarching process of the development of society. The transformation forms part of the
general logic of expansion of recognition relations, which means that we witness not just a
developmental process, but rather one possessing the more specific quality of a ‘moral
cultivation’ or ‘moral learning process’. Unless they become exposed as being reactionary,
emotional moral feelings and conflict in such a case contribute, in Meadian terms, to both a
generalization of the normative frame of reference and of a normative broadening of the practical
self -images of those involved.
Accordingly, Honneth regards the development of society in so far as it is a moral learning

process as capable of two distinct achievements which are illuminated by a consideration of the
specifically modern configuration of recognition patterns of love, law and solidarity. Having been
fused at the outset, these three patterns first of all had to be differentiated from one another and be
established as new recognition levels and, secondly, the potentials contained in them had to be
released and their actualization pursued in a concerted manner.
In Honneth’s view, social conflict can make a direct contribution only to the latter achievement,
but at best only an indirect one to the former. In the case of modernity, for instance, once the new
general socio-cultural level had been achieved, different kinds of social conflict and social
movement were able to focus on the universalization and materialization of law and on the
incorporation of individualizing and equalizing normative structures into the value community.
Press, 2001).
Axel Honneth, critical theory, functionalism, George Herbert Mead, Jürgen

Habermas, Marxism, Max Horkheimer, social mediation, Theodor Adorno, theory of recognition
18
2010)

(Piet Strydom)
November 5, 2019Critical Theory
The following is the third installment of a four-part series. The first can be found here, the
second here.
At this juncture several questions arise. The first one concerns social structure formation.
Considering the conflictual process as one that involves a shift from historical events to the
overarching process of the development of society, and considering further that such a
transformation forms part of the general logic of expansion of recognition relations, the question
is what kind of social structures capable of bridging the gap and making recognition relations
possible are formed here.
To this could be added the further question as to how such structure formation takes place. This
latter question would obviously demand that a theoretical account at least of social learning
processes be furnished which Honneth neglects to do. In fact, as will become apparent below, the
problem is more complicated than just moral learning processes. As regards the structures at issue
here, they are undoubtedly the very mechanisms of mutual recognition which Honneth has in
mind.
What are they, and how are they formed in the process of contestation and conflict? A
sociologically meaningful answer to this question is vital to the mitigation of the sociological
deficit of critical theory since, far from being just a matter of conflict, the social dimension
concerns the production or emergence of properties or features capable of stabilizing, at least
practically and temporarily, a degree of social integration.
The second question hinted at concerns the structure of the process as invoked by its directional
indices. Honneth claims that the interpretative framework his is developing – the one designed to
recover the social and thus overcome the sociological deficit of critical theory – is aimed at
reconstructing the path along which social conflicts unleashed the normative potentials of the
modern legal and evaluative forms, and to do so in manner that establishes the historical events as
stages in a conflictual learning process leading to an enlargement of recognition relations.
19
2010)
From this perspective, the development of society as a moral learning process finally appears
as ‘progress’, as a progressive process. Whether it actually amounts to progress, since regression
is of course also possible, is judged in terms of the normative standard of the hypothetically
anticipated or counterfactual situation of ‘the realization of undistorted forms of recognition’. I
accept the requirement for critical theory to operate with a normatively relevant counterfactual
reference, but the question is whether the debate about the normative justification of critique also
here in Honneth does not suffer from a tendency to confound the cognitive and the normative.
If modern societies provide a differentiated recognition order upon which normative problems

