This chapter introduces Axel Honneth's theory of recognition and discusses some criticisms of it, especially in relation to the third dimension of recognition and its relationship to the market economy.

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. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article I examine Axel Honneth’s positive theory of recognition. While commentators agree that Honneth’s theory qualifies as a positive theory of recognition, I believe that the deeper reason for why this is an apt characterisation is not yet fully understood. I argue that, instead of considering only what it is to recognise another person and what it means for a person to be recognised, we need to focus our attention on how Honneth pictures (...) the practice of recognition as a whole, which according to him works to make societies into places of greater freedom. This conception of recognition as a freedom-enhancing practice is supposed to provide a solution to a key problem of Frankfurt School critical theory, namely of how to determine the emancipatory practice in which critical theory is rooted, which becomes apparent as soon as one turns to the context in which Honneth originally develops his theory of recognition. At the end of the article, I offer a few reasons for doubting the overly positive picture of the practice of recognition that Honneth provides us with. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 19, Issue 2, Page 255-265, May 2011.

In this paper, we develop an understanding of recognition in terms of individuals’ capacity for conflict. Our goal is to overcome various shortcomings that can be found in both the positive and negative conceptions of recognition. We start by analyzing paradigmatic instances of such conceptions—namely, those put forward by Axel Honneth and Judith Butler. We do so in order to show how both positions are inadequate in their elaborations of recognition in an analogous way: Both fail to (...) make intelligible the fundamental nexus between relations of recognition and individuals’ capacity for conflict. We then move on to reconsider aspects of Hegel's view of recognition—ones that, from our viewpoint, have been unjustly neglected in the debate about recognition: his focus on the constitution of relations of recognition in conflict and on the status of being an author of acts of recognition. On this basis, we then spell out in a more systematic way what we take to be a more convincing conception of recognition. This puts us in the position to gesture at some consequences of this conception in practical contexts, above all with regard to the justification, role and structure of political institutions. (shrink)

In this volume Axel Honneth deepens and develops his highly influential theory of recognition, showing how it enables us both to rethink the concept of justice and to offer a compelling account of the relationship between social reproduction and individual identity formation. Drawing on his reassessment of Hegel’s practical philosophy, Honneth argues that our conception of social justice should be redirected from a preoccupation with the principles of distributing goods to a focus on the measures for creating symmetrical (...) relations of recognition. This theoretical reorientation has far-reaching implications for the theory of justice, as it obliges this theory to engage directly with problems concerning the organization of work and with the ideologies that stabilize relations of domination. In the final part of this volume Honneth shows how the theory of recognition provides a fruitful and illuminating way of exploring the relation between social reproduction and identity formation. Rather than seeing groups as regressive social forms that threaten the autonomy of the individual, Honneth argues that the ‘I’ is dependent on forms of social recognition embodied in groups, since neither self-respect nor self-esteem can be maintained without the supportive experience of practising shared values in the group. This important new book by one of the leading social philosophers of our time will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology, politics and the humanities and social sciences generally. (shrink)

AI systems have often been found to contain gender biases. As a result of these gender biases, AI routinely fails to adequately recognize the needs, rights, and accomplishments of women. In this article, we use Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition to argue that AI’s gender biases are not only an ethical problem because they can lead to discrimination, but also because they resemble forms of misrecognition that can hurt women’s self-development and self-worth. Furthermore, we argue that Honneth’s (...) class='Hi'>theory of recognition offers a fruitful framework for improving our understanding of the psychological and normative implications of gender bias in modern technologies. Moreover, our Honnethian analysis of gender bias in AI shows that the goal of responsible AI requires us to address these issues not only through technical interventions, but also through a change in how we grant and deny recognition to each other. (shrink)

In The Experience of Injustice, the French philosopher Emmanuel Renault opens an important new chapter in critical theory. He brings together political theory, critical social science, and a keen sense of the power of popular movements to offer a forceful vision of social justice. Questioning normative political philosophy’s conception of justice, Renault gives an account of injustice as the denial of recognition, placing the experience of social suffering at the heart of contemporary critical theory. Inspired by (...) Axel Honneth, Renault argues that a radicalized version of Honneth’s ethics of recognition can provide a systematic alternative to the liberal-democratic projects of such thinkers as Rawls and Habermas. Renault reformulates Honneth’s theory as a framework founded on experiences of injustice. He develops a complex, psychoanalytically rich account of suffering, disaffiliation, and identity loss to explain these experiences as denials of recognition, linking everyday injustice to a robust defense of the politicization of identity in social struggles. Engaging contemporary French and German critical theory alongside interdisciplinary tools from sociology, psychoanalysis, socialist political theory, social-movement theory, and philosophy, Renault articulates the importance of a theory of recognition for the resurgence of social critique. (shrink)

