Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility of mediating between theory and practice as treated in Hegelian Marxism by reviewing the critical theory developed by J. Habermas and A. Honneth. The theoretical-universal approach of Habermas succeeded in overcoming the problem of the irrational, but it raised a question about the motivation for moral practice. This difficulty takes place under an influence of historical philosophy. On, the other hand, Honneth's approach of “recognition” regards “the other of justice” excluded by Habermas as the motivation for practice. By dividing recognition theory into three themes, this author finds that a practical-normative approach of Honneth can diagnose “pathology of the social” which is not reduced to the question of justice. However, this approach runs a risk of turning practice into the irrational at the same time. And lastly, on top of verifying that both Habermas' and Honneth's approaches to mediating between theory and practice have shifted to the level of “life-world” theory, I argue that there is a need for sociology to work out a strategy for the practice of recognition by which the motivation for justice is objectively teased out from the communication analysis of life-world.