only then follow, are there not two distinct reference points here which cannot both be described
as normative? A serious related problem is the entirely opaque state in which Honneth’s account
leaves the relation between societal development and moral learning. If there is a distinction
between the establishment of a new socio-cultural level and the realization of the potentials of its
structural elements, is it possible then simply to speak globally of stages of a moral learning
process which step-by-step broadens recognition relations?
Does this not entail a confusion of different dimensions? Is a distinction between evolution and
learning not implied which renders such a global conception of moral learning problematic? Here
the problems of social structure, structure formation and mediation repeat themselves on different
levels.
A Cognitive Sociological Proposal
Therefore, a series of questions were posed at crucial junctures where problems seemed to arise
in his account. At this stage, it is necessary to take up and develop these questions in their own
right with the aim of assessing to what extent, if at all, his recovery of the social fulfills the
requirements of his project to eliminate the sociological deficit of critical theory. As indicated at
the outset, I approach the critical assessment as well as the corrective and alternative proposals
from the point of view of the relevance and significance that the cognitive revolution and the
consequent development of the cognitive sciences have for sociology.
The thrust of my argument, in other words, is that the cognitive turn in sociology can provide
most, if not all, of the necessary means to recover the social dimension and to overcome the
sociological deficit in question in a manner that seems to elude Honneth.
In order to present the assessment in an orderly and intelligible manner, let us recall Honneth’s
core statement from which the analysis in the previous section started. The central task, according
to Honneth, is to focus on the social dimension and to engage in the analysis of mediation by
determining how the participants are integrated into society through mechanisms of mutual
recognition which are the object of a struggle for recognition and therefore always contested.
The major analytical areas of concern, therefore, are the mechanisms involved and the process of
mediation, in which case both the mediation and the process itself are in question – that is,
precisely the areas in which we previously saw problems arising.
20
2010)
As regards mechanisms of mutual recognition, a central concept in the project of the recovery of
the social, we have seen that Honneth is theoretically quite vague. Rather than presented in
theoretical and analytical terms, he either does not reflect on the mechanisms in their own right
when concerned with them or he discusses them only indirectly in other contexts. The result is an
impression of incoherence.
When profiling his own position as against that of Habermas, on the one hand, the suggestion is
that the nature of these mechanisms should not be sought in language, but instead in moral
experience, something which brings emotion and motivation into the picture. On the other hand,
when in the context of his group- and movement-based theory of social conflict and societal
development he is confronted with the problem of the relation between a social movement and its
individual members as well as between it and the society on which it seeks to have an impact, he
is compelled to be more to the point.
Although not linked explicitly to mechanisms, he calls on semantics, a particular dimension of

language, to provide an answer – the key expression here being ‘semantic bridge’. Semantics
provide the mechanisms of mutual recognition which are interrelated or mediated through
conflict. If not a contradiction, there is certainly something odd about this move.
According to Honneth’s account, a ‘collective semantic’ serves as a bridge which allows not only
the integration of individuals into a social movement, but also the integration of a movement into
society in a way that transforms the latter. Semantics are undoubtedly of great importance in that
it makes available the symbolic means, whether in terms of language or images, for the
communicability of a movement’s message. In this respect, Honneth’s argument is entirely
plausible despite being not quite in synchronization with his own stipulations, yet the question is
whether this kind of bridging is sufficient.
How do semantics link up with the emotional- motivational structure, on the one hand, and the
shared socio-cultural patterns of society, on the other? Surely, both this structure and these
patterns are much richer than mere semantics? When the various bridges are successfully crossed
so that change occurs, what undergoes change – only words and meanings? Honneth further
tightens this conceptual approach by confining semantics more particularly to moral ideas and
doctrines.
This normative emphasis is of course of the greatest importance to critical theory, but the
problem – to begin with – is that this strategy captures only the normative dimension, that is, the
dimension of conscience on the micro level and morality, law and politics on the macro and meso
levels. But what then about intelligence and, especially, the emotive structure as well as their
respective counterparts on higher levels? Part of the problem is Honneth’s dependence on Mead’s
naturalistic moment and another is his interpretation of Mead’s interactionist moment.
On the one hand, he evaluates Mead’s naturalist rendering of Hegel too positively, since the
Darwinist basis from which American pragmatism at the time proceeded is by no means
adequate in the light of twentieth-century scientific advances. In this respect, Honneth’s appeal to
21
2010)
the necessity of an anthropological reference remains inadequate as long as it remains uninformed

