Instrumental Reason as Negative Freedom? On Critical Theory’s Leitmotiv in the Work of Axel Honneth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2318-9800.v25i3p137-158Keywords:
Axel Honneth, market economy, instrumental reason, civil society, negative freedomAbstract
The hypertrophy of instrumental rationality in capitalist modernity is one of the outstanding characteristics of critical theory in terms of time diagnosis. This leitmotiv seems to be contradicted or, at best, overshadowed in Axel Honneth’s recognition theory, representative of the so-called third generation of this theoretical tradition. In this article, I give an overview of Honneth’s stances in this regard throughout his work, from Critique of Power to Freedom’s Right, in order to show that his theoretical model is not only compatible with, but also provides the basis for, a critique of instrumental reason as a critique of negative freedom – even though the author himself has not taken this connection to its last consequences.
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Teixeira, M. (2019). “Can Honneth’s Theory Account for a Critique of Instrumental Reason? Capitalism and the Pathologies of Negative Freedom”. In: Schmitz, V. (org.). Axel Honneth and the Critical Theory of Recognition. Londres: Palgrave Macmillan/Cham, pp.173–205. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-91980-5_8.
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