Social philosophy is a somewhat broad and imprecise term. In this article I discuss the social philosophy of Habermas, Foucault and Honneth, arguing that the latter’s work is an interesting, but not unproblematic, conception of the discipline. Following Habermas and Honneth, I argue that social philosophy should be reconstructive, but incorporate insights from Foucault. Specifically, reconstructive social philosophy can be both normative and descriptive, and at the same time establish a dialectical relationship between philosophy and the social sciences, thus fulfilling (...) the ambition for social philosophy originally put forward by Horkheimer. The thesis I defend in this article is that reconstructive social philosophy in Habermasian or Honnethian fashion has the resources available to accomplish this ambitious task. (shrink)

To question power means also to ask what makes us governable and enables us to govern. This paper addresses this issue by rephrasing the question ‘what is power?’ into the question: ‘to what problem can power be seen as a response?’. This transformation allows us to keep the ‘power of power’ in sight. It then elucidates the ‘how’ of power through some conceptual explorations and theoretical clarifications as well as through an explicitly anthropological problematisation of power, as the way in (...) which power is understood depends always also on the way in which people understand themselves. Reassessing Foucault's rejection of anthropological reflections, the paper sketches a structural matrix of human self‐conceptions through which power and also critique can be reconstructed systematically. (shrink)