Affective recognition and social freedom - the psychoanalytic and normative-reconstructive logics of grounding social critique in Axel Honneth’s work

Abstract

The task of this paper is the following: how should one explain and solve the theory-immanent tension in Honneth’s recent works, i.e. the tension that reflects the difference between the concept of social freedom (a concept grounded in Hegel’s social philosophy methodologically articulated through normative reconstruction) and the concept of ‘affective recognition’ (which has replaced the earlier normative concept) - in other words: is there a certain logically-factually grounded path from the question of subjective-individual recognition to the intersubjective recognition of free (legal) subjects in society? My thesis is the fol­lowing: this supposed tension is a pseudo-tension. It loosens up - without completely resolving itself - as soon as we combine the two logics of grounding critique that we find in Honneth. However, unrelated to my claim about the pseudo-nature of the mentioned tension, the psychoanalytic mode of grounding critique is erroneous, since one cannot directly arrive at collective components of society starting from the empirical constellation of individual consciousnesses. The relation between subjective individuality and objective (intersubjective) generality is an objective contradiction (as opposed to a purely theoretical tension). If we still decide to pursue this path of grounding critique, we inadvertently introduce a psychologistic approach into social theory. Such an approach can be found in Honneth’s theory of intersubjective (normative) recognition as well.

Keywords

• Honneth
• Hegel
• Freud
• recognition
• social critique
• law
• self-consciousness
• desire
• negation
• freedom