Das Recht der Freiheit: Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit

by Axel Honneth

Il rapporto tra l'individuo e le istituzioni sociali e politiche in cui egli si muove e agisce, e soprattutto i concetti di giustizia e libertà che da quel rapporto si generano, sono temi caldi nella filosofia contemporanea e centrali nel pensiero di Axel Honneth, principale esponente della scuola di francoforte e allievo di Jurgen Habermas. Honneth torna in libreria con la sua opera ad oggi più completa e articolata. Ne "il diritto della libertà" analisi storico-sociale e riflessione filosofica si intrecciano per inquadrare una tesi importante: in una democrazia, libertà e giustizia non sono concetti astratti e statici, ma pratiche sociali concrete e dinamiche, conquiste che nascono da un'iniziale privazione e da una successiva rivendicazione. I conflitti scaturiti da questa lotta per il riconoscimento si realizzano in nuove istituzioni sociali, in sintonia con le aspirazioni delle persone e con il pluralismo delle società complesse. Prefazione di Gustavo Zagrebelsky.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Politics, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published June 20, 2011

About the author

Axel Honneth (born July 18, 1949) is a professor of philosophy at both the University of Frankfurt and Columbia University. He is also director of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Honneth's work focuses on social-political and moral philosophy, especially relations of power, recognition, and respect. One of his core arguments is for the priority of intersubjective relationships of recognition in understanding social relations. This includes non- and mis-recognition as a basis of social and interpersonal conflict. For instance, grievances regarding the distribution of goods in society are ultimately struggles for recognition.

Reviews

[Michal Lipták · Rating 3 out of 5]

To start - I suggest you read this detailed review by Terry Pinkard. It's very good. Now for some ramblings of mine:

This is an admirable effort to kind of re-write Hegel's Philosophy of Right (pleasant shift from the overused Phenomenology of Spirit) for the 21st century. It's not only an effort to update Hegel's certainly outdated particular political views, but a more thorough effort to re-apply Hegel's approach in our times. This, of course, raises firstly a question what it is that Hegel actually does in PR - it's kind of three-fold move, where Hegel simultaneously develops theoretically the idea of freedom, traces historical development of institutions and - despite his statement in preface that his enterprise is only descriptive - provides normative justifications for some of those institutions while critiquing the others. The ways these three lines of thought intertwine are extremely difficult to untangle but that's kind of the point. Hegel calls it "dialectics". Honneth calls it "normative reconstruction".

Throughout his normative reconstruction, Honneth borrows Hegel's tripartite division of abstrakte Recht, Moralität and Sittlichkeit, here offered under titles "legal freedom" (or negative freedom), "moral freedom" (or reflexive freedom) and "social freedom". Under the first two titles Honneth tackles mostly theories of freedom (classical liberalism like Mill, Kant for reflexive freedom, obviously, and so on) and explains why these do not provide complex account of freedom and justice. Freedom and justice need to be embedded socially, which is what he sets to prove in the last part on social freedom. Here, Honneth also roughly overtakes Hegel's division of Familie, bürgerliche Gesellschaft and Staat, although he explicitly parts ways with Hegel in the particulars of presentation in favor of more historical and sociological analyses. Rather, he substitutes Hegel for Dewey, Durkheim and - sigh - Habermas at this point. The parting of ways is justified politically, namely for the part on state Honneth justifies his choice thus:

His description of the domestic political order is so centralistic and full of substance, and he saw so little need for institutional precautionary measures in the relationships between citizens, that his doctrine of ethical life has been justifiably suspected of not being in any way interested in truly realizing democracy.

For Honneth's particulars, he subsequently tests various ways of social embedding of freedom: through romantic love, friendship, family, ethical consumption, interest groups, unions, political movements such as movements for universal suffrage, civil rights movements, political parties, patriotism, new media, and so on, so on, so on. The drill is usually the same: the particular institution is "normatively reconstructed" through historico-sociological analysis, its potential is outlined, and its succumbing to this or that sort of "social pathology" is further traced: patriotism descends into raw nationalism, ethical considerations of the market consumption degenerate into blatant conspicuous consumption - cue Veblen, civil rights movements result in apathy once they become professionalized, and so on. In the end, we are left with a kind social-democratic melancholia, dreams of what-ifs and that well-known Frankfurt School kind of pessimism.

