Solving the crisis of socialism :| two conceptions of social pathology in Honneth’s idea of socialism

Abstract

In his latest work on the transformative vision of social philosophy, Honneth aims to present a revitalized idea of socialism that can once be a viable source of political ethical orientations. After a normative reconstruction of the original idea of socialism that sets the notion of social freedom as the normative core of the idea, he engages in conceptual renovations that would rectify the congenital defects that subjects the original idea to a creature of the past, while still preserving what makes it unique. I contend that this is achieved through two distinct and seemingly contradictory iterations of the naturalistic concept of social pathology, which distinguishes social philosophy as a discipline. While social pathology aims to diagnose and cure specifically social wrongs akin to diseases in organisms, Honneth’s renovation resorts to both an organismic conception of social pathology that takes society as an organism, and Dewey’s anti-organismic conception that takes it as a life process irreducible to an organism. My argument is that the use of two naturalistic conceptions can be read as a Deweyan attempt in mediating radical and conservative criticisms within the social criticism posed by his idea of socialism. Through a critical and in-depth analysis of the book and Dewey’s social philosophy that constitutes its main theoretical framework, I argue that such a reading is not only novel, but also informative with respect to both the idea of socialism’s and political theory’s prospects in their respective aims towards social-political emancipation in today’s social context.