Axel Honneth

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Axel Honneth (2016)

Axel Honneth (born July 18, 1949 in Essen ) is a German social philosopher .

He is received worldwide and is one of the most important and best-known philosophers of our time. From 2001 to 2018 Honneth was director of the renowned Institute for Social Research (IfS) at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . He has been teaching and researching since 2011 as chair of the Jack C. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in New York .

Life

Honneth studied philosophy, sociology and German studies in Bonn and Bochum from 1969 to 1974 and graduated with a master's degree in philosophy. In 1977 he became a research assistant at the Institute for Sociology at the Free University of Berlin . There he received his doctorate in 1983 under Urs Jaeggi with the work Foucault and Critical Theory (published 1985 under the title Critique of Power. Levels of reflection in a critical social theory ). In 1983 he was employed as a university assistant in the Philosophy Department of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, as well as a parallel position as a “Fellow” at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin .

In June 1990 Honneth completed his habilitation with Jürgen Habermas at the Philosophy Department of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main with the thesis Battle for Recognition . In 1991 he received his first C3 professorship for philosophy at the University of Konstanz , and only one year later he was offered a professorship for political philosophy at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin. From September 1995 to April 1996, Honneth was also the Theodor Heuss visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, before he was appointed to the chair for social philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 1996 . Honneth held this chair until 2015. In 1999 he represented the Spinoza Chair in the Philosophy Department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam for a few months . In 2001 Honneth was appointed managing director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main . He headed the renowned institute until the end of 2018. He has been teaching at Columbia University in New York since autumn 2011, and since the 2017/18 winter semester he has been a full professor of the Jack C. Weinstein Professorship of the Humanities.

Axel Honneth is married to the philosopher and translator Christine Pries .

Research priorities

Honneth's research area is social philosophy . At the center of his work is a theory of recognition that is linked to the Jenenser writings of the young Hegel and the symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead , which he unfolds in his most famous work, The Battle for Recognition . This work has already been translated into over fifteen languages. In his work Verificationisierung he tries to reformulate this key Marxist concept in terms of recognition theory. A related topic of Honneth, similar to Habermas , is the reconstruction of the morality of interpersonal relationships. Moral development presupposes interpersonal relationships and at the center of these are relationships of recognition. Under the heading "Pathologies of Reason" Honneth strives to visualize and further develop a critical social theory in the sense of the Frankfurt School . In doing so, he explicitly draws on psychological and psychoanalytic theories and contemporary sociological theory and social ontology .

In his book Recognition. A history of European ideas , he examines the different approaches that make up the term recognition in England, France or Germany. The literal translations (“reconnaissance”; “recognition”) are not congruent, the underlying perspectives (in Germany especially Hegel , for the French tradition Rousseau “ amour propre ” and in the Anglo-Saxon-speaking area the orientation towards the common good according to Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill ) are historically different and require a synopsis. Honneth favors the Hegelian approach and tries to substantiate its socio-philosophical priority with arguments. A concept of recognition gained in this way, taking into account other European perspectives, is intended to develop its critical potential in current problems such as the refugee crisis, so-called "fake news" or the construction of identity. Honneth's best known academic students include a. Rahel Jaeggi , Martin Hartmann , Carolin Emcke , Martin Saar and Daniel Loick .

Functions

Honneth is co-editor of numerous specialist magazines and a. the German Journal of Philosophy, the European Journal of Philosophy and the journal Constellations. From 2007 to 2017 Honneth was President of the International Hegel Association .

Awards

Publications (selection)

Essays

literature

  • Odin Lysaker / Jonas Jakobsen (eds.): Recognition and Freedom. Axel Honneth's Political Thought . Brill, Amsterdam 2015.
  • Rainer Forst u. a. (Ed.): Social Philosophy and Criticism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 2009.
  • Christopher Zurn: Axel Honneth (Key Contemporary Thinkers, Vol. 1), Polity Press, London 2015.

Web links

Commons : Axel Honneth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Author profile at Suhrkamp Verlag, accessed July 6, 2018
  2. ↑ Axel Honneth at Columbia University
  3. ↑ https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/44526981/Honneth_Axel
  4. ^ "Recognition" - The history of a central idea in Europe , Deutschlandfunk Kultur from July 6, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018
  5. ↑ Why partitioning off is not a solution Axel Honneth in conversation with Simone Miller, dlf-kultur, Sein und Streit (audio 30:43 min.), July 8, 2018 (also accessed)
  6. ↑ http://www.boersenblatt.net/artikel-auszeichnung_fuer_politisches_buch.1079564.html
  7. ↑ In the judgment of Jürgen Habermas, this book is one of the most important works since 1950 The Most Important Philosophical Books Since 1950? .
personal data
SURNAME Honneth, Axel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH eat