Introduction

answers to Axel Honneth

Volker Schmitz

pp. 1-11

in: Volker Schmitz (ed), Axel Honneth and the critical theory of recognition, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

In 1968, Jürgen Habermas's Antworten auf Herbert Marcuse set the tone for the radical re-orientation of the Frankfurt School by a new generation of social theorists. Over the next 50 years, their primary focus remained firmly on normative foundations. In Axel Honneth's work, this tendency has taken on a different shape with a turn away from procedures of justification to investigations of modern society's ethical life and institutions. Axel Honneth and the Critical Theory of Recognition presents a collection of critical voices and their reactions to the Frankfurt School's most important thinker today: covering a wide range of disciplines, methodologies, and genres, the authors analyze the current direction of critical theory, contextualize it both intellectually and politically, and develop their own visions and suggestions of "what is to be done" in order to maintain critical theory's scholarly and "emancipatory intent."

Cited authors

Honneth Axel

Marcuse Herbert

Habermas Jürgen