Confronting the neoliberal challenge

Recognition, social freedom and depth realism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20143550
AutoresJolyon Agar (0000-0003-1212-5567, Anthropology, History, Philosophy and Politics Queen's University Belfast Belfast UK, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen91
Número1
Páginas88-105
Fecha de publicación2025-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaTheoria (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/theo.12579
OpenAlexW4404509200
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas25

This article explores how Axel Honneth's critical theory, when adapted to a materialist depth realism, can be utilised as a critique of Fredrick Hayek's ‘neoliberalism’, an antipolitics influenced by Karl Popper's neo‐positivism. In response to the neoliberal challenge, it is proposed that Axel Honneth's theories of recognition, when grounded in anthropological (‘critical’) materialism, provides a robust defence of an irreducible social agency. When interpreted through this lens, recognition is one aspect of the system of human needs based on subject–subject interactions, the other being a subject–object interaction of humans with non‐human objects. By contrast, Honneth's more recent theory of social freedom relies on a Hegelian process of historical reconstruction and so remains vulnerable to the same epistemic errors that inform neoliberal attempts to universalise homo economicus , that is, of reducing reality to various ways in which it is conceptualised. In this regard, anthropological materialism must presuppose depth realism . The importance of this can be seen when the implications for Honneth's move towards a more orthodox Hegelianism in his more recent works are considered

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Political economy · Political science · Realism · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics