Pathologies of reason : on the legacy of critical theory / Axel Honneth ; translated by James Ingram and others.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Honneth, Axel, 1949-

Contributor:

Ingram, James.

Series:

New directions in critical theory.

New directions in critical theory

Standardized Title:

Pathologien der Vernunft. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Critical theory--History.

Critical theory.

Social sciences--Research--History.

Social sciences.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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, Jürgen 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.

Contents:

The irreducibility of progress : Kant's account of the relationship between morality and history

A social pathology of reason : on the intellectual legacy of critical theory

Reconstructive social criticism with a genealogical proviso : on the idea of "critique" in the Frankfurt School

A physiognomy of the capitalist form of life : a sketch of Adorno's social theory

Performing justice : Adorno's introduction to Negative dialectics

Saving the sacred with a philosophy of history : on Benjamin's "Critique of violence"

Appropriating freedom : Freud's conception of individual self-relation

"Anxiety and politics" : the strengths and weaknesses of Franz Neumann's diagnosis of a social pathology

Democracy and inner freedom : Alexander Mitscherlich's contribution to critical social theory

Dissonances of communicative reason : Albrecht Wellmer and critical theory

Appendix : idiosyncrasy as a tool of knowledge : social criticism in the age of the normalized intellectual.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-222).

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786613628770

9781280598944

1280598948

9780231518376

0231518374

OCLC:

785782128