This book brings together philosophical approaches to explore the relation of recognition and poverty. This volume examines how critical theories of recognition can be utilized to enhance our understanding, evaluation and critique of poverty and social inequalities. Furthermore, chapters in this book explore anti-poverty policies, development aid and duties towards the (global) poor. This book includes critical examinations of reflections on poverty and related issues in the work of past and present philosophers of recognition. This book hopes (...) to contribute to the ongoing and expanding debate on recognition in ethics, political and social philosophy by focusing on poverty, which is one highly important social and global challenge. -/- “If one believed that the theme of “recognition” had been theoretically exhausted over the last couple of years, this book sets the record straight. The central point of all the studies collected here is that poverty is best understood in its social causes, psychic consequences and moral injustice when studied within the framework of recognition theory. Regardless of how recognition is defined in detail, poverty is best captured as the absence of all material and cultural conditions for being recognized as a human being. Whoever is interested in the many facets of poverty is well advised to consult this path-breaking book.” Axel Honneth, Columbia University. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was an important twentieth century contributor to the theory of recognition, even though he made literal reference to the concept only sparingly. He emphasized the importance of recognition, not only at the level of inter-personal relations and in the individual’s inclusion in the social, but also in terms of the capacity of human beings to communicate across cultures and across historical distances. The shift towards ontology in his later work provided a renewed grounding for his (...) interest in intersubjectivity and cross-cultural communication. Such continuity might be traced to lasting Hegelian and Marxian legacies in his thinking, which inflected his political interpretation of recognition. (shrink)

Multiculturalist theories of recognition consist of explanatory-descriptive social theoretical accounts of the position of the minorities whose predicaments the theories seek to address, together with normative principles generating political implications. Although theories of recognition are often based on illiberal principles or couched in illiberal-sounding language, it is possible to combine proper liberal principles with the kind of social theoretical accounts of minority groups highlighted in multiculturalism. The importance of ‘the social bases of self-respect’ in Rawls’s political liberalism is (...) used to illustrate how a liberal theory of recognition might be constructed, and it is argued that such a theory can capture some, though not all, of the concerns of multiculturalism, even though the resulting ‘politics of recognition’ is neither a ‘politics of difference’ nor a kind of ‘identity politics’. (shrink)

The present paper critically reconstructs Honneth’s recognition-theoretical conception of justice modelled on the formation of intact personal identity or self-realization. It looks into the status of using psychological evidence as a basis for a theory of justice, and whether or not such an approach of justice fails the publicity criterion.The claim is that although Honneth’s thesis is potentially susceptible to the charge of psychologization of injustice as Fraser alleges, the idea that recognition impacts on the formation or (...) malformation of personal identity should not be denied a critical role in a theory of justice. Doing so prevents a faceless or subject-less discourse of injustice.The paper also argues that recognitive justice founded on very specific moral-psychological assumptions passes the test of publicity. The challenge is how to establish the necessary conditions that enable victims of misrecognition to have a language and name their experience of suffering publicly. (shrink)

Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition has recently been criticised on the grounds that it conceives of the relationship between recognition and power in terms of an opposition. According to Honneth’s critics, this is too simple because recognition and power are often intertwined. My aim in this article is twofold: On the one hand, I seek to understand why Honneth conceives of recognition and power as opposed. As I will argue, this is not the result of (...) bad theorising; rather, there are important methodological considerations that account for this conception – specifically, the idea that one can develop an immanent critique of power in line with the tradition of the Frankfurt School only by adopting the participant perspective. On the other hand, I agree with the gist of what Honneth’s critics say and want to make a systematic proposal as to why opposing recognition and power is too simple. This proposal will build on the argument developed in the first part and will consist in the claim that to treat recognition and power as opposed is to consider recognition relations exclusively from the participant perspective in contrast to the observer perspective. As a result, the potential entanglement of recognition with problematic social arrangements cannot come into view. (shrink)

