Online research in philosophy

In this paper I provide an interpretation of Hegel’s account of ‘recognition’ (Anerkennung) in the 1802-3 System of Ethical Life as a critique of Fichte’s account of recognition in the 1796-7 Foundations of Natural Right. In the first three sections of the paper I argue that Fichte’s account of recognition in the domain of right is not concerned with recognition as a moral attitude. I then turn, in section four, to a discussion of Hegel’s critique and transformation of Fichte’s conception of recognition. Hegel’s transformation consists, I argue, in the claim that a comprehensive account of recognition in the domain of right must be concerned with recognition as a moral attitude.

Kant’s main concern in his famous essay on enlightenment is the relation between enlightenment and the political order. His account of this relation turns on the idea of the freedom of public reason. This paper develops a new interpretation of Kant’s concept of public reason. First, it argues that Kant conceives of public reasoning as a matter of speaking in one’s own name to the commonwealth of the public. Second, it draws on Kant’s republican conception of freedom in order to develop an account of the grounds of the freedom of public reason. It argues that the state’s duty with respect to public reason is an aspect of its duty to protect the independence of citizens. Contrary to what is commonly thought, this duty is not an obligation to refrain from interfering in the sphere of public reason. The state may have a positive, though limited, role to play in enlightenment.

In this article I argue that Jürgen Habermas’ notion of morality (moral norms) has more in common with Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’ as a ‘ sittlich ’ relation – understood as a socially integrative force – rather than Kant’s supreme principle of personal morality. I show that Habermas and Hegel, each in his own way, make a distinction between morality and ethics. However, I make the case that Habermas’ conception of ‘morality’ incorporates aspects of Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’, while Habermas’ conception of ‘ethical’ – referring to individual and group conceptions of the good life – is a remedy to the shortcomings in Hegel’s overly unified ethical life. I offer an alternative reading of Habermas’ principle of morality, which I suggest should be read as his attempt to provide a binding process to set up the norms that ought to condition a modern political community understood as a civil association.

Introduction: Redeeming recognition -- Oppression reconsidered -- Foundations of a liberal conception -- Toward a liberal conception of oppression -- Conclusion : A liberal conception of oppression -- Misrecognition as oppression -- Exploitation and disempowerment -- Cultural imperialism -- Marginalization -- Violence -- Conclusion: Misrecognition as oppression -- Overcoming oppression : the limits of toleration -- Contemporary differences : matters of toleration -- John Rawls : political liberalism -- Will Kymlicka : multicultural citizenship -- Conclusion: Accommodating differences : the limits of toleration -- Beyond toleration : toward a concept of recognition -- Hegel's early Jena theory of recognition -- Axel Honneth's critical social theory of recognition -- Charles Taylor's politics of recognition -- Conclusion: Toward a concept of public recognition -- Hegel's theory of recognition in the phenomenology : recognitive understanding and freedom -- The centrality of recognition in the phenomenology -- The pure concept of recognition and its failure in mastery and slavery -- The achievement of mutual recognition through recognitive understanding -- Challenges to Hegel's recognition theory -- Conclusion: Hegel's theory of recognition in the phenomenology -- Recognition in the philosophy of right : particularity and its right -- Recognition in the philosophy of right -- Particularity in the free market : the benefits and liabilities of free subjectivity -- Conclusion: The significance of the right of particularity -- Winning the right of particularity : recognizing difference in ethical life -- How particularity wins its right : the bildung of true conscience -- Exercising the right of particularity : corporations as sites of public recognition -- Challenges to Hegel's treatment of difference in ethical life -- Conclusion: The public recognition of difference in civil society -- Conclusion: Hegel, recognition, and ethical liberal modernity.

Prior to Kojève's well-known account in his Introduction to the Reading of Hegel there seems to have been relatively little interest in Hegel's concept of recognition,1 after Kojève, however, a popular view of Hegel's philosophy emerged within which the idea of recognition played a central role.2 While Kojève directed attention to the importance of Hegel's use of notion of recognition in the famous dialectic of "master and slave" in chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit,3 his reading, inspired equally by Marx and Heidegger, was nevertheless difficult to reconcile not only with the more systematic features of Hegel's philosophy, but also with what Hegel had to say on the topic of recognition within chapter 4, but especially, elsewhere in the Phenomenology.

In this paper, making reference to Robert Brandom's philosophical proposal - and against the background of Brandom's debate with Jürgen Habermas - I shall endeavor, first, to define the relation between recognition and normativity and then between recognition and criticism; in the final part of the paper I shall suggest a perspective that approaches recognition in terms of capacities. On this basis I attempt to see the critical attitude as something that is founded more on individual potentials than on formal criteria and that is essentially connected with a power of redescription: a dialectical anthropology of recognition is thus the most promising base to account for that which substantiates our critical powers.

Hegel, Marx, and the concept of immanent critique -- Hegel, Adorno, and the concept of transcendent critique -- Law, culture, and constitutionalism: remarks on Hegel and Habermas -- Political pluralism in Hegel and Rawls -- Hegel and the doctrine of expressivism -- Hegel, Hobbes, and Kant on the scienticization of practical philosophy -- Hegel's concept of virtue -- Political theology and modern republicanism: Hegel's conception of the state as an "earthly divinity" -- Hegel's conception of an "international" "we" -- Hegel, global justice, and the logic of recognition -- Is Hegel's philosophy of history Eurocentric?

This book offers the first full-length treatment in English of Hegel's idea of freedom - his theory of what it is to be free and his account of the social and political contexts in which this freedom is developed, realized, and sustained. Freedom is the value that Hegel most greatly admired and the central organizing concept of his social philosophy.

This paper examines the theme of recognition in Hegel's account of self-consciousness, suggesting that there are unresolved difficulties with the relationship between the normative sense of mutual recognition and phenomenological cases of unequal recognition. Recent readings of Hegel deal with this problem by positing an implicit distinction between an 'ontological' sense of recognition as a precondition for autonomous subjectivity, and a 'normative' sense of recognition as embodied in rational social and political institutions. Drawing on recent work by Robert Pippin and Axel Honneth, I argue that Hegel's conception of rational freedom provides the key to grasping the relationship between the ontological and normative senses of recognition. Recognitive freedom provides a way of appropriating Hegel's theory of recognition for contemporary social philosophy.

Freedom, Reason and History: The Hegelian heritage in Gadamer and Habermas. This essay aims at an elaboration of the theme of freedom by taking into account Gadamer"s and Habermas"s appropriation of Hegel. I will approach this theme by dividing it into three main topics: 1) The question of historical reconstruction of the idea(s) of freedom, 2) The question of justification of the idea of freedom, 3) The question of application (of the idea of freedom). The question of historical reconstruction will deal with the Gadamerian appropriation of Hegel"s idea of freedom in his concept of tradition. This will be confronted with Habermas"s twofold critique against Gadamer. Habermas claims that "tradition" could not be understood in a critical, that means, freedom-oriented way. He also claims that even a critical tradition would be one of many traditions, which leads to relativism. The question of justification will deal with Habermas"s and Gadamer"s approach to Hegel"s conception of freedom through recognition. The Habermasian approach to the Hegelian theme is a non-contextualised one, thereby aiming at a non-relative foundation for critical thinking. The third topic relates to the Gadamerian and also Habermasian question of how to apply a certain (non-contextual) freedom-based concept of recognition to different contexts. These last two topics relates to a Habermasian question of how to critically examine the freedom-potentials of a given context by using "freedom through recognition" as an ideal type, or standard.