Dalla critica ricostruttivo-immanente della modernità alla genealogia del neoliberalismo. Axel Honneth e i problemi di una teoria critica della società oggi

The article reconstructs Axel Honneth’s attempt to reformulate the original model of immanent critique of the first generation of Frankfurt’s School. Moving from the lesson of Habermas, Honneth clarified the socio-theoretical, philosophical and political problems that underlied this model of social criticism, but he also defended it as a valid alternative to other models of social criticism, which are prevalent today. The attempt to reformulate an immanent critique of society leads in Freedom’s Right into the innovative methodology of normative reconstruction, on which is based the ambitious program to renovate Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie. This model of critique fails, however, when it has to describe adequately the normative innovations introduced by the “neoliberal revolution”. To analyze this historical discontinuity Honneth is therefore forced to change methodology and to take a genealogical approach, like in his sociological writings dedicated to neoliberalism. Here Honneth focus on the contradictions and the paradoxes of capitalism, giving an other meaning to the immanent critique and testifying the nonautonomy of a reconstructive model of critique wich is based on the presumption of normative potentials within the capitalist economic system.