Communication, Recognition and Social Pathology: Normative Paradigms in Habermas and Honneth

The question of normative foundations remains central to critical theory. Critical theories of society attempt to give an account of what is wrong or bad about the social world. As such they are both descriptive accounts of society and theories of normative – that is, value-laden or action-guiding – justification. The difficulties in providing a justified account of social criticism are well recognised throughout the literature. Under Jürgen Habermas’s influential ‘post-metaphysical’ formulation, the parameters and scope of critical theory are provided by the rules implicit in the structure of linguistic communication. I provide a detailed exegetical account of Habermas’s work.  I broadly defend his analysis of the shortcomings of earlier critical theory, but show that his own theory remains open to a number of skeptical objections. My analysis concentrates on issues of morality and ethics, identity, philosophical anthropology, and the human relationship to nature. I go on to consider the work of Axel Honneth, whose theory of recognition is the foremost example of a post-Habermasian critical theory. I argue that Honneth’s work is ultimately best thought of as a corollary to Habermas rather than a distinct paradigm in critical theory, suggesting that Honneth’s account of recognition relies on the communicative paradigm to provide much of its normative content. In the final part of the thesis, I concentrate on the idea of ‘social pathology’ and its importance for critical theory. I defend Honneth’s insistence on the importance of this category before going on to show that his own account of social pathology is ultimately unconvincing.  Furthermore, I suggest that any possibility of realism about social pathologies requires a set of assumptions that are incompatible with the tenets of ‘post-metaphysical’ thinking. If Honneth is correct, and there can be no critical theory without social pathology, then it follows from my argument that, contra Habermas and Honneth, no coherent critical theory can claim to be ‘postmetaphysical’.  In conclusion, I examine the considerable implications of this thesis for contemporary critical theory.