While the research is thorough and the ambitions admirable, the result is kind of underwhelming. Honneth's idea of social embedding of freedom is at the end of the day still too much grounded in idea of self-realization, derived from legal and moral concepts of freedom - the idea of self-realization is question begging in that it presupposes some sort of grounded teleology and here, it seems, contra Hegel, that Rousseau is lurking once again. Hegel, on other hand, seems more interested in rationality, and in particular in the genesis of a standpoint (here the most promising left-wing response is still one of Lukács) which allows to observe and thoroughly comprehend the system as rational, and where Phenomenology does this for knowledge and Science of Logic does it for science, PR is supposed to do the same for politics. When Hegel hastily abandons civic society for the purposes of analysis of state, this is because he correctly views market as ultimately a sphere of self-interest which necessarily produces "rabble" that is politically degenerating, i.e. essentially unable to occupy such a standpoint. Marx is much more faithful to Hegel than Honneth in that he engages in harsh criticism, but in order to save civic society as true realm of politics, he request its thorough reconstitution - mainly, of course, overthrowing the institute of private property. Marx knows that he can't have the cake and it eat it, too - that save civic society as supported, pace Hegel, by abstract right to private property, and do away with the consequences traced by Hegel. So he daringly cuts to the bone of the matter. In contrast, Honneth's social-democratic approach appears as wishful thinking that has, in the end, only melancholia to offer.

If Hegel appears at the end of the day bizarre in his support for majorat, constitutional monarchy, bureaucracy and ends with musings about Germanic Empire, one should always try to firstly switch to logical aspects of his presentation and assess these conclusions as costs of employing such logical explanation - and then, of course, reject them while assessing the costs of getting rid of logical explanation that generated them. But it would be wrong to say that because of these conclusions Hegel is not in any way interested in "truly" (boring caveat qualifier, btw) realizing democracy. He actually is. Democracy is still vague enough term to include non-radical approaches, too, so that even those who, for example, acknowledge and at the same time practically defend "democratic deficit" of European Union (which includes legions of thinkers and politicians up to now) can be nonetheless called democrats, interested in realizing democracy. Hegel would go to uncanny lengths with his critiques so - with hindsight - he may appear totalitarian, but I don't think that's the case. What should be taken away from Hegel is the commitment to provide thoroughly rational justification of a democracy, to present its genesis in logical and universally comprehensible way, while being aware of costs of failure of such project.

And Honneth actually takes away these two bits, but then kind of cops out with social-democratic dreaming of self-realization. Others won't even touch this kind of stuff with a stick, though, so I guess it's good it exists.

[Lukáš · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up with hope that it might help me sort some mixed feelings that I had with Honneth's 'The Idea of Socialism', and I ended up with mixed feelings about this one. I would give it some 2.5 stars out of 5, but the hard work and occasional insights made me tip over upwards. Now, I think that this book would have been excellent if 1. it was published some 5 years, maximum 10 years after John Rawls' Theory of Justice 2. if Honneth had a better editor and 3. if it was actually something else.

Let me start on the first point. Honneth takes up some cues from G.W.F. Hegel's Elements of a Philosophy of Right, and tries to take its approach to moral philosophy and make it contemporary. While I have some doubts about whether some of the things that intrigued me personally about that book have been given enough attention and significance (I am aware that I am probably more some kind of Heideggerian when it comes to reading and interpreting text, which isn't surely Honneth's game), I nevertheless think that if this was posed against Rawls' Theory of Justice, the approach of looking into existing social structures for the 'ground' of rationality and justice would be a healthy alternative to the more a-historical and a-contextual deductive approach. However, I am not entirely convinced if the sociological resources on which Honneth draws are the best ones available - of sociology's "Great four", i.e. Durkheim, Marx, Weber and Simmel, I have personally always found Durkheim the least interesting, just as Honneth's preference for Parsons' work building on Weber might make one wonder if that's also the best one can make of that. I can't escape a certain scepticism - sure, common norms are the thing that makes much of a society, and Honneth's approach to them isn't exactly static, though as one of my supervisors told me a really long time ago, the problem with similar approaches is that they look at the more durable and robust structures, but are not necessarily as good for explaining change. Here I am thinking a certain line, loosely derived from aforementioned Hegel's book, where perhaps more suitable than looking at a norm (say, a general agreement that it's wrong to steal or murder people) is to pay attention to increases or decreases of crime, and perhaps the conditions under which, despite being in agreement it is wrong, people nevertheless steal or kill. At least, here I still see the picture of society in the book as rather harmonious and well-functioning, indeed running forth in progress and emancipation. But I can't help the thought that there might be some confusion as far as prescription and description go. (In all fairness, Honneth also carves quite a long list of distinction along which to articulate problems, misconceptions and as he calls them, pathologies of contemporary societies and thinking. I nevertheless wonder how much flexible could be the Hegelianism used for slightly or even more radically altering this part of Honneth's analysis, and how big might be the fish that swim through his ontological net unnoticed.)

