Module Directory

This module introduces students to different traditions of “Critical Theory”. The point of critical-theoretical approaches to philosophy is to identify marginalisation and oppression, to understand what drives these phenomena, and to help us emancipate ourselves and others from them. At Essex, we embrace a wide notion of critical theory that includes, for instance, Frankfurt School Critical Theory (e.g., Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, Honneth), Marx and the Marxist tradition, Contemporary French Theory (e.g., Foucault, Derrida, Rancière, Badiou), feminism and Critical Race Theory. The “Critical Theory” module provides students with the tools to critically engage with the contemporary social and political world.

The aims of this module are:

1. To introduce students to key topics in Critical Theory (e.g., alienation, social pathology, deconstruction, exploitation; progress);


2. To enable students to identify and critically examine the assumptions that underpin different forms of marginalisation and oppression and to critically evaluate current human practices that are informed by these problematic assumptions;


3. To enable students to appreciate the different ways in which philosophical insights and skills can inform attempts by political activists who fight against discrimination and oppression.


4. To give students tools to start formulating creative solutions to the challenges identified by Critical Theory or to identify new challenges that Critical Theory has so far neglected.

By the end of this module students are expected to be able to:

1. Write insightful reconstructions of the philosophical positions in Critical Theory that they have studied;


2. Critically evaluate strategies and positions of Critical Theorists;


3. Understand and critically assess the practical implications of such strategies and positions, and how they bear on on-going public debates and conflicts;


4. Form their own informed opinions and suggest solutions to the complex problems of marginalisation and oppression that we face.

By the end of the module students should also have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular be able to:

1. Identify and process diverse (and sometimes conflicting) arguments and empirical studies;


2. Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or methods;


3. Write and present verbally a precise account of strategies, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications;


4. Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are coherent and rigorous and accessible to them.

Example Syllabus:

The focus this term will be Axel Honneth's critical social theory. Among the questions we want to discuss are the following: What is so special about Critical Theory? Does the Frankfurt School have a particular notion of 'critique'? Does the Frankfurt School rely on a notion of progress? What is recognition? What are struggles for recognition? Are Honneth's recognition-theoretical approach to issues such as justice, ideology, and reification convincing?

Week 1: Welcome Week

Week 2: What’s so Special About Critical Theory?

What are, across the generations, the components that distinguish Critical Theory from other forms of normative theorising? How do these components relate to each other? And what would it take to show that Critical Theory is still a viable option for us today?

Required Reading:

Axel Honneth, “A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory”, in his Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, Columbia UP, 2009, ch 2, pp. 19-42.

Week 3: Does the Frankfurt School Have a Particular Idea of “Critique”?

What is reconstructive social criticism, that is, the particular form of critique the Frankfurt School is famous for? How does this form of critique relate to other forms of critique, for instance, genealogical, world-disclosing, or interpretive forms of critique?

Required Reading:

Axel Honneth, “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso: On the Idea of ‘Critique’ in     the Frankfurt School”, in his Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, Columbia UP, ch 3, pp. 43-53.

Week 4: Does Critical Theory Rely on a Theory of Progress?

It is often assumed that the Frankfurt School relies on a notion of historical progress. Honneth, for instance, speaks about the “Irreducibility of Progress” for the project of a critical theory. However, the idea of progress is, because of its “entanglements with racism, colonialism, and imperialism”, itself “in need of critical reconstruction” (Amy Allen).  This week we examine whether critical theory indeed requires a notion of progress, and identify the challenges the project of disentangling it from its problematic history faces.

Required Reading:

Amy Allen, “Critical Theory and the Idea of Progress” (unpublished manuscript)

Axel Honneth, “The Irreducibility of Progress: Kant’s Account of the Relationship between Morality and History”, Critical Horizons 8:1 (2007), pp. 1-17.

Week 5: What is Recognition? What are the Species of Recognition? What is a Recognition Order?

What does it mean to recognise someone, or to be recognised by someone? Are acts of recognition mediated by norms? Does recognition denote the act of attributing to a person a positive property, or does the person recognising someone simply express that she perceived a positive property the recognised person already had? Why does recognition matter? Are modern societies recognition orders? How many, and which, spheres of recognition do modern societies encompass? Which norms structure the relationships of those participating in these social spheres?

Required Reading:

Axel Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser”, in N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, Verso, 2003, pp. 138-150

Axel Honneth, “Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions”, Inquiry 45:4 (2002), pp. 499-519.

Week 6: From Experiences of Misrecognition to Struggles for Recognition

After engaging with Honneth’s phenomenology of experiences of injustice, we examine how such experiences motivate struggles for recognition. We take a closer look at demands for redistribution and recognition of one’s culture, and ask whether social conflicts follow a moral logic.

Required Reading:

Axel Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser”, in N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, Verso, 2003, pp.110-134, 150-159, 161-170.

Week 7: The Recognition-Theoretical Reframing of the Theory of Justice

Can “recognition” serve as the fundamental concept of a critical theory of justice? Is Honneth’s critique of liberal and procedural theories of justice sound? Does he succeed in integrating social theory and normative theory in his theory of justice? Does the theory of justice Honneth sketches encompass all the components that are, in his view, characteristic of Critical Theory? What kinds of critical engagement with the status quo does Honneth’s recognition-theoretical approach to justice make possible?

Required Reading:

Axel Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser”, in N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, Verso, 2003, pp. 170-189.

Axel Honneth, “The Fabric of Justice: On the Limits of Contemporary Proceduralism”, in his The I in the We, Polity, 2012, pp. 35-55.

Week 8: Reading Week. No lecture/class

Week 9: Honneth’s Recognition-Theoretical Reframing of Ideology

Is it worth the effort to try to revive the idea of ideology critique which has played a central role in the first generation of the Frankfurt School but has, since then, faded into the background? Does Honneth’s recognition-theoretical approach provide us with the appropriate tools for such a re-actualisation?

Required Reading:

Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, in. B. van den Brink & D. Owen (eds.), Recognition and Power:Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge University Press,

2007, ch 13, pp. 323-347.

Week 10: Honneth’s Recognition-Theoretical Reframing of Reification

Like the idea of ideology, the notion of reification has once been assigned a key role in the Frankfurt School’s attempt to conceptualise and criticise the pathologies characteristic of capitalist societies. Does it make sense to understand reification as “forgetfulness of recognition”? What is the critical potential of this re-framing?

Required Reading:

Axel Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford UP, 2008, pp. 40-63 and 75-85.

Week 11: A Recognition-Theoretical Reframing of the Critique of Capitalist Modernisation

We take a closer look at recent developments in capitalist societies in order to assess whether “structural economic changes have transformed historically developed recognitional expectations into disciplinary demands” (Honneth), thereby turning these normative expectations from a motor of progress into another element that stabilises the capitalist order.

Required Reading:

Martin Hartmann & Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism”, Constellations 13:1 (2006): 41–58.

The module will be taught through nine two-hour sessions which will consist of a combination of a lecture by the module leader and a seminar with contributions from students and classroom discussion. Typically, students will read weekly assignments and engage in a range of assessments (e.g. presentations, commentaries, essay plans and essays). Module leaders will use a range of teaching methods: for instance, a lecturer might ask students to develop their coursework in peer groups and will submit one draft of their final submissions to their peer group for comments.

Detailed information about the learning and teaching methods will be available in the outline on the Module Directory and from the full module description.