Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory: 23 (New Directions in Critical Theory)

by Axel Honneth (Author), Axel Honneth (Author), James Ingram (Author)

New
Hardcover
2009
$46.19

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns. Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new reconstructive form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School.

Synopsis

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns. Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new reconstructive form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 01 Jun 2009
ISBN 10: 0231146264
ISBN 13: 9780231146265
Book Overview: This volume is a significant contribution to the debates over the history of the Frankfurt School and the contemporary relevance of critical social theory. Axel Honneth's work provides a subtle reading of history that is less concerned with putting its products in their place--though he does do that in an exemplary fashion--than in highlighting what is living and vibrant in those products for contemporary thought. -- Christopher F. Zurn, University of Kentucky These essays reflect a deep familiarity with each individual author while also serving to advance the particular approach characterizing Axel Honneth's work: a focus on the theme of suffering and moral struggle as the point of departure for a more ambitious, 'reconstructive' form of social criticism. As such, this volume makes a very significant contribution to the continuing relevance of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School for contemporary forms of social criticism. -- Kenneth Baynes, Syracuse University

Media Reviews

John Holt's book is an impressive work of scholarship. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society This is a scholarly but eminently readable and accessible study of the multilayered resonance of Sri Lankan culture... Highly Recommended. Choice I highly recommend it to all those interested in social justice. It offers a sophisticated, exceptionally well-crafted answer to a highly pertinent question: what social scientific criteria are there for making normative judgements about why and how Western civilization should change? -- Ronjon Paul Datta Studies in Social Justice

Author Bio

Axel Honneth is professor of philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt and director of the Institute for Social Research. He is the author of The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts , Philosophical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment , The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory , and Communicative Action: Essays on Jurgen Habermas's The Theory of Communicative Action. James Ingram is an assistant professor of political science at McMaster University. He has translated works by Reinhart Koselleck, Christoph Menke, Hauke Brunkhorst, Jacques Derrida, and Etienne Balibar, among others.