Abstract

CAMPELLO, Filipe. Axel Honneth and the affective turn in critical theory. Conjectura: filos. e Educ. [online]. 2017, vol.22, n.spe, pp.104-126. ISSN 2178-4612.  https://doi.org/10.18226/21784612.v22.n.especial.09.

Over the last two decades, Axel Honneth’s widely acclaimed theoretical proposal suggests a model of rationality that, however, remains largely implicit. In this paper, I propose that Honneth’s approach suggests what we can understand as an affective turn in critical theory. To do so, I unfold my exposition in four steps. First, I present how the category of recognition, proposed by Honneth in the sense of “transcendenceimmanence” of a social theory, it is shown as a critique of rationality patterns. (1) That is, as this meaning is constituted from the limits of communicative articulation of suffering, in a particular link between patterns of rationality and social pathologies. In a second step, I discuss how an approach of the bond between affects and social theory is unfolded in The struggle for recognition (2), and then how it distinguishes itself from the sense of affective contents of social práxis in The right of freedom (3). If, in The struggle for recognition, a conception of affects seems to be clearer from the link between social theory and subjectivity theory, I will try to show that in The Right of Freedom, this affective content presents itself in a more plausible way within a theory of institutions, dissociated from strong anthropological premises. I conclude by mentioning in a programmatic way how the potential of criticism and conflict, present in the original intuitions of Honneth, could be maintained in the analysis of the affective content of social práxis (4).

Keywords : Recognition; Affections; Institutions; Critical theory; Axel Honneth.

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