Interpersonal Recognition and Responsiveness to Relevant Differences

Laitinen, Arto

This paper focuses on Hegel's views on the idea of retrospective and intersubjective determination of intention. The main point is to distinguish four perspectives to human action: 1) The agent's "moral" perspective and the understanding and description under which the agent acted; from this perspective we can thematize the operative intention-in-action and distinguish "action" from "deed". 2) The agent's retrospective awareness and appropriation of the action: was what I did really justified and did it express my true goals? 3) The retrospective takes of others concerning the action, from within relevant social practices and the prevailing Sittlichkeit. 4) The perspective of Reason or Idea as emerging in the world history. In this paper I use this differentiation of perspectives to discuss Hegel's views on action. I defend the primacy of the individual herself in the first aspect mentioned, in what Hegel calls the "moral" perspective. I hope to show that while the Hegelian or expressivist theme of "retrospective determination of intention" as discussed by Charles Taylor and Robert Pippin is true and important concerning retrospective awareness, retrospective appropriation and retrospective justification of action, we should not take it to imply that the intention-in-action is determined intersubjectively or retrospectively. The intention is formed by the self-determining agent herself, before or at the time of the action, just like a common sense theory of individual action assumes. Hegel's distinction in Philosophy of Right between "action" and "deed" and his views concerning the role of intended results and foreseen consequences in discussing the responsibilities of the moral agent make clear that this is also Hegel's mature view. In Phenomenology, Hegel toys with the idea of retrospective determination of intention, but does not put it forward as his own view.

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy Vol. 9, No. 1, 47–70, March 2006 Interpersonal Recognition and Responsiveness to Relevant Differences ARTO LAITINEN Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland armala@yfi.jyu.fi ArtoLaitinen 910Original 00000March 2006 Taylor 2006 Critical 10.1080/13698230500475481 FCRI_A_147531.sgm 1369-8230 & and Review Article Francis (print)/1743-8772 Francis of International Ltd (online) Social and Political Philosophy ABSTRACT This essay defends a three-dimensional response-model theory of recognition of persons, and discusses the related phenomenon of recognition of reasons, values and principles. The theory is three-dimensional in endorsing recognition of the equality of persons and two kinds of relevant differences: merits and special relationships. It defends a ‘response-model’ which holds that adequacy of recognition of persons is a matter of adequate responsiveness to situation-specific reasons and requirements. This three-dimensional response-model is compared to Peter Jones’s view, which draws the distinction between status and merit recognition, and mediated and unmediated recognition. The essay discusses a number of questions related to how recognition of situation-specific reasons, and more general values and principles, is related to recognition of persons. The threedimensional response-model of recognition of persons is in principle compatible with a constructivist view, which holds that the validity of values and principles is dependent on acknowledgement or endorsement. But even if one is a realist on that issue and thinks of validity as independent of acknowledgement, acknowledging relevant values, reasons and principles is a hugely important precondition of actual interpersonal recognition. The essay analyses these connections. KEY WORDS: Interpersonal recognition, misrecognition, acknowledgement, recognition of reasons, values and principles, responsiveness to reasons, normativity, realism, constructivism, Axel Honneth What do people and groups want, when they want ‘recognition’? Do they want affirmation of their fundamental equal standing or of their relevant differences from other people and groups? What sorts of differences are relevant? How does recognition of persons depend on (and differ from) recognition of values, reasons or principles? Although people may want and demand recognition for various things, it is a different question whether the demands are normatively justified. A normative theory of recognition tries to find some basis for assessing such claims. This essay suggests that adequate recognition (and treatment) of people is a matter of adequate Correspondence Address: Arto Laitinen, Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, PO Box 35 (MaB), FI-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland. Email: armala@yfi.jyu.fi. ISSN 1369-8230 Print/1743-8772 Online/06/010047-24 © 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13698230500475481 48 A. Laitinen responses to the evaluative and reason-giving features of people in different situations. Following Hegel, Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor in adopting a ‘multidimensional’ approach, I suggest that recognition encompasses both fundamental equality and relevant differences. All people share the universal equal status as ends in themselves, but there are further two kinds of relevant differences: various merits and other valuable particularities on the one hand, and reasons related to special relationships on the other. If recognition of persons depends on responsiveness to reasons, values and principles, is the validity of those in turn dependent on acknowledgement or endorsement, in some other sense? The theory suggested here is realist in one limited sense, as it embeds the phenomenon of interpersonal recognition into a norm- and value-laden lifeworldly context or into the context of ‘practical reality’ (Dancy) or ‘moral space’ (Taylor).1 In any situation, relevant features are ‘shaped’ in different ways, outweighing or excluding others. For example, in some contexts, merits and special relationships between persons are relevant, but in many contexts they are not, and it is a matter of situation-specific judgements to decide when this is so. It is quite obvious that situations and persons can possess relevant features even when unrecognised, and this lies behind much of the dynamics of struggles for recognition. Such realism concerning the real normative shapes of situations does not, in principle, presuppose realism about general values or principles, but is compatible with constructivist, historicist or expressivist views concerning principles and values (or with a particularist denial of such generalities altogether).2 It might be that acts of endorsing general principles have so to speak sent ‘normative messages’ to the situations, thus explaining how the features have acquired their evaluative significance. Whether one supports realism or not, analysing different ways to fail to recognise and respond to values, reasons and principles illuminates different ways in which also people can be misrecognised. The first section outlines the notion of interpersonal recognition, trying to show that we need a normative theory of recognition. The second section discusses recognising and responding to reasons, values and principles. The third sheds some light on the relevant differences and fundamental equality of persons. Interpersonal Recognition ‘Recognition’ in a Nutshell The view defended in this essay draws from Axel Honneth’s, Charles Taylor’s and Hegel’s views on recognition, and from some recent meta-ethical discussions concerning values and reasons (e.g. Raz, Dancy, Scanlon).3 It is part of a larger project with Heikki Ikäheimo to try to arrive at a satisfactory analysis of the notion of interpersonal recognition. The term ‘recognition’ seems to be at use in three different senses, which it is useful to distinguish.4 First, anything can be identified and re-identified as the thing it is, or the kind of thing it is. (‘That is not the Statue of Liberty’, ‘That is a statue’, Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 49 ‘that is bronze’). Secondly, facts, principles, claims, requirements, demands, values, reasons can be recognised or ‘acknowledged’ as valid. Thirdly, recognisers (persons, groups) can recognise each other as persons (or groups), and demand recognition from one another, and feel misrecognised if they are not responded to adequately. (Values and principles are of course not capable of such reactions). Mutual recognition in this sense is a matter of two recognisers mutually taking each other as recognisers of some kind (persons, groups), and relating to each other (more or less adequately) in the light of normative considerations relevant to such ‘taking’. Thus interpersonal recognition encompasses both the ‘descriptive’ issue of identification and the ‘normative’ issues of acknowledgement. There are a number of questions on how to make the definition of interpersonal recognition more precise.5 Here are some questions, and outlines of answers. What do people and groups want, when they want ‘recognition’? Do they want that others regard them in some favourable fashion in their thoughts, or express such regard publicly, or that they treat them accordingly in practice? Certainly, attitudes, expressions and actions can all be relevant in constituting adequate recognition. Mere actions and expressions without corresponding attitudes seem mere pretense of recognition, and mere attitudes without corresponding action do not seem sincere either. Furthermore, attitudes without expressions (at least implicitly in bodylanguage or tone of voice) are not accessible to others, who thus cannot ‘get recognition’. Sometimes (especially when the recogniser is the state) the relevant action is that of ‘granting a status’ or ‘proving a guarantee against violations’. Sometimes the status in question is merely a co-product of the attitudes (say, the ‘social status’ that publicly acknowledged artists end up having results from recognition