Description
Book SynopsisA reinterpretation and defense of Hegel's social theory as an alternative to reigning liberal notions of social justice. It rereads Hegel's Philosophy of Right to show how it diagnoses the pathologies of the overcommitment to individual freedom that the author says underlies the ideas of Rawls and Habermas alike.
Trade Review"Axel Honneth's book is stimulating, insightful, philosophically interesting, and analytically sophisticated. Its main contribution lies in its sympathetic, philosophically acute reconstruction of Hegel's position on individual freedom, which is made with an eye to lending it contemporary relevance. The book succeeds admirably and makes a great contribution to the English-language literature on Hegel."
—Fred Neuhouser, Barnard CollegeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii I: Hegel's Philosophy of Right as a Theory of Justice 1 The Idea of Individual Freedom: Intersubjective Conditions of Autonomy 7 "Right" in the Philosophy of Right: Necessary Spheres of Self-Realization 18 II: The Connection between the Theory of Justice and the Diagnosis of the Age 25 Suffering from Indeterminacy: Pathologies of Individual Freedom 28 "Liberation" from Suffering: The Therapeutic Significance of "Ethical Life" 42 III: The Theory of Ethical Life as a Normative Theory of Modernity 48 Self-Realization and Recognition: Conditions of "Ethical Life" 49 The Over-Institutionalization of "Ethical Life": Problems of the Hegelian Approach 63 Index 81
