Axel Honneth integrates social philosophy and philosophical psychology to articulate a theory of recognition that links identity formation, motivation, and institutional justice. Against both economic reductionism and proceduralism, he reconstructs how love, legal respect, and social esteem provide the intersubjective conditions for self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem; their injuries—violence, exclusion, and degradation—appear as social pathologies that motivate struggles for recognition. Drawing on Mead, Dewey, and object-relations theory (Winnicott), he elaborates a moral psychology of shame, humiliation, and indignation as sources of normative learning. In later work, Honneth transforms this grammar into a theory of social freedom, in which autonomy is realized through cooperative practices stabilized in institutions (family, labor, and democratic public spheres). Diagnoses of invisibility and reification are reframed as forgetfulness of recognition that distorts perception of others and self. Methodologically, his reconstructive-genealogical approach identifies norms already embedded in social practices while explaining their deformation under capitalist modernization. By reconnecting Critical Theory with developmental and clinical insights, Honneth offers a program for diagnosing social ills and guiding reforms—from care and rights to the organization of work and the division of labor—aimed at expanding reciprocal recognition as the basis of democratic life.