Axel Honneth: The Poverty of Our Freedom

According to this new book by Axel Honneth, our understanding of freedom is gravely impoverished.On one hand, the concept of freedom appears to be an empty universal, and we can no longer agree on its particular content.On the other hand, the failure of modern society to fulfill the normative promises of social liberty leads to the maintaining of the status quo and threatens societal fragmentation.By challenging this normative crisis, this book expands on Honneth's vision of social freedom, filling in the conceptual gaps and taking up anew the criticism raised by his earlier work Freedom's Right (2013).The Poverty of Our Freedom contains thirteen essays, divided into three parts, written over the years as responses to some of these issues.Honneth engages Hegel, and Marx, arguing that freedom is possible only in the interrelation with others in the social sphere.While familiarity with both is useful, the uninitiated will not feel lost.Honneth's writing is excellent, and he presents conceptually dense topics in an accessible manner.These critical and constructive essays read very well thanks to the efforts of the outstanding translators, all of whom deserve praise.The first part, "Forms of Social Freedom," contains six essays, devoted to the analysis of freedom.First, "The Depths of Recognition" presents an analysis of the tension in Rousseau's oeuvre, between the struggle for independence and the need for social recognition.By focusing on Rousseau's notion amour propre, Honneth shows its impact on the theory of recognition and the subsequent development in philosophy.In "On the Poverty of Our Freedom," Honneth revisits Hegel's theory of ethical life in an attempt to give us with a better understanding of individual freedom.While he concludes that Hegel's ethical theory is not viable as a theoretical model for establishing social freedom in any concrete way, it can teach us just how impoverished our modern understanding of freedom is and may lead to a revision of our similarly impoverished notion of justice.In "The Normativity of Ethical Life," Honneth confronts the paradox of the moral standpoint.Where do our moral