of their merits). But all adequate recognition seems to be a response to ‘moral statuses’, which persons have.6 Does recognition have some kind of ontological, reality-constituting role, or is it rather a response to some pre-existing reality? Again, both and. It seems that it is both a response to normative demands and an ontological precondition and constituent of personhood, social reality, as well as good autonomous life. I discuss this in more detail below.7 Further, interpersonal recognition encompasses various dimensions. ‘Multidimensional’ views of interpersonal recognition, such as those of Honneth, Taylor and Hegel, hold that there are different ‘dimensions’ of recognition, such as respect, social esteem and love, or ‘politics of universality’ and ‘politics of difference’, or recognition of universality, particularity and ‘singularity’. Here is one way to distinguish between three dimensions.8 Demands of equal recognition are based on the mere fact that X is a person, whereas some difference-sensitive demands are based on the fact that X is a particular kind of person, with special merits for example, and a third kind of difference-sensitive demands are based on the fact that X is the singled-out person who is in a special relation with the recogniser (a friend, a loved one), and has become irreplaceable for her. I discuss this below. Thus, both recognition of the strictly equal standing of persons, and of their relevant differences, based on their different features and special relationships, are relevant. The differences 50 A. Laitinen between cultures cut across these dimensions, and that is why some cultural differences are regrettable disagreements waiting to be solved, whereas many other differences are cases of recommendable diversity based on value pluralism. Is interpersonal recognition a matter of situation-specific encounters, or of some more general principled dispositions? Again, both and. It seems that both situationspecific reason-giving features and general values and principles are crucial. Judgements about relative weights of different reasons are situation-specific (although as a rule, nothing can outweigh the basic rights of persons). Drawing from the work of J. Raz, T. Scanlon, J. Dancy and others concerning situationspecific reasons of action, a so-called ‘response-model’ of adequate recognition is defended in this essay. It focuses on ‘proper’, ‘fitting’ or ‘appropriate’ responses to the legitimate demands that persons make in such situations, or more precisely, demands which are created by the situations even when no-one explicitly puts them forward. Such demands and requirements, like normative reasons for action generally, are based on various evaluative and reason-giving features that are present in the situation (features of persons, the relations between them, or intrinsic features that the required act has, etc.). Of course, explicit invitations and requests (say, by friends) often make a relevant difference and count among the relevant features of the situation. Yet, in some sense the issue of endorsing general values and principles is more fundamental for interpersonal recognition than the various situation-specific encounters: it matters to me now that I can expect others to respect my rights, if I were to encounter them sometimes in the future. And this ‘mattering’ is relevant now even though the future encounter never takes place. Or, it matters to me that others acknowledge the values that are central to my identity and orientation in life, even though they have no opinions about my identity (they may not know of me at all). The Need for a Normative Theory of Recognition Why do we need a normative theory of recognition? Why could not a theory of recognition start from people’s actual experiences and expectations, and their expressed demands for recognition? Why does not such a psychological theory of misrecognition suffice, why do we need a normative one? The reason is that the actual expectations and demands are not always reasonable. Some people may be more prone to have experiences of misrecognition than others, and some people may have unrealistic expectations. Francis Fukuyama distinguished between two kinds of desires for recognition, desire to be recognised as equal, and desire to be recognised as a superior. There is no reason to think that all people will evaluate themselves as the equals of other people. Rather, they may seek to be recognized as superior to other people, possibly on the basis of true inner worth, but more likely out of an inflated and vain estimate of themselves. The desire to be recognized as superior to other people we will henceforth label with a new word with ancient Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 51 Greek roots, megalothymia. Megalothymia can be manifest both in the tyrant who invades and enslaves a neighbouring people so that they recognize his authority, as well as in the concert pianist who wants to be recognized as the foremost interpreter of Beethoven. Its opposite is isothymia, the desire to be recognized as the equal of other people. Megalothymia and isothymia together constitute the two manifestations of the desire for recognition around which the historical transition to modernity can be understood.(Fukuyama 1992: 182) The fundamental modern assumption is that whether or not there are such megalothymic aspirations, they are unfounded. When it comes to basic rights and basic standing as a person, or a citizen, or a member of the social world, everyone ought to be taken as an equal (whether or not they have desires for superiority). This does not mean that all forms of ‘megalothymic’ tendencies must be rooted out; it is rather that they must be domesticated and channelled into such areas as sports, fashion, arts, sciences, etc. It is in these limited contexts only, that judgements about differential merits really get a foothold, and in all other contexts even ‘the foremost interpreter of Beethoven’ is just a human being among others, with equal rights (and with other features relevant to the situation at hand). And furthermore, within such practices one must merit any unequal recognition: one must be an excellent concert pianist to deserve such appraisal. Thus, even when it comes to relevant differences, a normative theory of recognition focuses on due recognition. Note that Fukuyama’s account of the motivation to excel in sports, arts and sciences is a curiously self-obsessed one. The aim of the agents seems to be to prove their superiority. In commenting the quoted passage, John O’Neill (1997) points out that Fukuyama fails to distinguish between two kinds of aspirations. The first is a self-absorbed quasi-tyrannical desire to be a centre of attention and to succeed in getting ‘positional goods’ such as ‘winning’.9 The other is a more reasonable desire to get truthful confirmation for the independent worth of one’s achievements, or merits. As Aristotle points out, the ‘aim in pursuing honour is seemingly to convince themselves that they are good; at any rate, they seek to be honoured … for virtue’.10. Or, as Charles Taylor (1992) has pointed out, recognition must be based on genuine value judgements, or otherwise it deteriorates into mere lip-service. If we accept this, the obvious step is to ask what, then, forms the normative basis for adequate recognition. Responsiveness to Pre-existing Requirements In principle, there are two kinds of models for adequate recognition: ‘responsemodels’, and ‘generation-models’ (see Laitinen 2002). The generation model holds that recognition is not a response to normative demands, but it is a matter of creating normative statuses from scratch, in a normative void. It is only after and because, say, a right is granted, that a corresponding normative status exists. For example, property rights seem to exist only because people grant each other corresponding 52 A. Laitinen statuses, such as ‘owner’. Similarly, people have a right for self-determination only within a community, in which such rights are being granted to individuals. The response-model agrees that this may be true of ‘positive, enforced rights’, and of rights that are related to some particular institutional system, but holds that there are more fundamental normative requirements. To grant someone basic human rights is to respond to some kind of requirement, which demands that one ought to grant those rights. Even though recognising the rights makes a difference in terms of whether that person’s rights are in practice respected, the validity of the requirement is not dependent on our responses to the requirement. Arguably, there is a categorical demand that every person ought to be granted a right to self-determination, and this demand is not dependent on whether we, as a response to the demand, actually do grant someone the right. And the response model can agree that the content of normative requirements is to some extent dependent on previous recognitional acts: once someone is granted the full right to govern herself, her rights ought to be respected. Thus, the response-model can accommodate the generation-model and embed it into a pre-existing normative context. All that the response-model claims is that there are normative demands or requirements, to which interpersonal recognition is an adequate response. In the next section I will discuss more closely the nature of such requirements or reasons, but there are four important points to notice here. First, the situationspecific requirement is arguably there to be recognised, whether or not one recognises it and responds to it adequately.11 Second, even though interpersonal recognition does not create the requirements (but ought to be responsive to them), it can create various other things and bring about ontological changes. Thus, recognition can be both a response to a requirement and a precondition of, for example, full-fledged autonomy, or good life, or healthy self-relations, or existence of societies, or systems of legal rights, etc. Thus, even though recognition does not create the requirement, it may