Social Action and Human Nature

by Axel Honneth, Hans Joas, Raymond Mayer (Translator)

English, German (translation)

208 pages, Hardcover

First published February 9, 1989

About the author

Axel Honneth (born July 18, 1949) is a professor of philosophy at both the University of Frankfurt and Columbia University. He is also director of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Honneth's work focuses on social-political and moral philosophy, especially relations of power, recognition, and respect. One of his core arguments is for the priority of intersubjective relationships of recognition in understanding social relations. This includes non- and mis-recognition as a basis of social and interpersonal conflict. For instance, grievances regarding the distribution of goods in society are ultimately struggles for recognition.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG, is this a brilliant cogent discussion of some of the major social theorists of our era -- foucault elias, habermas, Mead and more and the fundamental building blocks of their theories. It explores how they conceive of social action and the historical development of the human species and its elaboration of a social order. No, it is not a sustained critique of marx, and it certainly does not consider social movements. This is not an introductory text. It is for graduate students or above and presumes background knowledge of some of the theorists.