Abstract
Axel Honneth is, without a doubt, heir to a tradition of social and political thought that was decisive in the Marxist debates of the 20th century; critical theory. As an outstanding disciple of Jürgen Habermas, he denounced a sociological deficit in his teacher's theory of communicative action, while continuing a certain recovery of Hegel that Habermas made evident in his text: Work and interaction: notes on Hegelian philosophy of the Jena period (1986). Honneth deepened the Hegelian reading of Habermas, going from mere reading notes to a system of understanding the social based on recognition and ethics.