by contemporary scientific developments. By no means unrelated to the former, Honneth on the
other hand tends to interpret Mead’s interactionism in normativistic terms. Both partialities can
be overcome by observance of the implications of the cognitive revolution and the cognitive turn
in sociology
The introduction of the cognitive approach could improve matters since, as a multidimensional
approach,it makes possible an integral view of the various levels. To appreciate the significance
of this approach, however, Honneth will have to disabuse himself of the narrow conception of the
cognitive as being equivalent to explicit knowledge and purposive rationality which drives him
into maintaining throughout his work as a whole, from early to contemporary, the well-
intentioned yet less than helpful distinction between the cognitive and the normative. Far from
being exhausted by knowledge, the cognitive refers in the first instance to mechanisms,
competences, structures and processes which make the generation, organization and diffusion of
knowledge possible.
To this should be added, moreover, that such mechanisms, competences, structures and processes
as well as the resulting knowledge are by no means of a purely intellectual kind. A starting point
for broadening Honneth’s approach could be his reference to ‘intersubjective interpretative
frameworks’. While such frameworks are indeed articulated by semantics and therefore have a
pronounced symbolic countenance which misleads many in taking them only as such, 11 they are of
a much more encompassing nature which has been and still is the object of investigation of the
cognitive sciences.
They consist of sets of dynamic cognitive forms or structures of different levels and scope – from
being in the head and body, via collective agents and entities like social movements,
organizations and institutions, to a variety of cultural manifestations big and small. Depending on
discipline and stage of development of the cognitive sciences, they have been theorized in
different ways under different titles, including categories, prototype, schema or script, frame,
cultural schema, connectionist network and cognitive models.
It is important to take note of the successive shift in the cognitive sciences between the late 1950s
and the 1980s from the cognitivist through the connectionist to what Varela et al. propose to call
the ‘enactive’ paradigm, respectively based on the model of the computer, the brain and the actor
in its environment, since the consequences are continuing tensions and misunderstandings both
within these disciplines and in views of them. Particularly disorienting is the continued influence
of the oldest, scientifically outpaced, orthodox cognitivist trend.
Beyond the concept of frame and framing which stem from the cognitivist phase, sociology –
particularly the sociology of social movements – has been significantly impacted also by
connectionism through its idea of distributed generative activity and concept of network, while
the so-called ‘practice turn’ in the social sciences which takes the action environment, including
things and objects, into account displays certain hallmarks of the enactivist phase.
22
2010)
Although Honneth’s work can directly be linked to social movement studies and the practice turn,
it does not seem to have been touched in any way by the cognitive turn in these important areas of
contemporary social science. There can be little doubt about the fact, however, that it would
benefit immensely from being enriched by cognitive sociology and, more broadly, cognitive
social science.
Two aspects of the cognitive approach which are of importance for the recovery of the social
domain in a way that would contribute to the elimination of the sociological deficit of critical
theory in keeping with the current relation between the natural and social sciences are relevant in
the present context. The first is that the cognitive approach disposes over the necessary means to
bridge the gap between nature and culture.
While a large number and perhaps even the majority of cognitive scientists tend toward a strong
naturalistic position which has undesirable reductionist consequences for the social and cultural
disciplines, this is by no means a compelling position. The ‘weak’ or ‘soft naturalism’
Habermas has come to defend, for instance, is fully in accord with the position of perhaps the
first most complete cognitive sociologist, Erving Goffman. Habermas sees an ontological
continuity between nature and the socio-cultural world, but emphasizes an epistemological break
which secures the independence of the socio-cultural world without denying the conditioning
impact of nature.
In the most specific sociologically relevant sense, human cognitive competences developed over
millions of years of species evolution generate the socio-cultural world which acquires is own
contextualizing organization and logic. Comparably, Goffman took the view that ‘although
natural events occur without intelligent intervention, intelligent doings cannot be accomplished
effectively without entrance into the natural order’, which implies that ‘any segment of a socially
guided doing can be partly analyzed within a natural schema’.
At the same time, however, he stressed that the characteristic sociological concern is not with
naturalistic explanations nor, on the other hand, with sociologistic, functionalist or culturalist
accounts of social order in terms of norms or symbols, but rather with the ‘interaction order’
which constitutes and orders the social world and allows the framing of norms and normatively
regulated action and relations in social situations. Besides the generative activity, whether
communication or struggle, through which the competences of social agents take effect, the social
dimension crucially involves reflexive or second-order rules which in turn come to play a
generative and regulative role in the further exercise of those competences.
Press, 2001).
23
2010)
Alex Honneth, cognitive sociology, critical theory, Erving Goffman, functionalism, George

