Between the normative and the immanent:

notes on Axel Honneth’s theory of justice

Abstract

The article proposes to verify if it is possible to derive a theory of justice in Axel Honneth’s thought. For this the question that guides this text is: how to normatively and socially ground a theory of justice in Axel Honneth’s thought? The thesis to be defended is that it is possible to derive a theory of the experience of injustice from Honneth's thought, since his theoretical development allows us to identify experiences of non-recognition that lead to the development of social struggles. Therefore, we intend to show how there is a normative insufficiency in the philosopher’s theory here analyzed. In order to achieve this objective, we propose to follow this path: we will star by making a brief resumption of Honneth’s argumentative path, then we will to analyze the normative referrals proposed by the philosopher, to in the third moment think about justice as a relational greatness, at that moment bringing Rainer Forst’s theory into the discussion. In the fourth moment we propose to think about the role of law in Honneth’s thought.  We will finalize with the presentation of our final considerations proposing that Honneth develops a theory of experiences of injustices.