be necessary in bringing about the actualisation of the requirement. Third, the expected ‘actualisations’ or other consequences may be the basis of the requirements. Thus ‘responsiveness to reasons’ encompasses two kinds of cases: first, cases where the requirements are based on already existing facts, such as achievements, and the requirement is to take such existing features into account according to their merits. In such cases, what matters is that one’s attitudes and actions are ‘appropriate’ or ‘fitting’ given the existing features.12 But secondly, one’s actions can be responsive to actual requirements, which are forward looking, and based on outcomes and potential or possible features (instead of actual ones), whose realisation would be a good thing.13 Although it may not be obvious, responsiveness to requirements and reasons created by such prospect is nevertheless ‘responsiveness’ in the relevant sense meant here. In such cases, the action, which is a response to the requirement, may bring into existence the features, which ground the requirement. Indeed, consequentialists tend to think that all requirements are based on outcomes in such a forward-looking way. (These two aspects can be brought together in the description of the required act: some qualities are Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 53 favoured by the situation, and some favoured qualities are those of the intended result of the act.) Fourth, even though interpersonal recognition does not create the requirements (but ought to be responsive to them), it is nevertheless possible that the validity of the requirements depends ultimately on the agents acknowledging or endorsing the principle as valid. That is, it may be that individuals or communities first endorse general principles and then, in trying to recognise each other accordingly, try to live up to the situation-specific demands that such principles imply (I will turn to discuss this possibility in the next section). Whether the general principles are independent of such acknowledgement or not, the response-model holds that adequate interpersonal recognition is in any case a matter of responsiveness to specific pre-existing normative claims that we encounter in everyday situations. Recognising Reasons, Values and Principles A response-model of interpersonal recognition presupposes that normatively relevant features give us reasons to treat others in certain ways. To get a full picture of interpersonal recognition, we must have a view of recognising and responding to such reason-giving features. Further, if recognition of persons depends on recognition of reasons, values and principles in this way, it is worth asking whether the validity of these is in turn dependent on acknowledgement.14 I will discuss first situation-specific reasons for action and then general moral values and principles. Recognising Reasons and Normative Shapes of Situations We live in a moral space or ‘practical reality’, in which we encounter concrete moral demands and reasons for action, which often move us to act. The idea is that normative demands and requirements need not be explicitly stated by other agents, but the demands and requirements are generated by situations, which have a ‘normative shape’. In focussing on the normative shape of situations, the nature of moral properties as resultant properties becomes relevant (Dancy 1981, 2004). The normative shape of the situation results from (relative aspects of) the descriptive shape.15 It is in virtue of such feature, that the situation ‘calls for’ certain kind of action. You cannot change the moral features of the situation without changing the descriptive features. Among the features which determine what reasons one has are so called ‘thick ethical features’ which are both descriptive and evaluative (See Williams 1985; McDowell 1998; Dancy 1995). When we describe something as ‘oppressive’, ‘cruel’, ‘exploitative’, ‘just’, ‘courageous’ and so on, we at the same time evaluate it. Such evaluations play a central role as determining the reason-giving features: we have reason to oppose any exploitative practices, and reason to do just acts, and reasons to respect all people, and to esteem them in accordance with their merits, etc. 54 A. Laitinen A reason is a fact that ‘speaks in favour of’ or ‘favours’ doing something. The relevant favouring-relation can be seen as a three-place relation between a fact, an agent and an act. For example, that a person is drowning is a reason for me to help him. Thus ‘that he is drowning’ is a descriptive, normatively significant fact, whereas ‘ “that he is drowning ” is a reason for me to help him’ is a normative fact (Parfit 1997). Many other features, such as ‘it is Tuesday’ are normatively completely irrelevant. Thus, various features of the situation can make it the case that some action is required, or called for. In the process of recognising such reasons for action, we can analytically distinguish four steps: recognition of the descriptive features, recognition of the normative features, motivationally effective ‘endorsement’, and finally formation of an intention.16 The point in distinguishing these is to distinguish various ways of failing to respond to reasons adequately, and to ask whether responses in the various senses might be preconditions for there to be a reason at all. First, recognition of the descriptive features (’x is drowning’) is certainly a necessary aspect of recognising a reason. Obviously, we can be mistaken in this respect. In B. Williams’s (1981) classic example, I believe there is gin in the glass, but in fact it is petrol. Do I have a good reason to drink it? No, I have no reason to drink petrol. This case shows that unrecognised facts can certainly give us reasons for action: there was a reason not to drink it.17 Second, in addition to the descriptive features, we have to recognise their normative relevance, their role as reasons.18 That is, we must judge that these features speak in favour of a certain response (’that he is drowning gives me reason to try and help’), and balance the reasons to arrive at an overall judgement of what we ought to do, or have most reason to do. There are no reliable procedures for weighing the considerations, it is a matter of sensitivity to the normative relevance of the features, which ultimately determine what one has reason to do. Although it is sometimes called ‘perception’ or ‘moral sense’, it is literally a matter of judgement, reflective judgement in Kant’s sense, or practical wisdom in Aristotle’s sense. We can make such judgements about thought-experiments and imagined situations. Thus, getting the obtaining descriptive facts wrong is a different kind of mistake from getting wrong the normative shape of a certain (obtaining or non-obtaining) state of affairs. Again, considerations of fallibility suggest that features can have normative relevance that we fail to recognise, and thus being recognised as a reason is not a precondition of being a reason. (The constitutive role of endorsement is much more plausibly placed at the level of general values and principles). The third step in our responses to reasons is the ‘motivational endorsement’ of the recognised reason. In one sense, that constitutes a ‘desire’ (in the technical, philosophical sense of practical pro-attitude) to help.19 Desires are not mere urges, they are (more or less adequate) motivational endorsements of reasons. Again we may ask whether the validity of recognised reasons is dependent on actual motivational responses in this sense. Cases of listlessness, weakness of the will and practical irrationality seem to show it is possible to recognise a reason as valid without being motivated to act accordingly. Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 55 The fourth and final step is doing the favoured action.20 Endorsing a reason, or having some motivation to do the favoured action, is not yet the same as doing it. The formation of an intention to help, or ‘setting oneself to do it’ does not necessarily follow from the recognition and endorsement of the reason. One may have rival motivations, which may be stronger. I think no one would seriously suggest that only such reasons are valid, which in fact happen to lead us to act. All and all, the validity of the requirements seems independent of our responses in any of these ways. A failure to adequately respond to a situation can be a matter of not recognising the descriptive features, or judging wrongly their normative relevance, or failing to be motivated accordingly (say, because of listlessness, or weakness of the will, or more general ‘amoralism’). ‘Reasons’, of course, do not care whether they are recognised or not, but there is a corresponding list of failures in interpersonal recognition. Cases of misrecognition of persons may be failures to notice the other’s descriptive features, or to recognise the related normative claims, or, more dramatically, a failure to care about the recognised reasons. The last type of failure is definitely more insulting than the first one. The failures of the second type, concerning the normative claims, can further be of three kinds. It can be a matter of total ignorance of that type of reasons at all (one has not grasped the relevant reason or principle at all). Secondly, it can be a matter of systematic bias in applying the principle (one does not believe that women’s achievements could be any good, and thus one is blinded by prejudice). Thirdly, it could just be a relatively isolated situation-specific blunder due to lack of attention. Of these, total ignorance may de facto be most harmful, but it seems that often misrecognition of the second type, of systematic bias, feels more deeply insulting. This is probably because it seems more arbitrarily discriminating, whereas the first type is just a case of ‘ignorance’. Thus, it seems that cases, where there is room for immanent criticism of recogniser’s views, feel most hurtful to the recognisee. Recognising Fundamental Values and Principles Is the ultimate validity of general values and