Axel Honneth draws a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love, (2) respect and (3) social esteem. In his The Struggle for Recognition, the recognition of cultural particularity is situated in the third sphere. It will here be argued that the logic of recognition of cultural identity also demands a non-evaluative recognition, namely a respect for difference. Difference-respect is formal because it is a recognition of the value of a particular culture not "for (...) society" or "as such", but for the social group involved. Yet, although it is formal, difference-respect cannot be reduced to respect for personal autonomy and its preconditions, as Honneth wrongly suggests in Redistribution or Recognition? It is argued here that difference-respect is oriented towards another dimension of the person, namely social attachments. This kind of respect entails a separate register of formal recognition with a corresponding concept of personal identity and a parallel category of social disrespect. What morally justifies difference-respect from a recognition-theoretic approach is the practical relation-to-self that thus becomes possible, namely self-respect as a sense of belonging. The formal conception of the good life that Honneth articulates should include the insight that this sense of belonging is as much a necessary condition for the good life as is personal autonomy. (shrink)

Axel Honneth se pregunta si el concepto del reconocimiento puede hacerse cargo de la función que Jürgen Habermas había atribuido al concepto de la comunicación. Con ello se coloca en posición crítica frente a la tradición de pensamiento en la que él mismo se inscribe, la teoría crítica. Cuestiona ante todo el carácter abstracto o formal de la teoría moral que se da en la Ética del Discurso, que remite finalmente a Habermas a Kant. Honneth, por su lado, se apoya (...) en el joven y casi materialista Hegel de Jena y en el behaviorista G. H. Mead, para proponer una teoría de la sociedad, no ajena a lo empírico, que contenga sustancia normativa , equidistante del formalismo de la ética comunicativa y de la materialidad del comunitarismo, superando así las dos tendencias, la universalista y la relativista, con el fin de mediarlas.Axel Honneth asks himself if the concept of recognition can assume the function that Jürgen Habermas had attributed to the concept of communication. Thus he places himself in a critical position regarding the thinking tradition he belonged to-the critic theory. He questions the abstract or formal character of the moral theory of the Ethics of Discourse, which ultimately leads to Habermas and Kant. Honneth, on his side, seeks support in the young and almost materialist Hegel of Jena and in the behaviorist G. H. Mead to propose a theory of society, not altogether unempirical, somehow normative , equidistant from the formalism of communicative ethics and from the materiality of "communitarism", and going beyond both universalism and relativism. (shrink)

A widely debated question in current research centres on determining the precursors to G. W. F. Hegel's theory of recognition. Until now Fichte, Rousseau and Aristotle have been discussed. However, the present paper analyses a further surprising correspondence between Marsilio Ficino's theory of love and Hegel's theory of recognition. Here it is shown that Hegel studied Ficino in 1793 and that we can discover syntactical, semantical, and structural vestiges of Ficino's De amore II 8 in (...) Hegel's early fragments on religion (1793) and love (1797), which are closely related to the general theory of recognition found in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Not only may this thesis be relevant for Hegel or Ficino scholarship, but it could also be a further indication that social theories with normative content are an integral characteristic of (early) modern self-consciousness. (shrink)

This article examines the critical potential of Honneth’s theory or ethics of recognition by raising two concerns as regards the success of such a project. Firstly, this article argues that Honneth’s ethical turn in critical theory might not be completely warranted and that there are good reasons to supplement his theory of recognition with an account of justificatory practices. Secondly, it argues that the complexity of the beginnings of political resistance proves that an explanative gap (...) remains to be filled to account for the way in which personal experience of disrespect can be transformed into a collective struggle for recognition. By way of conclusion, this article posits that instead of rejecting the critical potential of Honneth’s theory, the concerns raised therein are invitations to specify his theory further, so that contemporary struggles for recognition can be understood more profoundly. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe recognition of emotional facial expressions is often subject to contextual influence, particularly when the face and the context convey similar emotions. We investigated whether spontaneous, incidental affective theory of mind inferences made while reading vignettes describing social situations would produce context effects on the identification of same-valenced emotions as well as differently-valenced emotions conveyed by subsequently presented faces. Crucially, we found an effect of context on reaction times in both experiments while, in line with previous work, we (...) found evidence for a context effect on accuracy only in Experiment 1. This demonstrates that affective theory of mind inferences made at the pragmatic level of a text can automatically, contextually influence the perceptual processing of emotional facial expressions in a separate task even when those emotions are of a distinctive valence. Thus, our novel findings suggest that language acts as a contex... (shrink)