Herbert Mead

(Piet Strydom)
November 10, 2019Critical Theory
The following is the forth installment of a four-part series. The first can be found here, the
second here, the third here.
It is at this juncture, where this particular kind of structure formation occurs, that the second
aspect of the cognitive approach of importance for the recovery of the social domain enters. It is
the cognitive concept of culture which is implied in the tradition running from Kant and Hegel,
via Marx and left-Hegelian American pragmatists and German critical theorists, right up to
Habermas.
What Honneth refers to as a general ‘frame of reference’ or ‘intersubjective interpretative

framework’ and, indeed, his central idea of ‘mechanisms of mutual recognition’, are theoretically
best conceived in terms of this cognitive concept of culture. This particulate or compositional
concept is the outcome of the differentiation of the intellectual, moral and aesthetic orientations
and cultural spheres at the dawn of the modern period due to an increase in reflexivity and the
emergence of second-order rules which Kant marked with his three critiques and Weber
confirmed sociologically with his observance of the establishment of autonomous domains each
with its own inherent logic and standard of validity.
Henceforth, these reflexive rules came to represent the cognitive order of modernity in the form
of an internally differentiated, generally shared classificatory framework which brings order into
social life through its generative and regulative impact on intellectual, moral and ethical
orientations and corresponding actions and social arrangements. In fact, what Honneth discusses
as the ‘differentiation of the recognition framework’ of modern times is but a part of this still
more general framework, as is borne out by the fact that he concentrates on the moral domain
through a focus on law and on the ethical domain through love at the micro-level and solidarity at
the macro-level.
24
2010)
The recognition models of love, law and solidarity, then, are particular dimensions of the
consensual in the sense of the taken-for-granted cognitive order of modernity. Without realizing
it, Honneth describes precisely this cognitive order when he insists that these recognition patterns,
rather than institutional arrangements or – we may say – normative expectations, are ‘only
general behavioural patterns’ and as such formal ‘structural elements’ (1992: 279) of all
particular human forms of life. This cognitive sense must be what he has in mind when he
invokes the emergence of second-order or reflexive rules by acknowledging the basic orienting
role of synthetic rules referred to above.
Now, it is the general intersubjective interpretative framework or rather cognitive order 20 with its
different structural elements that represents the mechanisms of mutual recognition which, as
Honneth says, are ‘always contested and therefore the object of a struggle for recognition’. It can
figure as the object of conflict since it is common to all, on the one hand, yet gets systematically
actualized in competing ways by culturally and institutionally different actors, groups and
collective agents.21
This implies that the mechanisms of mutual recognition which Honneth has in mind must involve
more than just the contested cognitive order as such. This is the case since the contestation or
struggle over the cognitive order can be carried out in the medium of conflict only through
competing cognitive frameworks which are themselves distinct actualizations of the overarching
cognitive order.
Such competing cognitive frameworks are embodied, presented and defended in the course of the
conflict by the different participating groups or collective agents who seek to actualize and realize
the potential of the cognitive order each in its own way. In his appropriation of Mead, Honneth
anticipated such actor-specific cognitive frames by speaking of the ‘practical self-image’ of a
subject or social actor, and later in the outline of his theory of group- or movement- based social
conflict he adverted to it in an under-theorized manner by referring to the ‘collective identity’ and
‘collective semantic’ of a social movement. The collective agents targeted by or opposing a social
movement who must also be taken into account in order to grasp a sequence of social conflict are,
of course, similarly endowed with distinct cognitive frames.
The conflictual dynamics of ‘disrespect and resistance’ driving this process may be motivated by
moral feelings, as Honneth emphasizes, but both the resistance offered by a social movement and
the offending disrespect showed by some other collective agent or agents must of necessity be
couched in cognitive frames characteristic of the relevant participants. In addition to the cognitive
order, then, the respective cognitive frames of each of the participants in a social conflict can be
regarded as the mechanisms of mutual recognition Honneth has in mind.
Mediation Through a Process of Structure Formation
To conceive the interrelation or mediation of the various mechanisms of mutual recognition as a

