In his most recent voluminous work Das Recht der Freiheit (2011) Axel Honneth brings his
version of the recognition paradigm to full fruition. Criticizing Kantian theories of justice, he develops a
Hegelian alternative which has at its core a different conception of freedom. In this paper, I will scrutinize
Honneths latest work to see whether he offers a promising alternative to mainstream liberal theories of
justice. I will focus on two key differences with Kantian theories of justice. Substant…
Read moreIn his most recent voluminous work Das Recht der Freiheit (2011) Axel Honneth brings his
version of the recognition paradigm to full fruition. Criticizing Kantian theories of justice, he develops a
Hegelian alternative which has at its core a different conception of freedom. In this paper, I will scrutinize
Honneths latest work to see whether he offers a promising alternative to mainstream liberal theories of
justice. I will focus on two key differences with Kantian theories of justice. Substantively, Honneth
criticizes the Kantian concept of ‘reflexive freedom’ and proposes instead as the core of his own theory the
concept of ‘social freedom’. Methodologically, he proposes a method of ‘normative reconstruction’, and
explicitly develops this in contrast to Kantian constructivism. I investigate the robustness of these shifts by
seeing how they are actually used in Honneth’s reconstruction of the market sphere. I conclude that his
method of normative reconstruction does not provide the kind of guidance Honneth thinks it does. His
conception of social freedom fares slightly better but can either be reduced to the mainstream’s idea of
reflexive freedom, or else faces some serious challenges.