principles dependent on our acknowledging them? Or is the relevance of acknowledgement more a matter of enabling these principles to make a difference in our actions? Further, do our endorsements have a legitimate selective role (in case there are optional values and principles)? A crucial distinction concerning both values and principles is the distinction between what is categorically valid or binding, independently of the contingent ends and pursuits of individuals (or communities), and what is merely optional. Different theories take different principles and values to be categorical (some take none), but arguably, for example, principles related to the status of persons are categorical, whereas values internal to various optional practices (such as arts, sports, sciences) are optional for any individual or community. Engaging in any of them can be constitutive of human flourishing, but there is a huge variety of different practices which are roughly equally good.21 56 A. Laitinen Various theories (e.g. certain constructivists, historicists and norm-expressivists) claim that the validity of moral principles and values is dependent on actual recognition or endorsement, by individuals or communities.22 On this view, there are no categorically valid reasons, independently of endorsements. This means that two descriptively exactly similar situations may differ in the reasons for action they embody, if in one situation the relevant participants have recognised some principle but not in the other.23 As such, there is nothing mysterious in this. Everyone agrees that positive law functions that way: of two descriptively similar situations, in the first something is a crime and in the second it is not a crime, because the legislation has been changed in the meantime.24 The question is, can we make sense of similar changes in moral legislation? The constructivist suggestion is that moral principles are dependent on actual acknowledgement just like law is dependent on actual legislative events. To be practicable, this picture of morality must be pretty general, analogous to law: it must be general principles, or systems of principles, that are acknowledged. The event of the acknowledgment of the principle ‘sends normative messages’ to all relevant situations (just like legislation does), governing what is right and what is wrong. For realists about principles, the principles are valid even when not actually recognised. They seem to merit acknowledgement, and while it may be to some degree up to us to acknowledge them or not, the meriting seems to be beyond our doing.25 (And of course, for particularists, there are no principles in the relevant sense, all there is to morality and practical reason is related to the normative shape of situations.) Even if realists would be right in this and the ultimate validity of principles were not dependent on recognition, nevertheless the social acceptance of a principle, or value, is relevant for their causal role. Indeed, unlike natural facts, which may have causal effects even when unrecognised, principles and values can make a difference only when recognised. In the case of optional values, endorsement and adoption of certain goals makes a difference in another sense as well: because there is no categorical demand to pursue an optional end, it is only if we adopt them as ends, that we have reasons to do the acts that subserve that end. There seem to be three stages in such ‘acknowledgement’ of values and principles. The steps need not, but may, be divorced from one another in different cases. We can, first of all, distinguish mere cognition, or ‘identification’ or initial awareness of the candidate value or principle in question. As a second step, there are judgements concerning the validity of the principle or value: does it merit acceptance? A third (often simultaneous) step is the motivationally effective endorsement of the principle or value. One endorses a value in this sense if one is moved by it, or cares about it, or gives it a role in one’s orientation in life and in one’s behavioural dispositions. This is a matter of being committed or attached to a value or a principle. Without such endorsements, the principles would not move the agents to act (although there may, of course, be external sanctions which move the agents). As suggested above, there are categorical values and principles, which everyone ought to recognise and pursue. For example, the universal principles and values related to personhood, equality, well-being, justice, truth, duties of keeping Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 57 promises, treatment of animals and nature may be such considerations. Rival cultures are really rival when it comes to disagreements concerning such categorically valid considerations. Yet there is room for the idea that different cultures present different selections of in-principle valid, but optional, values and principles. In such cases, there is no real rivalry between different cultures. Thus, the distinction between categorical and optional is reflected in two kinds of differences between cultures: there are real, regrettable disagreements about categorical values, and a recommendable plurality and diversity of different lifestyles, based on different ‘selections’ of optional values. Again, values and principles cannot care whether they are recognised or not.26 But interpersonal recognition is implied in acknowledgement of values and principles, in two ways. First, in debates about values, the ‘prestige’ and identity of the ‘recognisers’ who accept certain values, is at stake. But further, those ‘recognisees’ who fall under the principles or values in questions have their status at stake. Strictly speaking, even for those recognisees who have such a stake, success in such struggles does not quite amount to interpersonal recognition proper. What is still needed are situation-specific judgements, and one may encounter biases there, or it could be that one is being ignored totally. Thus, acknowledging relevant principles seems to be a mere precondition, albeit a hugely important one, of actual interpersonal recognition. If someone does not acknowledge the values and principles in question, it already guarantees that interpersonal recognition will be inadequate. Others’ endorsements of values and principles matter to me in terms of how well integrated, non-alienated and ‘at home’ I feel among the fellow actors (who are after all potential threats as well as benign co-operators).27 It matters to me that the depth-structure of their worldview is ‘decentered’ in such a way that the basic rights of all persons are taken for granted, even though it should turn out that I never end up in actual interaction with them.28 This speaks in favour of some kind of generalism: it is not only situation-specific judgements that matter. Public expressions of endorsements of general rights and values may matter, independently of judgements in situations. If I know that a person X endorses some ideology, which does not permit treating me and my likes as persons, but classifies us as subhuman, I can legitimately feel offended even though the person X has no thoughts about me in particular. He has made an implicit statement concerning me as well, and I am well justified in taking it personally. Conversely, if a person acknowledges some general norms of universal recognition, and is (to my knowledge) reasonably trustworthy, I can assume that she recognises me accordingly. If she is generally nice to people, and takes the rights of persons for granted, it is not likely that she will do something cruel and unusual when she meets me, given that it is not be hard to identify me physically as a human person. (Of course, she may not know my special needs, but that is irrelevant here). This kind of ‘inferred recognition’ can go further. I can perhaps assume that indeed most people in my society are like that person. I can feel relaxed, and ‘at home’ and ‘recognised’ in the social world. Moreover, 58 A. Laitinen the fact that the state endorses laws and institutions, which guarantee people’s equal standing, is relevant in this respect.29 Such pre-emptive measures matter even in cases where one does not in fact encounter situations where the guarantees are in fact needed. Interpersonal Recognition and Relevant Differences Taming Megalothymia: Three Dimensions In the previous section I discussed acknowledgement of reasons, values and principles. In what follows I suggest a three-dimensional model of interpersonal recognition. One advantage that multidimensional views of recognition have is that they can suggest that ‘megalothymic’ aspirations be confined into other dimensions, not that of fundamental equal respect and basic rights, while leaving room for recognition of differences. First of the three dimensions is the universalistic, egalitarian, dimension, which ignores two kinds of differences: what kind of person someone is, and the fact which person she is. All persons are taken as equals, irrespective of any of their particular features. A second dimension is difference-sensitive, which while ignoring the question which person someone is, nevertheless concentrates on the particular features of the person: anyone with these features would do. We can further introduce a third dimension, where a treatment is relationship-dependent and tied to a singled out, unique, irreplacable person. This person can undergo changes in her life, but still remain the same ‘object’ of special attachment. In this case, the personal significance is derived from a special relationship to the person, but does not imply that the person is somehow of more value than other persons. It is rather that one’s friendship (or any other special relationship) entails that the other’s needs, desires and feelings matter to one in a way that they would not matter without the relationship (See Scheffler 2004). In this triartite taxonomy, different kinds of recognition would differ in relation to whether the agents are related to qua persons, or qua persons having particular characteristics