process of social conflict is obviously sociologically crucial. It brings the participating actors into
view and allows, as Honneth stresses, a focus on the experience of the actors instead of being
25
2010)
carried away by some abstract process which transpires above the heads and behind the backs of
the participants. To present the process as a matter of social conflict, however, harbours the
danger of remaining at the descriptive level.
Social conflict indeed provides the medium in which the different mechanisms or cognitive
frames are related to one another, but as a process of mediation leading beyond sheer struggle
toward an end of the conflict in mutual recognition and social integration, something more
constructive must be involved. It is for this reason that Honneth speaks of a ‘developmental
process’ which, regarded from the inside, can be conceived as a ‘moral cultivation process’ or
‘moral learning process’.
The kind of development and learning implied here obviously go further than experience and,
therefore, Honneth sees both as carrying the general logic of expansion of recognition relations.
He is content, however, merely to describe what such logic entails rather than thinking it through
more theoretically, as would be sociologically required. Given the attainment of a new, general
socio-cultural level, for instance the modern configuration of recognition patterns of love, law
and solidarity, the potentials contained in them are released and their actualization pursued
through different kinds of struggle and social movement seeking to universalize and materialize
the law and to incorporate individualizing and equalizing normative structures into the ethos of
the community.
From a cognitive sociological perspective, however, this positive dimension of the process of
mediation can be explicitly conceived beyond such description as a process of structure
formation. Approaching mediation in these terms has implications for the conceptualization not
only of the outcome of the process, on which Honneth tends to focus, but also of the actual
interrelation of mechanisms which during a temporal window generates those outcomes.
Both the outcomes Honneth mentions, namely the normatively relevant broadening of the law
and of the practical self-images of the agents, entail reconstituted and newly articulated cognitive
frames at different levels. Such achievements are possible, however, only if the respective
cognitive frames of the agents – say, a social movement and its opponent – have gone through a
process in which they were interrelated first in a conflictual and competitive phase which then
gave way to a phase of mutual learning, convergence and overlap or even fusion in certain
respects.
Only along such a trajectory which involves the broadening of the cognitive frames of each and
making them orient in a new way toward the cognitive order could the agents arrive at the better
understanding of the other and of themselves which is presupposed by mutual recognition. It is
sociologically of the essence that this dynamic process and the sequential moments of structure
formation be followed and analyzed through their unfolding in time. This is precisely what is
implied by Honneth’s emphasis on the importance of ‘the analysis of social mediation’.
For such an analysis, needless to say, one requires a theory of the cognitive frame construction
devices, the structural (intellectual, moral and ethical) elements of cognitive frames, actor
26
2010)
cognitive frames, modes of interrelation of different actor frames and, finally, both the emergence
of transformed actor frames and of new macro cognitive structures within the cognitive order
shared by the erstwhile opponents. It is not possible to resolve the problem of the sociological
deficit in question without a theoretical component of this kind which enables one to deal with
the process of mediation. Unless the critical theorist is able to do so, also the phenomena of
development and learning will remain beyond reach.
A closely related problem that was noted earlier in the analysis is Honneth’s presentation of
recognition as an intersubjective phenomenon without going into the question of the role of his
three recognition models in mediation. It once more emerges here. He conceives recognition in
the elementary form of an intersubjective relation between two agents, but if it is a matter of
‘social mediation’, then one cannot stop at mediation confined to the double contingency relation
between ego and alter since there is a third dimension, the third point of view, involved.
While it enables evaluation and judgement and is therefore normatively significant, it should not
directly be reduced to a norm or something normative, since it is strictly speaking of a cognitive
nature. Two agents are able to relate to one another only through reference to the cognitive order
and the employment of the classificatory categories it provides. Sociologically, therefore,
mediation is not a dyadic but rather a triadic relation.
It brings the macro-level cognitive order – indeed in ethicized form – into play in the course of
the interrelation between the meso-level cognitive frames of the collective agents as well as the
micro-level cognitive frames of their individual members. Failing this more complex theoretical
approach, neither the consequent transformation of the different micro, meso and macro cognitive
structures can be sociologically grasped nor the learning they undergo and the development this
generates. These observations bring us finally to the question of the process itself.
In the earlier analysis, we saw that Honneth describes social mediation as a ‘developmental