Second, I obviously acknowledge that the book was first published in German, therefore it was intended first and foremost for German-speaking audience which one might reduce to a few European countries and their intellectual scene, which obviously might be different from what a more general and more global English-speaking audience of the translation would be interested in. And just as I acknowledge that this is not by any means a detective novel with suspension until the end, well, I experienced something way too similar to reading Rawls, which is that around halfway through, the major arguments and claims are laid down, the rest of the book can be almost automatically derived from there, but nevertheless one gets precisely all the detail and specifications that are already pretty much implied and near perfectly obvious, yet nevertheless it takes a plowing through hundreds of pages. Sure, from time to time there is something really key to avoiding misreadings, and I am not saying that there aren't bits that come in a way that clearly couldn't be programmed, even are fairly important to the argument, but as I wrote, a good editor could probably have helped, in particular the second half of this book to be better structured, sometimes spared of what feels like endless elaboration on some detail, or something that could be most likely achieved with a more 'economic' argument. On top of that, I am convinced that just as the key notion of both Freedom's Right and The Idea of Socialism is what Honneth terms 'social freedom', I am finding the discussion coming from the moment that comes with its articulation essentially an unintentional 'peeling off' of nearly all of the subversive, or strategic potential that the concept can have into a rather over-specified and normalizing result due to the stress on a certain type of specificity and conceptual consistency.

Which is why I even wonder why the book goes all the way in the direction that it takes in the third chapter (which is a long meditation on how social freedom is to be grasped in the context of bits such as friendship, family, the economy, democratic institutions, civil society and the media). For example, while I find Habermas' idea of deliberative democracy in terms of a potentially endless debate that must result in consensus pretty dystopian (seriously, imagine that after eight hours of work you would have to spend eight more hours arguing with no promise of the conversation to come to a conclusion, then sleep for the next eight hours and then do the same thing over and over again), I would actually find Honneth's emphasis on recognition a way more promising remedy - in that deliberation wouldn't need to be even as much conclusive if it produces enough of mutual recognition between different positions and interests. Unfortunately, this still stays in the background. (I will refrain from suggesting that for Nietzsche, the desire for recognition is potentially just as pathological as the desire for mastery... actually I wrote it, - whoops! - bad boy needs some discipline and punishment... )
Honneth also suggests that the different spheres, i.e. family, friends, economy are pretty distinct and allegedly there is not as much need for deliberation in family or the economy as opposed to democratic affairs (I put this very bluntly). Now, I actually am far less convinced if for example Hegel would agree with the distinct spheres of the 'ethical life' would really exist with their own principles and families weren't a key instrument for the administration of capital through heritage (not mentioned by Honneth) or if one can so easily assure a deliberation between equals in a civil society where the access to both information, education, or the means of making oneself heard might be dramatically disproportionate, not to mention the favorability of certain positions for more powerful and wealthier actors.
The result, to me, seems far less convincing and sterile than what could I imagine would be possible to achieve with the notion of 'social freedom', as, by example, William Clare Roberts' masterpiece, Marx's Inferno achieves by focusing on Marx as a thinker of political and social liberty.

Still, there is some value to many of the discussions here, but I remain troubled and unconvinced about the general viability of this project... If, as in one review, the claim was that in Philosophy of Right Hegel has placed his bets on all the wrong horses, I wonder if the owl of Minerva won't start its flight this time as a farce.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aber... wo ist die Pointe? Was genau ist jetzt die Erkenntnis, die Honneth mitteilen wollte?

[Johnson]

First read through: I reckon I understood about 1/4 of the book. The beginning and end of the book is incredibly dense to get through. Chapter 6.3 "The ‘We’ of Democratic Will-Formation" was especially difficult to get through.