or features or qua relationally singled out individuals. There are correspondingly three kinds of reason-giving features that persons can have, which provide the basis for distinguishing due recognition from misrecognition: first, equal ‘dignity’ or ‘worth’ of persons, second, unequal merits, and third, unequal relation-dependent special significance. (Needs are relevant in all of these dimensions). Furthermore, there are three kinds of corresponding general values and principles (not ‘three values and principles’, because there is a vast plurality of them, but three kinds): first, the universal ‘dignity’ or ‘worth’ or ‘status as ends in themselves’ of persons and the corresponding principle requiring everyone to respect the basic human rights. Secondly, there is a huge plurality of worthwhile goals and practices in which one can strive to succeed. Different practices contain different values and principles, which regulate the practice in question. These principle are often Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 59 optional, but there is a categorical demand for non-participants to respect, and not destroy anything which is of value in this sense (Raz 2001). Thirdly, relationships of friendship and love are valuable, and there are corresponding principles of loyalty and special obligations. That third parties generally acknowledge such values and principles of special relationships makes a difference in that they take other’s friendships to provide different kind of reasons for them (take friendships of others as something to be promoted, or just display approval to the patterns of partiality involved). Equal Personhood and Contexts of Equality According to universalistic principles persons are to be treated equally qua persons. The normative basis is what Kant thematised as the dignity or ‘worth’ of persons as ends-in-themselves. This is something that all persons possess equally, irrespective of their particular merits. It suffices that they are valuers, or self-determining, rational and moral agents, or self-conscious subjects or self-interpreting animals (depending on the favoured theory of personhood).30 The equal worth of persons is a source for demands for treating everyone equally. In this subsection I wish to discuss three possible qualifications: first, personmaking characteristics come in degrees; secondly, differences in needs and other features may make a difference to what treating ‘as equals’ amounts to; and thirdly, in different ‘contexts of justice’ equality applies only to the relevant members of that ‘context’ (legal, moral, democratic). These qualifications do not alter the basic point of equality. First, even if the various person-making characteristics come in degrees, recognising others as equals deliberately ignores the degrees to which these person-making features (such as rationality, capacity for autonomous decision-making) are instantiated. Or more precisely, some rights are such that the degrees of person-making features do not matter, whereas some rights are such that degrees do not matter above a certain threshold level, although they do matter below the threshold. Thus there are three kinds of cases. First, even newborn humans, whose rationality and autonomy are still merely potential, have the full right to live. Secondly, some rights of persons are conditional on one’s actual autonomy and rationality (for example the right to self-determination, or claims that one’s judgements are respected, etc.). These presuppose a certain threshold, above which further differences make no difference. The rationale for this is that at a certain limit you are entitled to the full package of basic rights.31 The reason for why you do not get more of the basic rights, even though you become more rational or more moral, is that once you reach the threshold, you already have all of the rights. There is nothing more to be distributed. Becoming more rational, more responsible, morally better, etc.. is a basis of esteem, but one cannot get more of the basic rights.32 But thirdly, differences in the degrees of person-making characteristics do make a difference below the threshold level of full autonomy and responsibility. There is a reason to treat all potentially autonomous persons in such a way that their potentials are actualised (through education, upbringing, etc.). Further, 60 A. Laitinen we ought to grant any people who possess a degree of autonomy a right to participate in leading an autonomous life. Thus, while differences above the threshold cannot make a difference (because the threshold level is where you are entitled to the full package), differences below the threshold do make a difference. Secondly, different individuals and, as is less frequently noted, different species, are different which makes a difference to how to treat persons as equals. Already the fact that humans have these biological needs makes a difference to what we owe to one another. If there were other kinds of rational beings, which ought to be recognised as persons, they might well have different kinds of needs. For example, while human beings need education, it would not be a matter of misrecognition for some supposed Martian persons who would have all the information they need innately, and who need no education. So there are contingent facts about humans, which tell us what respect for human personhood requires.33 More relevantly, the point can be made at the level of individual needs. The needs of individuals differ, and their living conditions differ. For example, if some people need more resources to live an autonomous life, considerations of equality may justify differential treatment. Even though the treatment or share of resources is different, the goal is to treat everyone as an equal. In this it differs from the forms of recognition of difference (merit, friendship) where the point of the kind of recognition is to be sensitive to what kind of person, or which person is at issue. Thirdly, a different set of qualifications concerns the scope of equality in various respects. There are different ‘contexts of justice’, where the scope of egalitarian considerations is narrowed down to a certain context (Forst 2002). Moral, democratic, legal and social contexts differ greatly concerning the scope of their membership. Moral community is not restricted at all, whereas democratic context is restricted to the members of this political community (and others are supposed to have their political rights guaranteed in their own countries). Legal context is restricted on territorial grounds, but it includes also non-citizen residents and travellers. Recent and ongoing scandals in the ways in which ‘war on terror’ has led to gross violations of basic principles of rule of law, in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, testify to ways in which violations of legal rights are cases of not treating persons as equals. A further context of equality is the more indeterminate ‘social world’. For example Nancy Fraser’s (2003) principle of ‘participatory parity’ is an application to the context of social life of the basic principle of equal worth of persons. The idea relevant to recognition of equal worth is that too great differences in material goods are a sign of some people being treated as second-rate citizens. The distribution of material goods should not hinder anyone’s basic self-respect. (Of course, distribution of goods matters for independent reasons as well.) Two Kinds of Differences: Merits and Special Relationships People can have unequal merits in the light of instrumental or non-instrumental values (Vlastos 1962). That is, there are differences in the extent to which persons have the different good-making features: someone is very useful for the society Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 61 (various professions), someone else is excellent in a practice with intrinsic value (tennis or poetry), and yet someone else is more phronetic and has virtues of character, etc. There are of course also differences in the bad-making characteristics of persons, and also in their contributions to something worthless, but it is merit in the light of values that is a relevant difference that can serve as a basis for esteem. One context where ‘megalothymic’ competitive struggles are legitimately at home, are various practices, which are either socially useful or designed for different projects of self-realisation. (Although as noticed above, the idea of ‘megalothymia’ does not seem to capture people’s typical motivations for engaging in these practices for their own sake). It seems that acknowledged excellence in any kind of practice can enhance one’s self-esteem. Further, some modes of merit are related to our being particular kinds of valuers, or belonging to different kinds of ‘value horizons’. In addition to being a valuer in general, each person has particular value-commitments, which are central in shaping her identity. One mode of merit is related to this, to our overall orientation in life: are we wise, prudent and mature as valuers, as judges of what is valuable in life, or good for us in our life. (This is different from respect, which ignores our particular merits as valuers, but insists that all have same basic ‘dignity’). Here esteem or lack of esteem may concern the whole group of people who share a way of life. This is of central importance to one’s identity. Often identity politics demand approving attention for the values and ideals one would want to live by, for the goals that one pursues. Value pluralism allows that there is a plurality of ways of life, which are equally good (or roughly equal) from the viewpoint of human flourishing. A related mode of esteem concerns one’s success in living up to one’s ideals (as opposed to one’s wisdom in merely adopting these ideals). In that sense, it is the achievements of individuals and cultural groups that are under scrutiny. In such merit-based treatment the point is precisely to treat people differently, according to their relevant traits. It would be pointless to give Olympic medals