process’ as well as a ‘moral cultivation’ or ‘moral learning process’ without attempting to specify
how these two dimensions of the conflictual process relate to one another. For the purposes of
recovering the social domain and overcoming the sociological deficit of critical theory, however,
the relation between societal development and moral learning calls for theoretical clarity.
Honneth effectively makes the distinction himself by offering an example of the properties of
each kind of process: on the one hand, societal development in which social movements are at
best only marginal leads to the establishment of a new socio-cultural level containing the modern
differentiated recognition model.
On the other, social movements’ pursuit of the realization of the potentials of the model’s
structural elements gives rise to processes of moral learning. Despite this assumption, he
nevertheless obliterates the distinction by speaking globally of stages of a moral learning process
which step-by-step broadens recognition relations. As against this reductive tendency, it should
be stressed that the broadening of recognition relations does not involve only the filling out of
27
2010)
potentials intentionally and actively targeted, but over time shifts occur in the cognitive structural
elements which have the effect of broadening the meaning of possible recognition.
While such shifts allow further moral learning processes by enhancing the available potentials
and stimulating their still fuller realization, they are irreducible to moral learning processes. It is
sociologically crucial not to confuse or collapse these different dimensions which are captured by
the important distinction between evolution and learning.
The problem Honneth encounters in conceptualizing the process, in particular the relation of the
evolutionary and learning dimensions, has its roots in his inadequate distinction between the
normative, which he prioritizes, and the cognitive, which he understands in a far too narrow
purposive-rational and explicit epistemic manner. Most immediately, however, it goes back to his
reaction to Habermas’ misunderstanding of systems theory. Habermas mistook systems theory as
having as its object substantive action systems devoid of the kind of normative
regulation pervading the communicatively reproduced lifeworld. Honneth’s immediate
reaction to the dualistic conceptual pair of lifeworld and system was to reject systems theory out
of hand – a position he explicitly retains right up to his recent interviews.
Rather than seeing through it, his rejection of systems theory indicates that he in effect shares
Habermas’ misunderstanding of the concept of system. What has to be appreciated, however, is
that the systems concept is a cognitive one which is vital for sociology and, by extension, for
critical theory. This can be illuminated by reference to the modern cognitive order. The concept
of system captures the phenomenon of the emergence of second-order, reflexive or synthetic rules
in a variety of domains which then come to represent the prevailing cognitive order of the time.
As regards modernity, in the sixteenth century Bodin registered the emergence of the concept of
state and its standard of sovereignty and Adam Smith followed in the eighteenth with the concept
of the economic system with its standard of efficiency. During the next number of years, Kant
canonically formulated in his three critiques dealing with pure reason, practical reason and
judgement respectively the second-order cultural rules which had emerged in the by then
autonomous intellectual, moral and aesthetic domains.
Together, all these reflexive rules, from sovereignty and efficiency to truth, rightness and
appropriateness, form the taken-for-granted and therefore generally shared cognitive order of
modernity. This cognitive dimension is of vital importance sociologically since it allows the
investigation of the constitution of society and the temporal attainment of social integration and
order by critically analyzing the diversity of competing and conflicting, but also learning and
cooperative, attempts to actualize and realize the potentials staked out by the range of structural
components of the cognitive order. Honneth’s three recognition patterns form part of this very
cognitive order as but elements of its normative and aesthetic areas.
Conclusion
28
2010)
Focusing on Honneth’s project to eliminate the sociological deficit of critical theory, this article
was devoted to an investigation of his proposed recovery of the social domain essential to the
attainment of his goal. In accordance with his conception of the social as social integration
achieved through permanent conflict and struggle for recognition, he gives priority to bringing
back in the intermediate area neglected or even excluded by his predecessors – Horkheimer and
Adorno the competences of social actors and the normal social and cultural activities in which
they engage while observing moral norms; Habermas the constitutive process of competition,
contestation and conflict.
What had to be investigated and critically assessed was the series of key concepts Honneth
introduced to recover this intermediate domain, including mechanisms of mutual recognition,
social mediation and the process of moral learning and societal development. While Honneth’s
conception of the social and the concepts proposed to capture it broadly point in the right
direction, they were found not to redeem his – cautiously advanced – claim of having overcome
the sociological deficit in question. In fact, the impression of a continuing deficit persists. Not
only are these concepts not sociologically substantiated, but Honneth’s proposals are theoretically
wanting.
This becomes particularly noticeable from the perspective of perhaps the most important
intellectual development of our time – the cognitive revolution and the development of the
cognitive sciences of which the cognitive turn in sociology forms an integral part. There indeed
are indications, however sparse, of cognitive influence in Honneth, for instance in his
conceptualization of the structural elements or principles of the modern recognition order. Yet it
remains too weak to draw him out into developing the social domain theoretically with the help
of cognitive sociology.
Neither is it made clear what precisely the mechanisms of mutual recognition are, nor are the
relations of interrelation and transformation of these mechanisms analytically laid out, nor finally
is the nature of the process satisfactorily accounted for. Whereas a cognitive sociological
approach can assist in both recovering the social and eliminating the sociological deficit of
critical theory, the impression of a confounding of the normative and cognitive dimensions in
Honneth’s project lingers on.
Press, 2001).
Adam Smith, Axel Honneth, identity politics, identity theory, Immanuel Kant, social

