Rahel Jaeggi

Agora

Rahel Jaeggi

b. 1966

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Alienation is a “relation of relationlessness” to ourselves and the world, and ways of life can be criticised as failing to solve the problems they themselves face.

Placement

Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory · Western Europe · Society & History, Ethics, Politics & Law

Social philosopher in the Frankfurt tradition, long at Berlin’s Humboldt University: alienation is a “relation of relationlessness”, and forms of life can be criticised rationally when they fail at the problems they themselves face.

Key ideas

Alienation as relation of relationlessness
Critique of forms of life
Progress and regression

Teachers: Axel Honneth

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Influence

Influenced by 5

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

influenced by
Jaeggi took Hegel’s determinate negation as the model of an immanent critique that judges forms of life by their own crises and contradictions (Kritik von Lebensformen, 2014). R. Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen (2014); G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Karl Marx

influenced by
Jaeggi reconstructed the concept of alienation from Marx and others without an essentialist human nature, as a ‘relation of relationlessness’ (Entfremdung, 2005). R. Jaeggi, Entfremdung. Zur Aktualität eines sozialphilosophischen Problems (2005); SEP “Alienation”
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
John Dewey

influenced by
In Kritik von Lebensformen (2014) Jaeggi drew on Dewey’s theory of inquiry to treat forms of life as attempts to solve problems, which can fail and learn. R. Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen (2014); J. Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938)
Evidence: AI draft
John Dewey › 1859–1952
Hannah Arendt

influenced by
In Welt und Person (1997), based on her master’s thesis, Jaeggi examined the anthropological background of Arendt’s social critique to use it for analysing social pathologies. R. Jaeggi, Welt und Person. Zum anthropologischen Hintergrund der Gesellschaftskritik Hannah Arendts (1997)
Evidence: AI draft
Hannah Arendt › 1906–1975
Axel Honneth studied with

studied with
Jaeggi worked at Honneth’s chair of social philosophy in Frankfurt as research associate (1996–2001) and assistant (2003–09); she took her doctorate there in 2002 with the study of alienation that appeared in 2005 in a series edited by Honneth, and her Habilitation in 2009. R. Jaeggi, CV (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin); R. Jaeggi, Entfremdung (2005)
Evidence: AI draft
Axel Honneth › b. 1949

Position

Jaeggi revived the concept of alienation, which had fallen out of favour because it seemed to presuppose a fixed human nature or “true self” from which we are estranged. She reconstructs it without such essentialism: alienation is a “relation of relationlessness”, a deficient relation to oneself and the world in which one cannot make one’s own actions, roles and desires one’s own. “Kritik von Lebensformen” challenges the liberal view that ways of life are private matters beyond rational dispute. Forms of life – bundles of practices such as the family or the market – are attempts to solve problems, and they can be criticised when they fail at the problems they themselves face; drawing on Hegel and Dewey, she calls this a form of immanent critique that can set off learning processes. Her conversation with Nancy Fraser treats capitalism as an institutionalised social order rather than only an economy, and “Fortschritt und Regression” asks how social progress can be told from regression without assuming a fixed goal of history.

Life & context

Rahel Jaeggi (born 1966 in Bern) is the daughter of the Swiss sociologist and writer Urs Jaeggi and the psychoanalyst Eva Jaeggi. She studied philosophy at the Free University of Berlin, writing her master’s thesis on Hannah Arendt, and took her doctorate in Frankfurt in 2002 under Axel Honneth, whose assistant she was for many years; she qualified as a professor there in 2009. From 2009 she was professor of practical philosophy and social philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and from 2018 she directed its Center for Humanities and Social Change. In 2025 the New School for Social Research in New York announced that she would join its philosophy department from autumn 2026.