Beyond freedom’s right: a republican analysis of the critical democratic theory of A. Honneth

Abstract

At the beginning of the 2010's, German philosopher A. Honneth outlined a specific critical democratic conception based on a social model of individual freedom, which he considers superior to negative and reflective models. Honneth believes that deliberative democracy depends conceptually and empirically on the social model of individual freedom, so that if certain social conditions are not met, citizens lack the conditions that would allow them to participate in the construction of democratic will. In this work, we will proceed to the reconstruction of the main normative postulates of the critical democratic conception of Honneth, who positively defines justice as mutual recognition, contrasting them specularly with those of the republican conception defended by the Irish philosopher P. Pettit, which is based on a negative model of political freedom understood as non-domination. In summary, we will explain four comparative attractions that P. Pettit's theory offers over that of Honneth in terms of methodology, concept of justice, classification of models of freedom, and priority of justice.