mediation, struggle for recogntion
29
2010)
30

The Sociological Deficit of Contemporary Critical Theory - Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition, Part 1 (Piet Strydom)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

The Sociological Deficit of Contemporary Critical Theory - Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition, Part 1 (Piet Strydom)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Sociological Deficit of Contemporary Critical Theory - Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition, Part 1 (Piet Strydom)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Strydom, ‘Sociological Deficit of Contemporary Critical Theory – Honneth’, The New Polis, online, 2019 (originally written

The Sociological Deficit of

The following is the first installment of a four-part series.

Such theoretical substantiation, I argue, is promised by the development of sociology in relation

The Sociological Deficit of Critical Theory

Accordingly, Honneth perceives the sociological deficit of the Dialectic of Enlightenment in

Adorno’s analysis covers the three dimensions of political-economic reproduction,

Considering Adorno’s reductive conceptual scheme, his diagnosis of the desocialization of

Axel Honneth’s response

Axel Honneth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Horkheimer, Max Weber, sociology, Theodor Adorno

The Sociological Deficit of

Honneth’s Theoretical Solution to the Deficit

Parameters of the Reconstruction

In a preliminary way, the following major components can be distinguished:

 Members of society forming different culturally integrated social groups; the

‘mechanisms of mutual recognition’, the ‘interrelation’ of such mechanisms, ‘social integration’

Recovery of the social

Mechanisms of mutual recognition

General Patterns of Recognition

Considered from the point of view of mechanisms of mutual recognition, however, it is

Recognition is described as an intersubjective relation between an individual and an interaction

Since emancipation consequently becomes dependent on the process of communicative

identity free from psychopathological manifestations, and finally communicative processes

The Process of Mediation

Accordingly, Honneth regards the development of society in so far as it is a moral learning

Axel Honneth, critical theory, functionalism, George Herbert Mead, Jürgen

The Sociological Deficit of

If modern societies provide a differentiated recognition order upon which normative problems

A Cognitive Sociological Proposal

Although not linked explicitly to mechanisms, he calls on semantics, a particular dimension of

the necessity of an anthropological reference remains inadequate as long as it remains uninformed

Alex Honneth, cognitive sociology, critical theory, Erving Goffman, functionalism, George

The Sociological Deficit of

What Honneth refers to as a general ‘frame of reference’ or ‘intersubjective interpretative

Mediation Through a Process of Structure Formation

To conceive the interrelation or mediation of the various mechanisms of mutual recognition as a

In the earlier analysis, we saw that Honneth describes social mediation as a ‘developmental

Adam Smith, Axel Honneth, identity politics, identity theory, Immanuel Kant, social

You might also like