Towards a reconstructive approach in political philosophy

Rosanvallon and Honneth on the pathologies of today’s democracy

Bibliographic Data

ID4480923
AuthorsHans Arentshorst (University of Jyväskylä, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume134
Issue1
Pages42-55
Publication date2016-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513616646019
OpenAlexW2347153123
LanguageEN
References cited8

This paper compares the democratic theories of Pierre Rosanvallon and Axel Honneth. The aim is to show how their work could form the basis of a 'reconstructivist' approach in political philosophy that rehabilitates the insights of 19th-century thinkers such as Guizot and Hegel concerning the benefits of combining political philosophy with history and sociology. Whereas the dominant procedural approaches in political philosophy tend to disconnect normative theory from the actual study of society and its history, Rosanvallon and Honneth argue that in order to understand the problems that face our democratic societies today we need a closer connection between theory and practice. Both have therefore developed a method that consists of historically reconstructing developments in modern society in order to identify certain pathologies. The paper compares the different diagnosis that Rosanvallon and Honneth give of the central pathology that faces democracy today, which in Rosanvallon's reconstruction is related to the problem of representation and in Honneth's account to the problem of recognition

Democracy · Epistemology · Hegelianism · History of political thought · Normative · Philosophy of history · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · European Political History Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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