to everyone equally. In such treatments, which are sensitive to differences, people are in a sense replaceable: it is not unethical, say, to hire who is best for the job, whoever he or she happens to be. But of course, people are replaceable from this viewpoint only: they are still people and ought to be respected. Thus people are never replaceable like old tools which one can destroy. Further, whatever the differences are, they are relatively context-sensitive. Outside the relevant contexts, the special positions or merits or achievements do not serve as a basis for a differential treatment. Any comparisons are thus one aspect at a time, and do not threaten the basic equality of persons.34 The point of such difference-sensitive, context-sensitive treatment, is that it enables people’s efforts and achievements to affect their relationships to others, and makes it possible to develop a positive self-relation based on the feedback of others. Neither universal respect nor special relationships such as love are in this sense conditional on one’s efforts and achievements. But conditional treatment is important both to self-realisation and to certain kinds of relationships to others. Succeeding 62 A. Laitinen in worthwhile activities may be rewarding on its own, and it may be rewarding to be noticed (say, to get appropriate applause after a successful concert). But a much longer-lasting effect is in one’s self-relationship and the relationship to other members of one’s society. Through acknowledged contributions, one may gain a relatively permanent standing in the relevant community (say, in the art community). And this affects the ways that others (also outside that context) regard one: one’s social identity is defined partly through one’s profession, hobbies, etc. And it affects how one regards oneself: one’s self-esteem is dependent on the esteem and feedback one gets in one’s pursuits, and one’s feeling of belonging, or ‘being at home’, is dependent on having relevant memberships and established standings in some groups. Thus, while the dimension of recognition of differences can accommodate ‘megalothymic’ tendencies, a much more stable and satisfactory result is an ‘isothymic’ one where everyone succeeds in finding their place, and contributes one’s share to the common goods and achieves one’s goals of self-realisation in one’s pursuits. It seems like a valid psychological insight that if one has a sense of belonging to a community in and through which one can realise one’s ground projects, one simply does not have any megalothymic, endless yearning for more and more attention, or more and more external signs of success.35 A third type of recognition is neither universalistic nor ‘meritocratic’. It is based on the personal value of ‘special persons’ like friends or lovers, who are irreplaceable from one’s viewpoint, and who are of special significance to oneself. When I am attached to you, your well-being matters to me more than anyone else’s. I do not judge that you have literally more value than other people’s friends, I just think that I am related to you in a way which justifies giving you special attention. Friendship is a matter of taking the other’s needs, desires and wishes as reasons (which they would not be apart from friendship). Loving attachments are not based on merit in the light of any value, and there is no duty to love everyone equally. So while there are differences between people in their relative merits, there are also differences between people in how ‘special’ they are to other individuals, and this constitutes their personal significance for these individuals. Thus, in addition to the equal dignity of persons, and their different merits in the light of different values, there are relational values related to special relationships, which do not obey the logic of ‘merit’. Judgements concerning merit imply replaceability: anyone who would have similar merits would do, our judgements ought not be clouded by our special relations and by the fact that the judgement concerns this individual. In judgements concerning our special relations, such deliberate ignorance about which person is in question would lose the subject-matter out of sight totally. While such special significance exists when the relationship is already established, is there any sort of responsiveness in the process of forming a friendship or a love-relationship? Perhaps here the status of ‘being a special person for me’ is just a matter of being taken as a friend, and the status is created gradually as a result of the history of the relationship? Before such ‘relating’, there was no relevant difference between the person and all others, but in virtue of the forming of the relationship, the person has become irreplaceable. Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 63 But even here, I think we can make sense of the responsiveness to reasons and values in question. All persons are worthy of my love and friendship to begin with, in the sense that I am not superior to anyone so that some people would not be worth my love.36 Further, as I cannot be everyone’s friend or lover, I am allowed to be selective; someone who tries to be everyone’s friend is not responsive to the nature and value of friendship as enabling depth at the cost of impartiality. While forming a relationship is partly under one’s control, there is some normative pressure that one ought to at least try to form such relationships with those that one lives with anyway (parents, neighbours). Furthermore, as friendship and love are to some extent based on an exchange of spontaneous reactions, one should be responsive to spontaneous reactions (such as ‘liking’ someone, or enjoying someone’s company). And as forming a relationship is semi-voluntary, one should be responsive to reflective judgements (a relationship with this person would ruin my life, or be a form of wrong kind of dependency, so I will not permit myself to do it). And finally, of course, love and friendship are valuable relationships, although this is more often a relevant consideration for third parties. To conclude, the distinction between recognition and misrecognition can be seen as based on the correctness of the response to the three kinds of evaluative, reasongiving features that persons may instantiate. Adequate recognition means treating persons according to their dignity, merits and their special role in one’s life. And as analysed above, the failures to do so may be due to lack of sensitivity to descriptive features, or general or specific normative demands or due to lacking motivation. Mediated Recognition? I wish to end this essay by commenting briefly on Peter Jones’s (2006) distinction between unmediated and mediated recognition. So far I have spoken merely about unmediated recognition. (See also note 7, where Jones’s distinction between status and merit-recognition is briefly discussed). Jones begins by asking why should I recognise your identity. Not because I judge it is ‘truly’ worthwhile way of life (after all, as a Muslim, I need not appreciate your Christian ways), but more mediately because it matters to you, it is your identity, and I must accord recognition to you independently of your particular identity, as a person or a human being. Your identity must matter to me because you matter to me, although the value-orientations or goals which constitute your identity do not matter to me. After all, making ‘our’ recognition of ‘their’ identity depend upon what ‘we’, rather than ‘they’, find valuable, does not seem right. Thus, there seems to be an important distinction between mediated and unmediated recognition.37 I find Jones’s suggestion important, although perhaps for a slightly different reason than he. I would stress a distinction between something ‘mattering to someone’ (to me, to you, to us, to them) and ‘being in principle worthwhile’. While this distinction is far from uncontroversial, it preserves important intuitions. I can recognise that listening to Mozart is in principle worthwhile, while 64 A. Laitinen personally, listening to Mozart does not matter to me at all. Thus, I think that in recognising the contents of the identities and convictions of others, the question is not whether the contents matter to us (or to them), but rather, whether the contents are in principle worthwhile. Most cultural practices (sports, arts, sciences, hobbies) are such that while I do not pursue the goals myself, I find them worthwhile. The possibility of such distinction suggests that unmediated recognition is at least in principle possible. But the problem is that judgements concerning such ‘true worthwhileness’, while considerably broader than just questions of what matters to me, may inescapably be biased in favour of one’s own culture. And about foreign practices in foreign cultures, unknown to me, I cannot even form a view at all. We are often unable to judge whether a practice is in principle worthwhile (while it is all too easy to say that it does not matter to me personally), and that seems to be the reason why mediated recognition of Jones’s type is so important.38 How does mediated recognition of someone’s identity differ from respect? We may respect people’s right to determine their identities, even when we are ignorant of what the contents of their orientations and identities are. That is unmediated respect. As I understand it, mediated recognition is directed at the particular contents that others have chosen. We do not form our own judgement concerning the worthwhileness of the contents, we rather think that these contents are special in the sense that they matter to ‘the other’.39 In regulations sensitive to ‘conscientious objection’ we think that those with pacifistic convictions need not participate in military service. In a mediated manner, we give recognition to the contents of the identity or conviction: someone need not go into the army, say, or take off a headscarf in school, etc., because it is against their deeply held personal views.40 This is more than mere equal respect of their right to express themselves, it