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Personal Respect, Private Property, And Market Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel

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Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to show that Hegel’s concept of personal respect is of great interest to contemporary Critical Theory. The author first analyzes this notion as it appears in the Philosophy of Right and then offers a new interpretation of the conceptual relation between personal respect and the institutions of (private) property and (capitalist) markets. In doing so, he shows why Hegel’s concept of personal respect allows us to understand markets as possible institutionalizations of this kind of recognition, and why it is compatible with a critique of neoliberal capitalism. He argues that due to these features Hegel’s notion of personal respect is of great interest to theoreticians within the tradition of critical theory.

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Notes

  1. The term ‘Critical Theory’ is used here to refer to what is also called ‘The Frankfurt School’, that is, the school of thought established in the 1930s at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Cf., e.g., Hoy and McCarthy 1994 and Wiggershaus 1986.

  2. Love, as Honneth understands it, is a kind of recognition that involves “strong emotional ties” (Honneth 2003, p. 153) between those who recognize each other in this respect. Cf. Honneth 2003a, pp. 153–174. It is therefore hard to see how markets could be understood in terms of love.

  3. In fact, they were critical of any kind of market system.

  4. In Honneth’s view, capitalist societies that are social-democratic are characterized by regulated markets, significant welfare state arrangements, and economic policies that are anti-cyclical; societies falling under the concept “neoliberal capitalism,” by contrast, are characterized by the following elements: largely deregulated markets; a level of social security that is comparably low; a shareholder culture; and flexible business organizations (see Hartmann and Honneth 2006, p. 41 and p. 45). According to Honneth, social-democratic capitalism was dominant in Western Europe between roughly 1945 and 1980, whereas neoliberal capitalism has become increasingly important ever since (see Hartmann and Honneth 2006, p. 43). There is, unfortunately, no space to discuss Honneth’s interpretations of “neoliberal capitalism” and “social-democratic capitalism.”

  5. In this context, the subtitle is telling; it reads: “An attempt at a reactualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” Cf. Honneth 2001.

  6. Cf., e.g., Neuhouser 2000, Patten 1999, and Williams 1992.

  7. I would like to emphasize this point, because some important contemporary philosophers (for instance, R. Brandom, T. Pinkard, R. Pippin, and P. Ricoeur) seem to focus on other parts of Hegel’s work when they analyze and discuss his views on recognition and personhood. In this paper, I cannot discuss the question whether Hegel’s various treatments of these issues can be understood as parts of one theory.

  8. The term ‘neoliberal’ is used here in the sense specified by Honneth. See note 4 above.

  9. I use H. B. Nisbett’s translation of Hegel’ Philosophy of Right (cf. Wood 1991), which I have occasionally altered for the sake of clarity and consistency. Changes to Nisbett’s translation are not noted.

  10. On Hegel’s concepts of personality and person, see Quante 1997 and Quante 2004, pp. 13–55.

  11. See my discussion of this issue in Schmidt am Busch 2007, pp. 93–102.

  12. It is sufficient here to note that Hegel’s justification of the first thesis is speculative. I shall argue below that this need not be a problem for Critical Theorists interested in Hegel’s notion of personal respect. See Section 6, note 25.

  13. See the discussion in Hegel 1991, §§ 43, 48, and 49.

  14. Cf. Hegel 1991, § 49: “In relation to external things, it is reasonable that I possess property.”

  15. I quote here T. M. Knox’ translations of the Philosophy of Right.

  16. I quote here T. M. Knox’ translations of the Philosophy of Right.

  17. See Section 3 above.

  18. It is for this reason that, according to Hegel, “[t]he Idea of Plato’s republic contains as a universal principle a wrong against the person, inasmuch as the person is forbidden to own private property” (Hegel 1991, § 46, Rem.).

  19. See Section 3 above.

  20. Hegel himself emphasizes this point. See Hegel 1991, § 67, Add.

  21. The term ‘in principle’ is used here for the following reason. It may be the case that certain kinds of (capitalist) markets systematically exclude certain (classes of) people from the cooperation they structure. Whether or not there are markets of this kind and, if so, what the conceptual relation between them and the notion of personal respect might be are issues that lie outside the scope of the present discussion.

  22. This point is made by Hegel himself. See Hegel 1991, § 80.

  23. Hegel himself seems to argue that this is not the case. See his discussion in Hegel 1991, § 236, Rem. and Add.

  24. These questions are: What shall be produced? Who shall produce the goods that shall be produced? For whom shall these goods be produced?

  25. One might also wonder whether Hegel’s notion of personal respect, which is part of a ‘speculative’ social philosophy, can be taken up be theoreticians who claim to be committed to ‘postmetaphysical’ thinking. The issues related to this question are too complex to receive full treatment here. In lieu of any such discussion, I shall offer the following two remarks: First, I’m not sure whether contemporary Critical Theory really is postmetaphysical. Honneth explicitly says that the existence (and institutionalization) of the kinds of recognition he names “love,” “respect,” and “esteem” corresponds to “‘quasi-transcendental interests’ of the human species” (Honneth 2003, p. 206). This claim suggests that contemporary Critical Theory might not be free from assumptions that can be qualified as ‘metaphysical’ (cf. Halbig and Kohl 2004). Second, the kind of volitional relation to oneself that Hegel calls “personal freedom” can be analyzed in such a way (see Section 3 above) that it seems to be rather uncontroversial to consider it an element of any form of human freedom. (What is problematic from our point of view, by contrast, is Hegel’s claim that the existence of relations of this kind has to be explained as one aspect of the self-realization of what Hegel calls “the will.” This part of Hegel’s theory, however, can be left aside by Critical Theorists interested in his notion of personal respect.) If these arguments are correct, it may well be possible to cash out in non-speculative terms those elements of Hegel’s theory of personal respect that are of interest for contemporary Critical Theory.

  26. See Section 1 above.

  27. Cf. Honneth 2002 as well as Hartmann and Honneth 2006.

  28. On Honneth’s understanding of ‘neoliberal’ see note 4 above.

  29. See Section 1 above.

  30. See my discussion of this (basic) feature of Hegel’s social philosophy in Schmidt am Busch 2007, pp. 103–76.

  31. Hegel himself holds the view that personal respect gives people a prima facie reason to favor market-like exchanges over state-regulated distributions of goods, and that the normative claims of the moment of personality do compete with those based on the moments of particularity and of (non-abstract) universality. This can be inferred from: Hegel 1991, § 236, Rem. and § 254.

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Acknowledgements

I have presented different parts of my paper at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Kentucky in Lexington (November 11, 2006) and at the International Conference “Hegels Theorie der Subjektivität,” which took place at Debrecen University (Hungary) from September 27 to September 30, 2006. I should like to thank the participants for their helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks are due to Daniel Breazeale, Andrew Buchwalter, Axel Honneth, Mattias Iser, Thomas McCarthy, Michael Quante, Erzsébet Rózsa, Christopher F. Zurn and two anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Institute for Philosophy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany

    Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch

  2. Philippsbergstr. 37, 65195, Wiesbaden, Germany

    Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch

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Schmidt am Busch, HC. Personal Respect, Private Property, And Market Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 11, 573–586 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9118-6

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