O déficit sociológico do republicanismo de P. Pettit : interfaces com a teoria crítica de Honneth

Abstract

This study establishes a dialogue between the neo-Roman republicanism of Philip Pettit and the critical theory of Axel Honneth. The discussion revolves around the theme “freedom” and its developments. I sought, during the research, to list elements that allowed me to sustain that freedom as non-domination, formulated by Petit, suffers from a social deficit. Therefore, I proposed that some categories from Honneth’s critical theory could enrich the language of republicanism, namely, the notion of recognition, social pathology, and the theoretical-methodological model of normative reconstruction. Petit’s theoretical undertaking advances a lot in the construction of a concept of freedom, understood as non-domination, especially in the criticism of liberalism, and yet Petit sticks to an analytic description of the phenomenon of domination, losing sight of the potential for social criticism that the concept of non-domination entails. Consequently, Petit formulated a model of democratic participation qua contestation, whose basic assumption is a strictly juridical conception of the person. This assumption results in a deflation of the notion of people and turns the republicanism weak from the sociological point of view. I argue, together with John McCormick, that Pettit’s republicanism loses the socioeconomic cleavage given by Machiavelli and ends up being refractory to the social dimension of the conflict. I present, in turn, Honneth’s critical theory as an alternative to what I call the sociological deficit of the republican theory. Finally, I outline a criticism of the Brazilian national state in the light of critical theory and, at the same time, raise some questions about republicanism’s and critical theory’s potential to offer answers to Brazilian social dilemmas.