Honneth’s dialectical shortcoming: understanding Honneth’s problem with power

Within contemporary critical theory, Axel Honneth’s recognition paradigm continues to exert significant influence. Honneth adopts an empathetically positive view of recognition, that it is always freedom-enhancing. But recently, there is a trend toward a more complex and ambivalent understanding of recognition. Critics highlight Honneth’s inattentiveness to deeper power relations which can use recognition as a tool for domination. This is most evident in the problem of ideological recognition, which is my principal focus. In this paper, I aim to contribute to this literature and offer an explanation for why the problem of ideological recognition arises, and why Honneth struggles to adequately resolve it. I begin by discussing Honneth’s own response to the problem of ideology, which I find wanting. Honneth’s diagnostic criteria are unable to reliably identify and critique ideology. Following this, I then aim to deepen our understanding of the problem of ideological recognition and diagnose a dialectical shortcoming in Honneth’s general theoretical orientation. Namely, in his attempts to pursue an action-theoretic paradigm, Honneth increasingly obscures the mediating role and influence of social systems and their functional logics in shaping spheres of intersubjective action. In failing to adequately attend to this dialectic, Honneth effectively abstracts recognition from its proper social context, and presents a relatively undialectical and idealised vision of intersubjective relations. I conclude by gesturing toward an alternative, a more dialectically informed understanding of social systems and social action.