•  120
    Lukács is widely recognized as being the first critical theorist to have explicitly developed the idea of a “standpoint theory”. According to such a theory, members of oppressed groups enjoy an epistemic privilege regarding the nature of their oppression. However, there is no agreement regarding what precise argument Lukács offers for his claims regarding the alleged epistemic privilege of the working class. Additionally, it remains unclear whether later feminist standpoint theories share any co…Read more
  •  17
    Ideology as Misrecognition
    Global Discourse. forthcoming.
    Theories of recognition often acknowledge that some forms of recognition can be ideological. Only recently have authors also begun to ask whether all ideological phenomena involve a more basic form of misrecognition of epistemic agents. I argue that an expressivist reconstruction of the Marxian theory of ideology can help us to understand what forms of misrecognition are involved in ideology. According to this understanding, ideological discourses reflect the rules of hierarchical social practic…Read more
  •  250
    “Ideal theorists” in contemporary liberal political theory argue that we can only arrive at a conception of what our most important political values require by reference to an imagined ideal state of affairs and that we must therefore, to some extent, engage in utopian thinking. Critical theorists, from Marx and the Frankfurt School, have traditionally been highly skeptical towards using idealizations in this way. This skepticism is mirrored by contemporary authors, such as Charles Mills. I argu…Read more
  •  5
    Introduction
    In Heikki Ikäheimo, Kristina Lepold & Titus Stahl (eds.), Recognition and Ambivalence: Judith Butler, Axel Honneth, and Beyond, Columbia University Press. pp. 1-20. 2021.
  •  17
    Georg [György] Lukács
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2023.
    Substantively revised entry, 2023. Georg (György) Lukács (1885–1971) was a literary theorist and philosopher who is widely viewed as one of the founders of “Western Marxism” and as a forerunner of 20th-century critical theory. Lukács is best known for his Theory of the Novel (1916) and History and Class Consciousness (1923). In History and Class Consciousness, he laid out a wide-ranging critique of the phenomenon of “reification” in capitalism and formulated a vision of Marxism as a self-conscio…Read more
  •  184
    What (if anything) is ideological about ideal theory?
    European Journal of Political Theory 23 (2): 135-158. 2024.
    It is sometimes argued that ideal theories in political philosophy are a form of ideology. This article examines arguments building on the work of Charles Mills and Raymond Geuss for the claim that ideal theories are cognitively distorting belief systems that have the effect of stabilizing unjust social arrangements. I argue that Mills and Geuss neither succeed in establishing that the content of ideal theories is necessarily cognitively defective in the way characteristic for ideologies, nor ca…Read more
  • La ley y la perspectiva plural en primera persona
    In Adolfo Chaparro Amaya, G. van Roermund & Wilson Herrera Romero (eds.), Quiénes somos "nosotros"?,: o, cómo (no)hablar en primera persona del plural, Editorial Universidad Del Rosario. 2015.
  •  18
    There are few aphorisms in Minima Moralia that display a less sympathetic attitude towards their subject than “They, the people”(§ 7). Adorno denounces the “amor intellectualis for [the] kitchen personnel” in the subsequent aphorism, but “They, the people” already seems to confirm all suspicions about the alleged elitism of critical theory. The idea that intellectuals mostly encounter those less educated when “illiterates come to intellectuals wanting letters written for them” is laughable, even…Read more
  •  20
    Sozialontologie und Anerkennung
    In Ludwig Siep, Heikki Ikäheimo & Michael Quante (eds.), Handbuch Anerkennung, Springer. pp. 491-498. 2018.
    In verschiedenen philosophischen Traditionen findet sich die These, dass Haltungen der Anerkennung eine zentrale Rolle für die Existenz von sozialen Institutionen spielen. Der Artikel gibt einen kurzen Überblick über zentrale anerkennungstheoretische Modelle in der Sozialontologie.
  •  19
    Recognition, Constitutive Domination, and Emancipation
    In Heikki Ikäheimo, Kristina Lepold & Titus Stahl (eds.), Recognition and Ambivalence: Judith Butler, Axel Honneth, and Beyond, Columbia University Press. pp. 161-190. 2021.
    The claim that recognition is ambivalent is best understood as meaning that social recognition is both a precondition for individual freedom and a source of freedom-undermining domination.1 The first part of the claim entails that we can only be truly autonomous or realize ourselves once we receive a certain kind of recognition from other people. The second part of the claim — at least on what I view as the dominant reading — entails that recognition (necessarily or at least potentially) constra…Read more
  •  30
    Immanent Critique
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2021.
    When we criticize social institutions and practices, what kinds of reasons can we offer for such criticism? Political philosophers often assume that we must rely on universal moral principles that are not necessarily connected to the particular social practices of our communities. Traditionally,continental critical theory has rejected this claim through its endorsement of the method of immanent critique. Immanent critique is a critique of social practices that draws on norms already present with…Read more
  •  94
    Recognition and Ambivalence: Judith Butler, Axel Honneth, and Beyond (edited book)
    with Heikki Ikäheimo and Kristina Lepold
    Columbia University Press. 2021.
