The Grammar of an Ambivalence: On the Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in the Critical Theory of Axel Honneth

In the epicenter of politics: Axel Honneth’s theory of the struggles for recognition and Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s moral and political sociology

“…In his argument in function of the moral sociological explicative axis, Honneth (1995b) rejects the nucleus of economic and utilitarian theory that he sees as characterizing Bourdieu's theory of symbolic struggles. Honneth asserts that moral normative logic is at the basis of contestatory action and argues against all exclusively utilitarian strategic explanations of such motivations (Honneth, , 1995b(Honneth, [1992), which -correctly or not -he sees reflected in Bourdieu's work (Basaure, 2011b). To put it another way, Honneth rejects Bourdieu's sociology as partial because (using my terms) the phenomenon of the moral does not play a significant role in its sociological explicative axis.…”

“…The struggles for recognition between moral and political sociology A systematic reconstruction of the theory of the struggles for recognition developed by Axel Honneth (1995b[1992) allows for the identification of two central and intimately related argumentative axes: the moral sociological explicative axis and the historic philosophical reconstructive axis (Basaure, 2007(Basaure, , 2011b. The first represents the conceptual effort to provide an explanation for the moral motives of the subjective action at the root of social struggles.…”

“…Instead, it focuses on the modes of construction of collectives in an antagonistic position and the opportunities that they have to access the public political space, intervene in it and transform social categories, value orientations, and practices that regulate social recognition and individual rights. Conceived in this way, the political-sociological axis is inserted between the moral sociological explicative axis and the historic philosophical reconstructive one (Basaure, 2007(Basaure, , 2011a(Basaure, , 2011b. In short, this axis does not refer to the motivational why of social struggles or their historic meaning but the how of them.…”

“…2 I argue that the political-sociological axis is not duly developed in Honneth's work. He does not offer a complete theory of social struggles as such (Basaure, 2007(Basaure, , 2011a(Basaure, , 2011bSieverding, 2008). At the same time, it would not be accurate to ignore that Honneth has provided certain elements that -though in an embryonic manner -can be reconstructed in such a way that they appear to sustain what I call a political-sociological axis.…”

“…At the same time, it would not be accurate to ignore that Honneth has provided certain elements that -though in an embryonic manner -can be reconstructed in such a way that they appear to sustain what I call a political-sociological axis. These political-sociological elements possess a very specific characteristic: in order to develop them, Honneth (1995aHonneth ( ], 1995bHonneth ( [1992, 2003) mainly bases his perspective on the political sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Basaure, 2011b). This reference to Bourdieu is symptomatic of what I perceive to be a paradigmatic dualism within Honneth's theory of the struggles for recognition: While the main and most fully developed axes of his theory -the moral sociological explicative and the historic philosophical reconstructive -are elaborated assuming a decidedly moral perspective, by anchoring the less developed axis of that theory, the political-sociological axis, in Bourdieu's political sociology, Honneth assumes social theoretical suppositions that are not rooted in a perspective of moral sociology.…”