The Consequences of the Axel Honneth’s Recognition Theory for Contemporary Radicalism

Nowadays, the Theory of Recognition emerges as a new discourse, at the same time has been grown up in the field of Western philosophy and social sciences. In the present article, the fundamentals and intellectual principles of Axel Honneth’s thought – a German political philosopher who has an important role in the expansion of recognition theory – are studied. Honneth considered the concept of “recognition” as the basis of social conflict by re-interpreting the critical theory and aiming at eliminating the barriers that this theory has been struggling with at the beginning. He presented a new understanding of the concept of “identity” to pass the first generation of critical theory presented by Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, who all emphasized on negative dialectic and the second generation that emphasized on the communicative action in the universalism framework and Intersubjectivity to evaluate the perspective of the ethical experiences of subjects in interpersonal interactions based on recognition theory. The main question raised in the present study is “How does Axel Honneth evolve in contemporary radical issues by introducing measures in the framework of recognition theory with the critical approach?” In response to this question, the following hypothesis is proposed: Honneth has come up with a comprehensive view of recognition by relating three areas of identificators, namely, love and friendship with rights-based relationships and solidarity. He deduced this achievement as the basis of an infraclass analysis of contemporary radicalism and a critique of the orthodox view. The aim of the present study was to examine one of the growing trends in contemporary radicalism.