Carnegie Council

Axel Honneth is an internationally renowned social theorist who has creatively continued the legacy of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory. Under his direction, the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research has reclaimed its earlier mission of combining radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry.

Honneth has been professor of philosophy at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main since 1996, and director of its Institute for Social Research since 2001.

He has published numerous critical essays and books on social theory and its history, including The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (1996), and The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory (1993). Honneth's more recent publications include Suffering from Indeterminacy: A Reactualization of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (2000), Recognition or Redistribution? Changing Perspectives on the Moral Order of Society, with Nancy Fraser (2003), and Anxiety and Politics (2003).

Honneth has been a member of several research institutes, including the Danish National Research Foundation's Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen since 2002, and the Institute for Cultural Sciences at the University of Bern in Lucerne, Switzerland since mid-2004. He has lectured at universities around the world, including McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan.

In May 2004, Honneth received the F. Palacky Honorary Medal for Merit in Social Sciences, presented by the Academy Council of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Awards.