Revista Interdisciplinar de Direito (Dec 2020)

Habermas e Honneth: leitores de Mead

  • Maria Eugenia Bunchaft

DOI
https://doi.org/10.24859/RID.2020v18n2.931
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 18, no. 2
pp. 272 – 308

Abstract

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Mead was an American pragmatist philosopher who developed a line of thought called symbolic interactionism.To the social psychologist there can only be a sense of the self if there is a corresponding sense of "us." Mead 's theory is central to Habermas (2002 , 2012) and Honneth, it does not resort to methodological individualism , explaining social phenomena and social behavior in an intersubjective perspective. It is argued that the fundamental concern of Habermas, in rereading the social psychology of Mead, focuses on the development of the self to reach a level of post-conventionality. Concern Honneth, to redeem Mead, binds to the contexts of moral vulnerability, ie the possibility to avoid the damage that the self may suffer in the formation of personal identity. It is argued, finally, that a reinterpretation of the social psychology of Mead based on the normative paradigm of self-realization has no theoretical resources with the potential to assess contemporary injustices and meet the challenges posedby the new social movements, since the expansion of the dimensions of recognition does not may rely on a defense of moral psychology of suffering. Search is therefore present a dialogue between Habermas and Honneth on the social psychology of Mead.

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