Towards a Cognitive Sociology for Our Time: Habermas and Honneth or Language and Recognition … and beyond

Abstract

This article argues that Habermas and Honneth's respective critical social theories contain elements which, although largely concealed, can be unearthed, consolidated and developed for the purposes of constructing a timely kind of cognitive sociology. The proposed departure attempts to draw out and build on the strengths of both authors, however divergent and opposed their social theories might appear. Amidst all the differences between them, the common core elements in their respective language-theoretical and recognition-theoretical versions of critical theory provide the means for devising a theoretical innovation that goes beyond both, yet remains within the metatheoretical parameters of critical theory encapsulated by its key concept of immanent transcendence.