is also mediated recognition of the specific contents. Think, however, of an encounter between someone with racist convictions and us, who are critical of racism. Should racist identities be mediately respected, or at most tolerated, or maybe not even tolerated? (I use ‘toleration’ here as including the judgement that something is bad, and not worthy of respect, but nevertheless ‘tolerable’). Should we display direct criticism and zero-tolerance of the contents of the identity, while at the same time displaying ‘respect’ towards the person? Should we even think that ‘identity’ is not only no excuse, but quite the contrary: while having some racist views is bad enough, having one’s identity built around such views is even worse. I at least think we ought to send two messages in such cases: first, the contents of the racist identity are not even mediately worth recognition. It is indeed worse to have a racist identity than to have occasional racist thoughts. Something like ‘intolerance’ seems the right attitude to take, concerning the contents (which are, after all, racist and categorically wrong towards other people). The racist case suggests that all ‘mediated recognition’ may contain an implicit ‘unmediated’ judgement after all, concerning the worthwhileness, or categorical wrongness, of the contents of the identity. But secondly, it is nonetheless important to relate to the racist as a person, and to show to him that his judgements matter.41 Indeed, it is Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 65 because everyone’s judgements matter, that we are so concerned with the contents of his judgements. Acknowledgements I want to thank Gideon Calder, Peter Jones, Steve Smith, and other participants of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy Annual Conference, 2004, for helpful discussions and comments. This article was prepared during a visiting scholarship (2004–05) at the University of Reading and the University of Oxford. I wish to thank Jonathan Dancy, Joseph Raz and John Broome for making the visits possible, as well as the Finnish Academy Project ‘Persons, Reasons and Realism’ and the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters for their financial support. Notes 1. Dancy (2000), Taylor (1989, 1995). For a critical discussion of Taylor, see Laitinen (2003a). 2. I use ‘particularism’ in this essay in the sense used by Dancy (1993, 2004). The debate between particularism and generalism in this sense concerns the nature of reason-giving features: if some feature (say, ‘being pleasant’) gives a reason in one situation, does it give a (prima facie) reason also in other situations? Or does it have a reason-giving role only in some situations, and is it even possible that it can sometimes be a reason against the action? Generalists say that features can perhaps be silenced, but they cannot change their polarity, whereas particularism holds that they can change their polarity as well. Sometimes the term ‘particularism’ is used to refer to the view that the validity of a principle or a value is not universal, but restricted to the particular culture, which endorses it. A third sense of ‘particularistic’ figures in the distinction between universal equal recognition, and ‘particularistic’ recognition of relevant particular features. ‘Particularistic’ recognition in that third sense is compatible with generalist (against particularism 1) and universalist (against particularism 2) views, for example generalist universalists can hold that special prizes ought to be distributed according to specific (‘particular’ in the third sense) merits. 3. See the texts mentioned in the bibliography by Honneth, Taylor, Hegel, Scanlon, Dancy, Raz, Laitinen, Ikäheimo. 4. See Ikäheimo (2002b), and Ikäheimo and Laitinen (forthcoming), in which we try to analyse this threefold sense of ‘recognition’ further. The distinction can be made in accordance with the scheme ‘A recognises B as C’. Anything can be identified as the thing it is, whereas only ‘normative entities’ can be acknowledged as valid, and only recognisers can recognise each others as persons (or groups). We can distinguish between the three cases alternatively using the linguistic expressions ‘recognise that’ or ‘recognition of’: recognition of descriptive facts, of normative claims and of someone’s personhood. 5. For some suggestions, see Ikäheimo (2002a), Laitinen (2003b), Ikäheimo and Laitinen (forthcoming). 6. Compare to Jones (2006). Jones distinguishes between status recognition and merit recognition. Merit recognition tracks merits people have independently, whereas status recognition creates what it recognises, and confers rather than responds to value. Yet, he adds, status-recognition is not arbitrary, but we can have reasons to accord status in the ways we do. Once we admit this, it seems that status-recognition, too, is responsive to reasons and values, but in this case the reasons are not dependent on the different particular features of the individuals. It is a matter of responsiveness to the universal worth of all human persons. The distinction between different kinds of creative roles that recognition can have is relevant here: arguably recognition does not create the very requirements it is responsive to, but nevertheless recognition may be constitutive or ontologically creative concerning the actualisations of those requirements. ‘Status’ in this context can importantly mean two things: 66 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. A. Laitinen first, the moral status that all persons have and which demands everyone ought to be granted certain positive rights, and secondly, the (positive) status that they have when the positive rights have been granted. I think interpersonal recognition is responsive to status in the first sense, but constitutive of status in the second sense. The same is true in the case of judgements of merit: we ought to respond with certain attitudes, but such responses are constitutive of ‘social status’. So it seems that both merit- and status-recognition (in Jones’s sense) are responsive to reasons (and values and requirements), and furthermore both create ‘statuses’ in some sense: acknowledged merit creates a social status, whereas recognised rights as citizens create a normative status of, say, rights-bearer. See Ikäheimo and Laitinen (forthcoming). Matters are complicated even further by the (constructivist) possibility that the basic moral status of persons, which interpersonal recognition is responsive to, is in turn created through acknowledgement of a moral principle. See below for discussion of this possibility. I outline the ontological relevance of recognition, and its compatibility with the response-model in Laitinen (2002). Some ideas about the relevance of recognition to good autonomous life are developed in Laitinen (2003b). Laitinen (2002). For slightly different suggestions, see Honneth, Taylor, Hegel, Hardimon, Ikäheimo (2002a). There are of course meaningful pursuits where the sole point of competition is to ‘be better than’. But many activities have an independent point, and an independent standard of success. Nicomachean Ethics, book i, 5. British intuitionist Prichard (2002: 99) saw something of a paradox in this. How can an act have the property of ‘being obligatory’ unless the act is done? After all, if one does not perform the obligatory act, the act does not come to exist at all, and thus it cannot have any properties, and thus not the property ‘being obligatory’ either. There are ways out of this so-called ‘paradox’ however: one is to say that real features of an existing situation create the requirement, and the requirement is there whether or not one responds by doing the act. It is precisely the peculiar nature of ‘requirement’ or ‘demand’ or ‘invitation’ (unlike, say, ‘explanation’ or ‘cause’) that they exist whether or not they lead to any actions or not. Requirement is logically prior to and independent of any responses to the requirement. Furthermore, the actual requirement may be at least partly based on the features that the required action would have, if performed. I mostly focused on such cases in Laitinen (2002), in a possibly misleading way. For example, human infants are potentially responsible and autonomous, which generates and actual demand to help them actualise their autonomy. Indeed, it is categorically wrong to neglect such potentials central to personhood. Or, if supporting you would help you to become a great artist, then I have a (possibly optional) reason to support you, and I can fail to respond to such a reason. Or, in establishing a relationship (say, friendship or love) the reasons to which I respond, may be partly based on the fact that such a relationship is a good thing. Above I distinguished between three meanings of recognition: descriptive identification, normative acknowledgement as ‘taking something as valid’ and interpersonal recognition. In this section I focus on the second of these senses. It would be satisfactory to be able to sustain the terminological distinction between these three, by reserving the title ‘acknowledgement’ to this usage, and the term ‘recognition’ to interpersonal relations. See Ikäheimo and Laitinen. I have to make an exception to this usage in this section. This section focuses on distinguishing several aspects of such ‘acknowledgement’. In referring to these aspects, it is both natural, and the prevailing practice in the literature I quote, to use terms like ‘recognition of (descriptive) facts’, ‘recognition of reasons’ and ‘endorsement of reasons’. These are intended as aspects of ‘acknowledgement’ in the broader sense, and so I have to leave it to the context to decide which sense of ‘recognition’ is at issue. The distinction between ‘resultance’ and ‘supervenience’ is that supervenience holds between all the descriptive features and the normative features, whereas resultance is a narrower relation, it includes only those descriptive features which are relevant. See Dancy (2004). Different theories and philosophers may then argue that different combinations of these can never come apart, or they can argue that some of them are necessary for the reason to exist. See e.g. Dancy 2000c. Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 67 17. The belief that ‘there is gin in the glass’ will no doubt have some role in explaining why the agent drank petrol, and thus it will have some role in the story about ‘motivating reasons’ or ‘explanatory reasons’. But it is not a good, normative reason for action. On motivating and normative reasons, see Dancy (2000a: ch. 1). 18. Failure to recognise is ambiguous between two readings: failure to consider at all and failure to accommodate adequately. Dancy (2000b: 325). 19. Dancy (2004: 146) discusses various theories of how recognition of a reason, desire and motivation are related. In his and Raz’s (1986) view, to desire is to endorse a reason and thus to be motivated. In the view of Garrard and McNaughton (1998), to be motivated is to recognise a reason. For Scanlon (1998), to desire is to recognise a reason. 20. In a third-personal case, when one does not aim at action, but merely judges what someone else ought to do (or oneself, when the situation is not ‘on’), we can distinguish i) recognition of descriptive features and ii) recognition of the normative relevance of those features in terms of reasons and iii) an overall judgement of what one ought to do (which is a further judgement dependent on the judgements concerning the individual reasons which contribute to the overall normative judgement). 21. The distinction between categorical and optional is slightly different from ‘valid independently of recognition’ and ‘valid when recognised’. It is possible to recognise that the values embodied by opera are in principle valid, without motivationally endorsing them and pursuing them oneself. Thus, the validity of both categorical and optional principles and values could be independent of recognition. But one has to be realist, to be able to hold that categorical values really are categorical independently of actual endorsements. 22. On historicism, see e.g. Walzer, MacIntyre and Pippin, on norm-expressivism, see Gibbard, on constructivism, see the discussion in Shafer-Landau. On the notion of reflective endorsement, see Korsgaard. 23. If this difference in endorsements is taken to be a further descriptive feature, then supervenience is preserved. 24. Thus, there is no strict supervenience on the descriptive features of a situation, and its ‘legal properties’. 25. And in fact, various contractualist theories end up suggesting this as well: they do not think that actual recognition makes a difference, but rather what would be recognised under idealised conditions. But this is a form of realism in the sense that actual endorsements do not make a constitutive difference. See e.g. Habermas. 26. This is not to say we ought not ‘care about’ values or principles, for their own sake. It is just that ‘for their sake’ means a different thing here and in the case of living beings, who we ‘care for’. See Darwall (2002). 27. Recognising reasons and values matters to the relationships between people even when what is at issue is not the reason-giving features of the persons. We relate to each other as ‘respondents’ to all kinds of other reasons, and our sensibilities to various things affect our relations. But concerning some reasons (most notably those related to the fundamental standing as persons) we are both agents and patients. In discussing the importance of considerations or right and wrong, T.M. Scanlon points out that ‘the reasons that a person recognises are important to us because they affect the range of relations we can have with that person. In many cases these effects are quite local. If someone does not see the point of music, or of chess, or does not appreciate the grandeur of nature, then one cannot discuss these things with him or enjoy them together (Scanlon 1998: 159). Scanlon points out that such ‘blind spots’ leave much of life untouched. By contrast, a failure to be moved by moral considerations, or what is right and wrong effects a global rupture. What is at issue is ‘the person’s attitude towards us - specifically, a failure to see why the justifiability of his or her actions to us should be of any importance’ (ibid.: 159). This amounts to denying one’s standing as a person, and thus is a gulf rather than a blind spot. One is in a sense totally unconnected to that person, at least as a reasonsresponsive agent. This, in Scanlon’s view, accounts for the special importance of seeing the reasongiving force of moral considerations. Acknowledging that our relations to one another ought to be justifiable to one another establishes a connection of mutual recognition. 68 A. Laitinen 28. Here, the idea of continuous chains of people connected to others through other people is relevant. See Brink (2003: 52–69). 29. On the importance of guarantees, see e.g. Pettit (2001). 30. Different dimensions of personhood (say, capacity for rational thinking and moral agency on the one hand, and vulnerability and capacity to suffer on the other hand) may invite different kinds of universalistic responses, most prominently universal respect and universal altruistic concern or ‘love’ in one sense of the term (see Ikäheimo 2002). One can care benevolently or altruistically about anyone’s suffering and capacity to decent life. So respect may not be the only ‘universalistic’ response, in some conceptions of altruistic love, also love can be universalistic. 31. On range-properties, see Rawls (1972). 32. It is a bit like driving license or many other rights: at some point you have it fully, and above the threshold level even better drivers cannot get any more of the same. What they can get is differential esteem, but that is a different matter from the permit of others to drive. 33. If all persons are humans, this consideration can in practice be put aside. Even then, this is a useful theoretical reminder to show, that the contents of human rights cannot simply be deduced from any notion of person-making characteristics. To treat people as equal human persons is a more substantive notion, than to treat them as persons. Furthermore, participation in the same global order, and sharing the same atmosphere etc. makes a difference to what obligations we have towards other ‘terrestial’ persons (whether human or other animal species) in comparison to potential Martian persons. 34. Even though a footballer and a lecturer can in principle be compared from the viewpoint of ‘football and lecturing’ (say, if there were a job opening under that, somewhat unlikely, combination), this is still a very narrow perspective. On possibilities of comparing instances of different values, see Chang (1997). 35. This is discussed in a quite illuminating way in O’Neill (1997). Cf. Hegel and Hardimon. 36. And not only is everyone worthy of my love, but friendship and love presuppose mutual respect. The following quote is from Scanlon, who agrees that even friendship ‘involves recognition of the friend as a separate person with moral standing – as someone to whom justification is owed in his or her own right, not merely in virtue of being a friend. A person who saw only friends as having this status would therefore not have friends in the sense that I am describing: their moral standing would be too dependent on the contingent fact of his affection. There would, for example, be something unnerving about a “friend” who would steal a kidney for you if you needed one. … what it implies about the “friend’s” view of your right to your own body parts [is, that:] he would not steal them, but that is only because he happens to like you’ (Scanlon 1998: 164–165) The role of the kidney example is to assure that friendship requires us to recognise our friends as having moral standing as persons, independent of our friendship. Thus, the kind of partiality relevant to special relationships is no threat to the more fundamental impartiality and equality between people. 37. Compare to Heikki Ikäheimo’s (2002b) suggestion that recognising foreign cultures is ultimately a matter of respecting their judgement and right to define their own way of life. 38. Our epistemic situation may indeed seem quite dire, for several reasons: there is a general tendency to have too narrow (and not too broad) horizons, when it comes to worthwhile practices and goals, and thus we should expect that those who claim that a certain practice is not worthwhile, are simply being one-sided. This is especially so, when the critic is not well acquainted with the practice in question: ignorant critics are more likely to be wrong. But on the other hand, participants in the practices for whom the practice matters are bound to be biased in favour of the practice, and thus we should not trust too much the participant’s views either. What we need are people who are well acquainted, but capable of unbiased judgements. So it may seem that we need enlightened outsiders, or even better, insiders who succeeded in some practice and despite that, came to admit that the practice in question is not worthwhile. But it may be that these worries underestimate the powers of judgement and imaginative identification. 39. Note that Jones’s ‘mediated recognition’ cannot enhance self-esteem in the right way, because in it no independent judgements about the contents of the identity are expressed. But he plausibly adds Recognition and Responsiveness to Differences 69 that there is nothing wrong with seeking more unmediated recognition of merits in addition to the mediated recognition. This would be the case of seeking true esteem, true recognition of the worthwhileness of one’s orientation in life. 40. Thus ‘mediated recognition’ makes a difference in practice, and is not mere indifference, or lipservice, although in a sense the message is ‘I respect your identity whatever its content happens to be’. (I suppose Jones’s model presupposes awareness of the contents of the identity in any case, although judgement concerning its worth is suspended. 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