Rethinking the Notion of Contract on the Basis of Honneth's Recognition Theory

Honneth’s recognition paradigm, resting on an intersubjective conception of the subject, allows to overstep the clear-cut dichotomy between commutative and distributive justice, between inter-individual and collective interests. To this extent, the proposed paper will aim at pinpointing how recognition unsettles the legal discourse in civil law contract theory. First, it will be argued that it leads to consider that the concept of autonomy should not be discarded from contract theory too fast; a different interpretation, with respect to the recognition paradigm, seems promising for the legal discourse. Second, it will be presented why contract theory should be framed into Honneth’s theory of justice. Third, it will be shown how one might expect that the proposed reinterpretation of contract theory can ultimately modify the distributive landscape.