This paper pursues two questions derived from psychoanalysis that are central to the theory of recognition: must the image or force of negativity classically derived from Freud necessarily be thought of as an elementary component of human beings equipped with drives? Or, can this image or force of negativity be conceptualised as an unavoidable result of the unfolding processes of internalised socialisation? The first question is pursued in a consideration of its legacy for the older representatives of the (...) Frankfurt School, whilst the second question is pursued for its contribution to the theory of recognition that places the force of negativity within the domain of the social and not in a theory of the drives. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses Axel Honneth's theory of recognition as a specific constellation, i.e. as a theoretical endeavour spanning over and interrelating positions in the fields of anthropology, social theory, and politics. As essential components in this constellation I discern an anthropology of recognition, a social philosophy of different forms of recognition, a morality of recognition, a theory of democratic ethical life as a social ideal, and a notion of political democracy as (...) an ambitious reflexive form of social cooperation. A tentative attempt is also made to elucidate the motivational history that underlies and animates Honneth's theoretical endeavour and accounts for its specific 'spirit'. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to Max Horkheimer, a critical theory of society has to fulfil two tasks: the elimination of social injustice and the critical reflection of its own conceptual means. Based on this definition, I argue that Axel Honneth’s critical theory of recognition is at risk of losing sight of the ambivalence of recognition which limits the scope of his analysis of social pathologies. By drawing on the concept of misrecognising recognition it can be shown that (...) recognition itself is an ambivalent concept which can not only serve the purpose of self-realisation but also the purpose of self-subjection. Following the lead of Jean-Paul Sartre in this article I will unfold the concept of misrecognising recognition and put it at work to show how a variety of social pathologies of self-subjection can only be addressed if the ambivalence of recognition is taken into account. (shrink)

The origins of Axel Honneth's theory of recognition lie in his earlier project to correct the conceptual confusions and empirical shortcomings of historical materialism for the purpose of an adequate post-Habermasian critical social theory. Honneth proposed to accomplish this project, most strikingly, by reconnecting critical social theory with one of its repressed philosophical sources, namely anthropological materialism. In its mature shape, however, recognition theory operates on a narrow concept of interaction, which seems to lose (...) sight of the material mediations with which intersubjective relations are imbricated. The paper argues that a circumspect return to this twofold materialist heritage could substantively correct and enrich contemporary critical theory. The paper provides an illustration of this with the paradigmatic example of work. (shrink)

이 연구는 악셀 호네트의 인정이론의 규범적 토대를 이루는 인정이 론적 도덕 구상을 체계적으로 검토하면서, 호네트의 의도나 전체 이론기획에 비춰볼 때 그 도덕 구상을 의무론적으로 재구조화할 필요가 있음을 제시하고자 한다. 이 연구의 결과는 발굴이면서 동시에 재구조화일 것이다. 인정이론에서 지금까지 사람들이 인식했던 것보다 훨씬 더 많은 칸트적 요소를 발굴해 내면서, 동시에 호네트 자신의 구상에 반해서, 칸트의 인간 존엄성 이념이 인정의 세 가지 인정형식의 규범적 토대로 명시적으로 도입되어야 함을 역설할 것이다. 그렇게 의무론적으로 재구조화된 도덕 구상이 호네트의 의도와 인정이론의 기획에 더 잘 부합한다는 것을 (...) 보이는 것이 이 연구의 최종 목표다. (shrink)

The article argues that Honneth’s idea of reconstructive critique represents a type of immanent critique. Starting from the objection raised by Rahel Jaeggi, who considers the reconstructive critique to be a genre of internal criticism devoid of any transformative negativity, it seeks to show, on the contrary, that Honneth’s notion of “surplus of validity” plays a role of transcendence within the historical reality, which could explain his understanding of reconstructive critique as immanent one. In the second part, the paper displays (...) how Honneth applies this conception of critique to solve the division within Critical Theory, induced by Habermas’s use of the idea of rational reconstruction, which would have split off the tasks of founding the normative criteria and discovering immanently elements for the social transformation. In the third part, the category of surplus of validity is investigated in its function of enlightening possibilities of transformation following an “universal-particular dialectic”. In its final part, the paper addresses some conceptual difficulties in Honneth’s attempt to clarify the systematic value and philosophical meaning of the surplus of validity within the framework of normative reconstruction. (shrink)

