Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:49:53.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel and Honneth’s Theoretical Deficit: Education, Social Freedom and the Institutions of Modern Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2017

Jenn Dum  and
Robert Guay
Jenn Dum
Affiliation:
Binghamton University, [email protected]
Robert Guay
Affiliation:
Binghamton University, [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The accounts of social freedom offered by G. W. F. Hegel and Axel Honneth identify the normative demands on social institutions and explain how individual freedom is realized through rational participation in such institutions. While both offer normative reconstructions of the market economy, public sphere and family, they both derive the norms of educational institutions from education’s role in preparing people for participation in other institutions. We argue that this represents a significant defect in their accounts of social freedom because they both fail to account for the distinctive aims and norms of education. Only educational institutions bring individuals into a both shared and autonomous standpoint necessary for participation in social life. We thus argue both that Hegel’s and Honneth’s accounts are empirically inadequate and that they neglect the normative demands on schools to contribute to individual moral and intellectual development.

Type
Articles
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 38 , Special Issue 2: Hegel and Critical Theory , October 2017 , pp. 293 - 317
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acemoglu, D. (1998), ‘Why Do New Technologies Complement Skills? Directed Technical Change and Wage Inequality’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 113:4: 1055–1089.Google Scholar
Anderson, E. (2007), ‘Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective’, Ethics 117:4: 595–622.Google Scholar
Au, W. (2008), Unequal by Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baker, D. P. (2011), ‘Forward and Backward, Horizontal and Vertical: Transformation of Occupational Credentialing in the Schooled Society’, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29: 5–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, D. P. (2012), ‘The Educational Transformation of Work: A Synthesis’, in H. Lauder, M. Young, H. Daniels, M. Balarin and J. Lowe (eds.), Educating for the Knowledge Economy? Critical Perspectives. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baker, D. P. (2014), The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Porath, S. (2013), ‘Deferring Virtue: The New Management of Students and the Civic Role of Schools’, Theory and Research in Education 11:2: 111–128.Google Scholar
Ben-Porath, S. (2016), ‘Humanism and Standards’, in M. Levinson and J. Fay (eds.), Dilemmas of Educational Ethics. Cambridge MA: Harvard Education Press.Google Scholar
Bills, D. (2004), The Sociology of Education and Work. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bricker, D. C. (1989), Classroom Life as Civic Education: Individual Achievement and Student Cooperation in Schools. New York: Teachers College Press.Google Scholar
Brighouse, H. and Swift, A. (2006), ‘Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family’, Ethics 117:1: 80–108.Google Scholar
Curren, R. (2014), ‘Judgment and the Aims of Education’, Social Philosophy and Policy 31:1: 36–59.Google Scholar
Franco, P. (1999), Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fraser, N. and Honneth, A. (2003), Redistribution or Recognition? A Political–Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram and C. Wilke. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Gjesdal, K. (2015), ‘Bildung’, in M.N. Forster and K. Gjesdal (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Golann, J. W. (2015), ‘The Paradox of Success at a No-Excuses School’, Sociology of Education 88:2: 103–119.Google Scholar
Hanhela, T. (2014), ‘Axel Honneth’s idea of a Drawn-Out Process of Education’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society 22:3: 369–388.Google Scholar
Hardimon, M. O. (1994), Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation . New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1970), Werke 4: Theoriewerkausgabe: Nürnberger und Heidelberger Schriften 1808–1817 . Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Hirst, P. H. (1973), ‘Liberal Education and the Growth of Knowledge’, in R. S. Peters (ed.), The Philosophy of Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (1995), The Struggle for Recognition, trans J. Anderson. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (2002), ‘Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions’, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45:4: 499–519.Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (2007), Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (2014), Freedom’s Right: New Directions for Critical Theory, trans J. Ganahl. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (2015), ‘Education and the Democratic Public Sphere: A Neglected Chapter of Political Philosophy’, in O. Lysaker and J. Jakobsen (eds.), Recognition and Freedom: Axel Honneth’s Political Thought. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Inkeles, A. (1973), ‘The School as a Context for Modernization’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology 14:3/4: 163–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamens, D. (2009), ‘The Expanding Polity: Theorizing the Links between Expanded Higher Education and the New Politics of the Post-1970s’, American Journal of Education 116:1: 99–124.Google Scholar
Lebron, C. (2015), ‘Thoughts on Racial Democratic Education and Moral Virtue’, Theory and Research in Education 13:2: 155–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, M. (2014), No Citizen Left Behind. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levitan, S. A., Belous, R. S. and Gallo, F. (1988), What’s Happening to the American Family?: Tensions, Hopes, Realities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Luo, X. (2006), ‘The Spread of a “Human Resources” Culture: Institutional Individualism and the Rise of Personal Development Training’, in J. W. Meyer, G. S. Drori and H. Hwang (eds.), Globalization and Organization: World Society and Organizational Change. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mehta, J. (2016), ‘Toward Pragmatic Educational Ethics’, in M. Levinson and J. Fay (eds.), Dilemmas of Educational Ethics. Cambridge MA: Harvard Education Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, J. W. (1977), ‘The Effects of Education as an Institution’, American Journal of Sociology 83:1: 55–77.Google Scholar
Neuhouser, F. (2000), Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pippin, R. (2008), Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schaub, M. (2010), ‘Parenting for Cognitive Development from 1950 to 2000: The Institutionalization of Mass Education and the Social Construction of Parenting in the United States’, Sociology of Education 83:1: 46–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tubbs, N. (2015), ‘Hegel and Philosophy of Education (II)’, in M. Peters (ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Singapore: Springer.Google Scholar
Warnick, B. R., Kim, S. H. and Robinson, S. (2015), ‘Gun Violence and the Meaning of American Schools’, Education Theory 65:4: 371–386.Google Scholar
Wood, A. W. (1998), ‘Hegel on Education’, in A. O. Rorty (ed.), Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wyatt, I. D. and Hecker, D. E. (2006), ‘Occupational changes during the 20th century’, Monthly Labor Review/U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics 129:3: 35–57.Google Scholar
Young, I. M. (2006), ‘Education in the Context of Structural Injustice: A Symposium Response’, Educational Philosophy and Theory 38:1: 99–101.Google Scholar