Outlook: The Theory of Recognition as Synthesis
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Both lines converge in the theory of recognition. Hegel had made recognition a key concept – in the master-servant dialectic, in the struggle for recognition. This concept becomes central in the 1990s.
Axel Honneth (a student of Habermas) develops in The Struggle for Recognition (1992) a theory that connects Habermas’ procedural reason with Hegel’s recognition. Nancy Fraser debates with Honneth over the relation between recognition and redistribution. Taylor himself develops in The Politics of Recognition (1992) a political philosophy of recognition.
These developments belong to Volume III. Here it suffices to note: the defenders have won – not in the sense of a refutation of postmodernism, but in the sense of a productive sublation. Postmodernism’s legitimate concerns (critique of domination, sensitivity to difference) were taken up, but integrated into a framework that keeps reason and criticism possible.
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Transition to Chapter 19: After the great debates over modernity and postmodernity, we turn to the institutional and philological side. The 1970s and 1980s saw a consolidation of Hegel research – new editions, new associations, new approaches. The German Hegel renaissance reached its institutional maturity.