인정이 이데올로기로 작동할 때, 호네트가 주장하듯이 인정투쟁의 결과가 항상 사회의 도덕적 진보를 가져온다고 말할 수 있을까? 이데올로기적인 사회적 인정질서 안에서, 상호주관적 인정관계를 확장시키기 위한 인정투쟁이 역설적으로 또 다른 배제의 영역을 생산하는 결과를 가져올 위험은 없는가? 이러한 문제의식을 바탕으로, 이 논문에서는 배제의 영역을 생산해내지 않는 방식으로 상호주관적 인정관계의 확장을 꾀하기 위해서는 현대의 사회적 관계를 포괄할 수 있도록 상호주관적 인정관계를 재구성할 필요가 있음을 주장하고자 한다.BR 이러한 주장을 하기 위해 먼저 이데올로기적 인정질서 안에서 규범이 어떻게 작동하며 그 효과는 무엇인지를 버틀러의 수행성 개념으로 설명한다. (...) 다음으로 헤겔 『정신현상학』의 ‘불행한 의식’에 대한 버틀러의 논의를 통해, 근대적 주체개념과 연관된 상호주관적 인정관계는 육체라는 타자를 배제함으로써 구성될 수 있었던 관계임을 밝힐 것이다. 마지막으로 취약성(Vulnerability)개념을 중심으로 상호주관적 인정관계를 재구성할 때, 또 다른 배제의 영역을 생산하지 않는 방식으로 상호주관적 인정관계를 확장해 나가는 것이 가능해질 것이라고 주장하고자 한다. (shrink)

Should madness be recognized as grounds for identity? Should society recognize and validate madness as diversity, be it psychological, behavioral, or emotional? To answer these questions, we might turn to medical consensus about which mental, behavioral, or emotional states count as mental illness. Unfortunately, the criteria for determining which mental health phenomena fall within the boundary of mental illness remain open to debate, creating what is known as "the boundary problem." Common approaches to resolving the boundary problem include naturalism, a (...) position that aims to answer the problem by positing a scientific concept of disorder based on value-free judgments about species-typical functioning. In An... (shrink)

Although Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition continues to resonate among political theorists, its relationship to the debate on political and moral cosmopolitanism remains unclear. The paper aims to fill this gap by defining a few guideposts to a ‘recognition-theoretical’ conception of the international. My argument is that Honneth's theory oscillates between a liberal-cosmopolitan model of the global spread of human rights and an alternative model that is closer to the anti-cosmopolitanism of the late Rawls. Both (...) models reflect certain assumptions about the moral standing of political communities or ‘peoples’, even if those assumptions remain implicit and unexamined. I begin by discussing the premise that recognition theory is all about ‘natural’ persons instead of ‘artificial’ persons such as states or peoples. I proceed by comparing Rawls's notion of a distinct logic of the international to Honneth's more ambiguous gestures toward an international political theory. Finally, I offer some thoughts on the place of peoples and sovereign statehood in the theory of recognition. (shrink)

Axel Honneth reads the young Hegel as engaged in a debate with Hobbes over the social nature of the autonomous self. In the passages that are crucial for the development of Honneth’s own theory of recognition the Jena manuscripts nevertheless do not mention Hobbes by name. Attributing to Hegel an advance on Hobbes’s influential early modern account of individual autonomy, Honneth does not duly consider the polemical context in which Hobbes wrote. A re-examination of the polemical use to (...) which Hobbes puts the notion of individual autonomy raises questions concerning the extent to which Honneth can straightforwardly valorise individual freedom. (shrink)

Honneth's fundamental claim that the normativity of social orders can be found nowhere but in the very experience of those who suffer injustice leads, I argue, to a radical theory and critique of society, with the potential to provide an innovative theory of social movements and a valid alternative to political liberalism.

Axel Honneth reads the young Hegel as engaged in a debate with Hobbes over the social nature of the autonomous self. In the passages that are crucial for the development of Honneth’s own theory of recognition the Jena manuscripts nevertheless do not mention Hobbes by name. Attributing to Hegel an advance on Hobbes’s influential early modern account of individual autonomy, Honneth does not duly consider the polemical context in which Hobbes wrote. A re-examination of the polemical use to (...) which Hobbes puts the notion of individual autonomy raises questions concerning the extent to which Honneth can straightforwardly valorise individual freedom. (shrink)