Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory

Axel Honneth

April, 2009
Cloth, 236 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14626-5
$29.50 / £20.50

"This volume is a significant contribution to the debates over the history of the Frankfurt School and the contemporary relevance of critical social theory. Axel Honneth's work provides a subtle reading of history that is less concerned with putting its products in their place—though he does do that in an exemplary fashion—than in highlighting what is living and vibrant in those products for contemporary thought." — Christopher F. Zurn, University of Kentucky

"These essays reflect a deep familiarity with each individual author while also serving to advance the particular approach characterizing Axel Honneth's work: a focus on the theme of suffering and moral struggle as the point of departure for a more ambitious, 'reconstructive' form of social criticism. As such, this volume makes a very significant contribution to the continuing relevance of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School for contemporary forms of social criticism." — Kenneth Baynes, Syracuse University

Related Subjects

• Continental/Feminist Philosophy
• Political Philosophy
• Political Theory

Series

• New Directions in Critical Theory

About the Author

Axel Honneth is professor of philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt and director of the Institute for Social Research. He is the author of The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Philosophical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, and Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Habermas's "The Theory of Communicative Action." James Ingram is an assistant professor of political science at McMaster University. He has translated works by Reinhart Koselleck, Christoph Menke, Hauke Brunkhorst, Jacques Derrida, and Étienne Balibar, among others.

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