Rosa and Jaeggi’s approaches bring up the question: how should one understand the notion of strangeness in estrangement and Fremdheit in entfremden? What is the origin or essence that one is estranged from in class-based societies? Alienation implies that one has externalised something, e.g. activity, to whose control one has a moral right. Externalisation in alienated social relations is lost control because objectification is combined with asymmetric power relations that result in a loss of ownership of property, political influence, and cultural significance in the economic, political, and cultural system that in all societies are created by humans in common, but in classbased societies controlled by elites. One does not have to give up the notion of essence for a theory of alienation because it can be interpreted as an immanent feature of all societies that has transcendental importance. Reconciliation means to take control of what humans have produced, but cannot control in class-based societies. In a classless society, not elites, but the creators themselves, control objects. The logic of essence goes to the ground of humanity and society in order to show what capitalism and domination rob from humans so that they can no longer be fully social and as humans are social beings not fully social.
Rosa and Jaeggi fail to provide foundations for a universal, critical and dialectical theory of morality. I will try to show next that Axel Honneth’s reinterpretation of Lukács is not without problems, but shares basic insights with the Hegelian approach so that it can be connected to a materialist and dialectical moral theory.
5.3. Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Lukács’ Concept of Reification in the Critical Theory of Recognition
5.3.1. Honneth’s Theory of Recognition
Honneth bases his theory on the assumption that humans are psychological beings that strive for ‘self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem’ (Honneth 1992, 196) and sufer if they are disrespected. He subdivides recognition into three forms: love, equality, and achievement. Honneth (1996) grounds this approach in the works of Hegel and George Herbert Mead. He argues that both Hegel and Mead advanced stage theories of recognition, in which there are three forms of recognition that build on each other. For Hegel these are the recognition of the need for love provided in the family, the recognition of human autonomy in civil society and the legal system, and the recognition of individual particularity by the state and in ethical life and processes of solidarity (Honneth 1996, 25). The absence of such forms or recognition would be the foundation of struggles for recognition.
The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory
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