    Recognition is one of the most debated concepts in contemporary social and political thought. Its proponents, such as Axel Honneth, hold that to be recognized by others is a basic human need that is central to forming an identity, and the denial of recognition deprives individuals and communities of something essential for their flourishing. Yet critics including Judith Butler have questioned whether recognition is implicated in structures of domination, arguing that the desire to be recognized …Read more
  •  430
    Privacy in Public: A Democratic Defense
    Moral Philosophy and Politics 7 (1): 73-96. 2020.
    Traditional arguments for privacy in public suggest that intentionally public activities, such as political speech, do not deserve privacy protection. In this article, I develop a new argument for the view that surveillance of intentionally public activities should be limited to protect the specific good that this context provides, namely democratic legitimacy. Combining insights from Helen Nissenbaum’s contextualism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, I argue that strategic surve…Read more
  •  13
    Debating Critical Theory: Engagements with Axel Honneth (edited book)
    with Julia Christ, Kristina Lepold, and Daniel Loick
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2020.
    Bringing together leading scholars in contemporary social and political philosophy, this volume takes up the central themes of Axel Honneth’s work as a starting point for debating the present and future of critical theory, as a form of socially grounded philosophy for analyzing and critiquing society today.
  • The Moral Psychology of Hope: An Introduction
    In Claudia Blöser & Titus Stahl (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Hope: An Introduction (The Moral Psychology of the Emotions), Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 1-12. 2019.
  •  41
    Political Hope and Cooperative Community
    In Claudia Blöser & Titus Stahl (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Hope: An Introduction (The Moral Psychology of the Emotions), Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 265-284. 2019.
    This chapter pursues three aims: First, I propose three different roles that hope can play in political philosophy - one instrumental, one constitutive, and the other justificatory. I then examine three major approaches to political hope, exemplified by Bloch, Rorty, and contemporary liberal authors in order to distinguish three approaches to the justificatory question. I argue that they make opposite mistakes with regard to the importance of hope. Whereas Bloch solves the problem of justificati…Read more
  •  12
    Privatheitsrechte und politische Öffentlichkeit
    In Hauke Behrendt, Wulf Loh, Matzner Tobias & Catrin Misselhorn (eds.), Privatsphäre 4.0: Eine Neuverortung des Privaten im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung, Metzler. pp. 123-143. 2019.
    The link between the right to privacy and the right to democratic self-determination is often understood to imply that privacy rights have only instrumental value for democratic participation, and that they consist solely in the possibility to retreat from participation in a public. I examine three arguments for an internal link between both sets of rights: The right to privacy protects political public spheres from epistemic inequality, it protects groups in public from a loss of their delibera…Read more
  •  49
    The contributions in this volume, written by leading scholars in the philosophy of hope, gives a systematic overview over the philosophical history of hope, about contemporary debates and about the role of hope in our collective life.
  •  51
    Lukács and the Frankfurt School
    In Peter E. Gordon, Espen Hammer & Axel Honneth (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, Routledge. pp. 237-250. 2018.
    The work of the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács is a constant source of controversy in the history of the Frankfurt School. All leading thinkers of that theoretical tradition have struggled with Lukács’s theory. On the one hand, it was an inspiration for their attempts to come to terms with the oppressive features of capitalist modernity. On the other hand, both its political conclusions and Lukács’s actual philosophical submission to Soviet orthodoxy seemed to show that his theoretical framework…Read more
  •  19
    Ideologiekritik
    In Michael Quante & David Schweikard (eds.), Marx-Handbuch, J.b. Metzler. pp. 238-253. 2016.
  •  75
    Practices, Norms and Recognition
    Human Affairs 17 (1): 10-21. 2007.
    The problem of the social foundations of normativity can be illuminated by discussing the narrower question whether rule-following is necessarily a social matter. The problems with individualistic theories of rule-following seem to make such a conclusion unavoidable. Social theories of rule-following, however, seem to only push back one level the dilemma of having to choose either an infinite regress of interpretations or a collapse into non-normative descriptions. The most plausible of these mo…Read more
  •  67
    Analytic philosophy and the return of Hegelian thought (review)
    Critical Horizons 9 (1): 109-112. 2008.
    A review of Paul Reddings book "Analytic philosophy and the return of Hegelian thought".
  •  2
    An introduction to contemporary metaethics
  •  77
    Hope
    with Claudia Bloeser
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017.
  •  72
    Critical theories often express scepticism towards the idea that social critique should draw on general normative principles, seeing such principles as bound to dominant conceptual frameworks. However, even the models of immanent critique developed in the Frankfurt School tradition seem to privilege principles over particular moral experiences. Discussing the place that particular moral experience has in the models of Honneth, Ferrara and Adorno, the article argues that experience can play an im…Read more
  •  583
    Fundamental Hope and Practical Identity
    Philosophical Papers 46 (3). 2017.
    This article considers the question ‘What makes hope rational?’ We take Adrienne Martin’s recent incorporation analysis of hope as representative of a tradition that views the rationality of hope as a matter of instrumental reasons. Against this tradition, we argue that an important subset of hope, ‘fundamental hope’, is not governed by instrumental rationality. Rather, people have reason to endorse or reject such hope in virtue of the contribution of the relevant attitudes to the integrity of t…Read more
  •  21
    The location of critique
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 43 (3): 351-352. 2017.