The Struggle for Recognition

Introduction

Honneth’s habilitation thesis, published by Suhrkamp in 1992 (English 1995). It takes up the theory of recognition in the young Hegel’s Jena writings and gives it an empirical basis in G. H. Mead’s social psychology. Three forms of recognition correspond to three forms of a positive relation to oneself: love gives self-confidence, legal rights give self-respect, and social solidarity gives self-esteem. Their denial – abuse, exclusion from rights, denigration – is experienced as disrespect and can motivate social struggles. With this “moral grammar” Honneth shifts the focus of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory from Habermas’s communication to recognition.

Connections

Builds on

• Phenomenology of Spirit1807 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Mind, Self, and Society1934 · George Herbert Mead